Love is a beautiful thing, and everyone identifies and admires those who genuinely celebrate love, because love is a universal language, I, therefore, join millions worldwide to wish Mr & Mrs David Adeleke, a happy married life.
The wedding, however, re-entrenched my belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with the black people not just her leaders. This is perhaps the reason why we are yet to move out of poverty despite the huge natural deposits. Some people are so shameless that they go to a wedding that they are not invited because they want to be associated with a certain class of mere mortals. “A fish is a fish”, “a bird a bird”, one can be in the middle of an occasion, yet not a crocodile.
The arrogance and primitive display of wealth by a few privileged individuals who ostensibly feel that they became rich by their smartness, dedication, and talents and therefore should intimidate impoverished Nigerians on social media with such wealth, is becoming alarming. Interestingly, most of us are not moved by such a public display of wealth, there are other intrinsic values to life than mundane material possessions.
We should not deceive the next generation, by indirectly indoctrinating them to believe that the only thing that matters in life is money or material possessions. A car is merely a means of transportation; it was conceived to ease movement. At a certain level of wisdom, you will consider a car as a toy. The capitalists are merely playing on the psyche of most of us.
People who truly build wealth may sooner or later realise that the wealth that they have may not have come because they are better than others, therefore, the wealth shouldn’t be displayed in such a manner as to intimidate others, this is considering the fact that so many Nigerians go to bed every day without a meal, children die daily from starvation and you are bragging that you got a bottle of wine for one million.
Many wealthy individuals in other clans, share or Will their estates and wealth to the poor, the motherless homes, orphanages, old people’s homes, and charities. Your wealth is not just for vanities, vain glory, and the satisfaction of your flesh and blood.
Again, the passion and attention that greeted that wedding if channeled to ugly government policies or the arbitral taxation by the current government may have given this administration reasons to rethink as it is currently happening in Kenya.
Poverty has made many of us, lose our sense of value and rationality, imagine for a second that Davido wasn’t a celebrity, people would have remembered that the couple already have children out of wedlock, a situation that would have denied the payment of a bride price to the bride’s family. The bride price is only paid when a woman is a virgin.
The most painful part of the whole episode was that an Igbo man gave out her daughter in marriage outside Ala Igbo, that was an affront to the culture of our people. Assuming, but not conceding that the Orlu part of Imo State is unsafe for a wedding of that magnitude, why not use Owerri or any other town in Igboland for a traditional wedding?
Legally speaking, it can be presumed that no wedding took place on Tuesday since the couple didn’t meet the requirements for a marriage celebration in Igbo culture, which is that an Igbo girl should be given out in marriage traditionally in his father’s ancestry land.
Let’s always stand for the right thing irrespective of the personality.
Roland Uwakwe, Esq.