Money Wives: Startling Revelations About Nigerian Community Where Child Brides Are Advertised And Bought Off Facebook
In a shocking new report by Channels TV, Nigerian child brides as young as ten are being advertised on Facebook and then sold to men as old as their grandfathers to pay off their parents’ debts. “Money wives” as it turns out is a common practice in Becheve community in Obanliku, Cross River State, Nigeria.
READ ALSO: UNICEF Report Claims Nigeria Has Largest Number of Child Brides in Africa
Young girls are regularly exchanged by their parents for food, cash, or offsetting debts. These girls who are forced to grow into women are referred to as money wives or money women. It has now emerged that their parents and guardians are taking to Facebook to put them up for sale.
Sometimes, they are bought by men older than their fathers and they become the properties of these men for the rest of their lives.
The men can choose to use them as they like. Some of them are used as baby making machines, some are made to do all the house chores and to farm.
One of the girls, unnamed, told how her uncle sold her at about 10 years of age on the grounds that her father failed to pay her mother’s bride price. Following the sudden death of the little girl’s father, her uncle told her she had to pay her father’s debt and he sold her off in marriage at primary 6.
Another girl, Monica said she and her sister got married a month apart to men they had never met and who were far older than them.
Picture above is allegedly of men in Becheve travelling with goods to pay for a child bride
Monica further said:
My father knew nothing about Facebook until my elder brother bought him a smartphone and convinced him to join Facebook and post our photographs whenever he likes.
He’ll buy new clothes and force me and my sisters to put them on before taking photographs of us.
It is young people who convince old men to look for wives on Facebook.
READ ALSO: Another Child Bride, 15-Year Old Ebube Surfaces In Same Anambra State
Monica ran away from her husband to live with a friend less than a year after she got married to him as a money wife.
She added:
The man I married said his oldest son showed him my photo on Facebook and directed him to my father.
Usually, in the Becheve community, parents of the money brides take the girls to men who can afford to pay for their daughters. But in recent months, families who are so desperate to give their children away for money turn to Facebook so their kinsmen can check them out and pick the girl of their choice.
Magnus Ejikang, a local chief in Ogbakoko said the money wives practice is all about men and boosting their status:
“The practice is meant to boost the status of the men in Becheve community. The more brides you have, the more respect you gain in the community.”
Watch video of the ‘money-wives’ speaking about their plight below:
https://youtu.be/3mGBFsTNumM