Nigeria’s Raging Marriage-Phobia: A Social Crisis Bad Leaders Created -By Isaac Asabor

Marriage is meant to be a blessing, not a burden. Yet in today’s Nigeria, it is fast becoming a nightmare. Young men are fleeing from it. Young women are waiting endlessly for it. And the nation is paying the price for what has become a full-blown crisis: “marriage-phobia”.

This fear is not imaginary. It is real, it is spreading, and it is eating into the fabric of our society. Worse still, it is not caused by “lazy youths” or “irresponsible bachelors.” No. It is the product of bad leadership, decades of corruption, waste, and neglect that have turned love into a luxury.

A professional colleague once said “This is an economy that kills love. The foregoing jocular assertion cannot be pooh-poohed with mere wave of the hands as it hit the nail on its head. In fact, it is expedient to ask in this context, “How does a young man think of marriage when he cannot afford rent, food, or even transport?”  Degrees lie useless in drawers. Inflation bites daily. Salaries vanish before the month ends. Survival itself is a battle. Against this background, marriage is no longer a milestone, it is a financial trap.

Many young men would rather remain bachelors than commit economic suicide by tying the knot. Can you blame them?

As if the economy was not enough, culture has been hijacked. Marriage rites, once sacred, have become extortion rackets. Bride price lists now include electronics, generators, and cash in hard currency. Families no longer give daughters away in love; they literarily sell them off like merchandise.

Let us stop pretending. This is not culture. This is greed. And it is scaring men away from the altar. Then comes the wedding circus. Aso-ebi is like a tax. Decoration meant to “outshine” neighbours. Social media pressure to trend. Many couples borrow heavily just to stage a “society wedding.”

One couple in the South West learnt the hard way. Barely three months into marriage, they were already neck-deep in debt from their lavish ceremony. Their honeymoon was not about love, it was about creditors.

And it is not just them. In the South East, a robber caught on CCTV confessed he joined crime to raise money for marriage rites. Think about that. A man risked prison not to eat, not to pay school fees, but to satisfy society’s suffocating demands. That is how far we have pushed people.

The results are everywhere. Women, frustrated by delays, slide into transactional relationships. Men, hiding under perpetual bachelorhood, indulge recklessly, fueling moral decay. Divorce rates are climbing. Failed marriages become cautionary tales, frightening even more men away.

Without a doubt, the situation has become a vicious cycle, and Nigeria is bleeding from it due to the collective mischievousness of bad Leaders and rotten Foundations.

Make no mistake: this crisis was not created by young people. It was created by leaders who destroyed the economy, who allowed unemployment to fester, who let inflation spiral. Leaders who waste billions on themselves while ordinary Nigerians cannot afford family life.

When young people cannot marry, cannot build homes, cannot raise families, society itself is under threat. Marriage-phobia is not just private fear, it is public failure. It is the rotten fruit of bad leadership.

Enough is enough. Parents must stop treating daughters like business ventures. Bride price lists must return to sanity. Society must stop glorifying wasteful weddings. And above all, government must fix the economy. Jobs must be created. Inflation must be tackled. Housing must be affordable.

Marriage is divine. It is good. But in Nigeria today, it has been twisted into a source of fear. Unless leaders wake up, marriage will remain a dream deferred for millions of young Nigerians.

The truth is simple: bad leadership has turned our weddings into burdens, our traditions into traps, and our youths into victims. And until that change, Nigeria’s marriage-phobia will continue to rage.