A headline cut through my afternoon just as I was stepping away from politics into the messier terrain of human behavior. “Man Demands Refund of Bride Price After Sleeping with Potential Bride,” it read on GistME News. I clicked before I realized I’d been hooked. The story came from Lusaka, Zambia, but it felt uncomfortably familiar.
Jones Mukanzo, 45, had paid K10,000 of a K21,000 lobola for Selina Zulu and was already rehearsing for a wedding that would never happen. When he called it off, he went to the Lusaka Boma Local Court demanding his money back. Selina’s family refused. In Nsenga tradition, they argued, lobola isn’t refundable, especially not after Jones had “test-driven” the bride. Her uncle told the court that Selina had been spending weekends at Jones’s place, Fridays to Mondays, with his permission. Jones denied ever sleeping with her. The magistrate adjourned the case, asking Selina to appear and set the record straight.
It sounds like an oddity from Eastern Province, yet it mirrors a pattern I’ve seen play out across West Africa. Anthropologists call it the instrumentalization of bride price. In classical African kinship systems, lobola wasn’t a purchase but a social contract, a symbolic transfer that sealed alliance between two families and gave the union legitimacy. As Meyer Fortes argued in his work on Tallensi kinship, the exchange creates jural rights and moral obligations that extend far beyond the couple. When that ritual is reduced to a transaction, the meaning collapses.
What makes Jones’s case fascinating is the economic shortcut it reveals. In many modest communities, the full bride price and initial rites still cost less than ₦200,000. For some men, that lump sum feels like a bargain compared to months of expensive gifts, hotel bills, and performative generosity that may never secure intimacy or commitment. Pay once, gain access, and the girl’s family often relaxes their vigilance. She, believing the cultural and sometimes religious threshold has been crossed, may see herself as morally and emotionally bound to the man. Some clerics reinforce this by teaching that bride price and family consent are what make a man a husband in the eyes of God and society.
Here lies the contradiction. Sociologist Anthony Giddens in The Transformation of Intimacy, described how modern relationships increasingly hinge on “confluent love”, contingent, negotiated, and revocable. But when traditional structures are selectively invoked, they become tools for risk management. Paying bride price with no intention to marry converts a sacred obligation into a low-cost trial marriage. Research from the University of Ibadan on courtship practices in southwestern Nigeria found that over 60% of respondents knew of engagements that dissolved after sexual intimacy, with men citing “changed feelings” as the primary reason. The process becomes a substitute for the product.
The economics are brutal and simple. A man may balk at spending ₦200,000 in small increments on dinners, gifts, and outings with no guarantee of marriage. Yet he will pay the same amount as lobola because it grants him social cover and psychological leverage. For some women, the pressure is internalized. I’ve heard accounts where ladies push for the payment themselves, not for tradition’s sake but to secure freedom and privacy with their partner. When parents later demand the full rites, excuses emerge: “He’s not ready.” The relationship has already delivered its perceived benefits.
This is why engagement has become more common than marriage in certain circles. The ritual satisfies the immediate desire without triggering the long-term responsibilities. Scholars like Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí have warned about the distortion of indigenous institutions when they are detached from their communal logic. What was meant to bind communities now gets weaponized for individual gain.
The tragedy is that dating becomes more expensive than having a wife, not in naira but in trust. The moment bride price stops signaling commitment and starts signaling access, the entire system turns predatory. And the safest code, uncomfortable as it sounds in a liberal age, remains unchanged across cultures and religions: *no full* *marriage* , *no* *intimacy* . Anything less turns sacred rites into a gamble, and women into the stakes.
Bagudu can be reached via bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com or 07034943575.
