“Youth of Awo-Omama Will Boycott Their Girls”

Men, Marriage, and Ethno-Cultural Nationalism in Southern Nigeria, 1920–1956

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20083799
AutoresSaheed Aderinto (autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Páginas243-267
Fecha de publicación2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoCHAPTER
RevistaMasculinities and the Nation in the Modern World (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9781137536105_13
OpenAlexW2485975863
ISBN9781137536105
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas24

The title of this chapter is the headline of a news report in the January 8, 1948, issue of the Nigerian Spokesman, one of the newspapers published by Nnamdi Azikiwe, a foremost nationalist and one of the founding fathers of independent Nigeria.1 The newspaper reported about a resolution an assemblage of young unmarried men had passed in December 1947 about bride price in Awo-Omama, a community in southeastern Nigeria. According to these men, bride price had "soared to the Olympian summits, inaccessible to most youths without difficulties and strains." The youth, under the auspices of the Awo-Omama Patriotic Union (Lagos Branch) accused their elders and chiefs of "profiteering and traffic in conjugal" affairs and "burning the candle at both ends by sucking marriageable youths dry."2 They resolved not to marry women from their town unless the elders reduced bride price to £15 and £25 for educated and uneducated girls, respectively. They also threatened to ostracize members who contravened this resolution.3 A similar organization, the Ngwa Youth Association, after a two-day convention held in Aba (also in southeastern Nigeria), in 1953, directed its members not to pay more than £25 for a bride, regardless of the educational status of the girl. So heated was the atmosphere at the convention that one of the elders demanded that "the temper of the youth be controlled by elderly and more experienced brains."4 KeywordsColonial StateBride PriceAfrican MasculinityColonial CultureInterethnic MarriageThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

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