- The country deserves to know why students leapt into the rites of marriage
A marriage is “the legally or formally recognised union of two people as partners in a personal relationship (historically and in some jurisdictions specifically a union between a man and a woman).” If it is a union between a man and a woman, it then means it is an affair for adults. It is celebrated with fanfare in many places, with elaborate western and traditional ceremonies that sometimes gulp a fortune.
Although marriage, unarguably the foundational relationship for all society, has been having hiccups in modern times, with divorce rates on the upswing, the bastardisation of the institution got to new lows when some students of Sa’adu Zungur’ Model Primary and Secondary School in Bauchi State decided to be joining themselves in what apparently is unholy matrimony, after the male students would have paid a token as bride price to their intended ‘spouses’ A newspaper reports that “male students paid N500 as dowry to their female counterparts as precondition for their marriages, while classmates of both the ‘grooms and brides’ contribute money for refreshments at the ceremonies usually conducted secretly.” The ‘deal done’, what follows can be left to conjecture. In a school where male and female students study in separate classrooms, this must have come as a rude shock to the school authorities and the Bauchi State government.
Apparently this practice had been going on for some time; however, the last straw that broke the camel’s back was when a Senior Secondary School 2 (SS2) student (name withheld) organised one such illegal wedding in the school. The ecstasy and noise generated by the illicit union attracted teachers to the scene. Stunned by what they saw, the teachers alerted the school authorities and the principal, Malam Ahmed Zailani, immediately informed the state ministry of education. The deputy governor, Nuhu Gidado, who oversees the education ministry has since ordered the school shut and set up a committee to look into the ugly development “and come up with a detailed and sincere report before the school would be re-opened.”
We cannot agree less.
We know that students play many pranks and that as they grow up, they drop some of these pranks. But what the students involved in this matter have done is beyond being dismissed as one of those pranks. As the deputy governor rightly observed, the student’s behaviour only mirrors the degree of moral decadence in the land and it should not be tolerated. Already, there is so much depravity in the country, especially among youths, particularly students. When people marry, one of the natural privileges is uninhibited intimacy between the couples. Could the students therefore be working towards this with their illegal marriages? Since the marriage by the SS2 student was not the first in the school, it would be interesting to find out how those who had done it before have been coping. Have there been instances where some of the ‘wedded’ students got pregnant? Do they have unfettered access to their spouses, etc? These are some of the questions that the committee would do well to provide answers to.
We commend the state government for intervening promptly in the matter before the practice begins to spread like bush fire. Students are sent to school to study so as to be able to better their lot in life and also impact their society; not to marry. It would not be out of place though for the government to counsel the students on the need to get their priorities right. Marriage and pregnancy cannot be the focus for students; rather, they should be concerned about how to live a comfortable and meaningful future, a thing which only education, by and large, can guarantee.
