A 40-year-old Cynthia Osarome is a Lagos-based successful banker. She met Efe Ogheneme, a Benin-based businessman over 14 years ago during her secondary school days.
Efe proposed marriage to Cynthia when she gained admission into the University of Benin to study Banking and Finance about 12 years ago and he asked her not to forget him.
She spent four years in school, graduated, finished her National Youth Service and is now gainfully employed in one of the top Nigerian banks yet Efe is yet to come to see the parents of Cynthia to start a formal marriage process.
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Meanwhile, the engagement ring on the hand of Cynthia has scared many men away from her, especially in her successful career days. Efe has continued to give her reassurance that things will be well, and they will eventually get married.
Now, Cynthia is in a confused state because she doesn’t know whether to put an end to the long relationship to move on with her life because years have passed by, and it seems to be too late for her to start all over.
Cynthia is not alone in this marital dilemma as many ladies are faced with similar situations. Some ladies have worn wedding rings for five to 10 years now and there is no sign of a wedding date.
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They have continued to prod the men who gave them the rings, but nothing is happening such that people are now asking when the wedding bell will ring, and some others are beginning to make a caricature of such ladies because there is no sign of wedding date and wedding bell.
Another similar situation is that of Adenike Ojo, a beautiful young fashion designer who is in her late 30s. She has been engaged to one Tunji Babatunde, who is currently in the United Kingdom.
Both grew up together in the same neighbourhood in Ogun State and they even went to secondary school together. Tunji proposed to Adenike before leaving Nigeria five years ago and both of their parents also knew about their intention to get married.
Five years have gone by, but Tunji has yet to find his feet in the UK, which is why it has been difficult for him to return to Nigeria to fulfil his marital promises to his childhood sweetheart, Adenike.
Today, Adenike is confused and under pressure because several suitors are coming her way, but she is still hoping that Tunji will make his promise of taking her to the altar.
Ladies like Adenike are tired of wearing the engagement rings but are not able to remove them because of fear that the day they remove it may be the day the man will brace up and start making wedding plans.
They are ashamed of what friends and neighbours who have been seeing them with engagement rings on them may say. Now, they seem to be in bondage. They cannot move on with their lives because other men see them as engaged or married.
“I have been engaged for three years now waiting for my fiancé to announce his readiness for us to fix our wedding date,” said Onyinyechi Ezeogu, a 43-year-old Lagos-based beauty expert.
According to her, she has experienced several failed love relationships in the past until she met one Chukwuebuka Mbah, a Lagos-based businessman, who is into buying and selling bicycle spare parts in one of the markets in Lagos.
Chukwuebuka is struggling to make ends meet as he barely maintains a one-room apartment in the popular Ajegunle area of Lagos.
Onyinyechi said that as the first child in a family of six children, Chukwuebuka bears the burden of helping his aged parents in the village to pay for the school fees of his younger siblings, cater for the aged parents and bear other financial burdens of the family.
She said that Chukwuebuka’s greatest challenge is to see how to be able to put up a decent apartment for his parents in the village before he can think of getting married.
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“My fiancé barely earns enough money to make ends meet yet he wants to build a house in the village before he can think of getting married. I understand that there is not enough space in the family house that they are currently managing. The house they are currently managing is a mud house built by his grandparents in which his parents were given a room, which they are sharing with their six children.
“I have been to their hometown in Enugu State and witnessed everything myself and discovered that these are not far from the truth but how long will I continue to wait for him? Look at the situation of Nigeria’s economy, business is prolonged, and inflation is surging on a daily basis.
“Chukwuebuka managed to finish moulding about 4,000 blocks that he will use to build a 3-bedroom bungalow for the parents so that they will allow him to get married but there is no money to start building the house. I’m becoming impatient and don’t know if I will continue to wait because time is already running out,” Onyinyechi lamented.
There are thousands of Nigerian ladies who are in what can be regarded as a “bondage.” They are so unfortunately trapped that going forward is difficult and moving backward is equally difficult.
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