My Dear Bros,
I am tired of you whining about your girlfriend. What is it that you want? What are your expectations? She grew up in a city where “chop my money” by P-square is the soundtrack of our existence. She has Eldee singing, “ki lo fe, shey moto ni?” (what do you want, is it a car?); where Skuki is telling her to stop complaining that the sex is sore after obtaining a Prada purse; and Olamide is demanding that she “go down low” before she can get whatever expensive bric-a-brac she wants.
She is on the internet watching flamboyant proposals on YouTube - one guy pays for the whole seats in a movie theatre just so he can propose to his girlfriend over a Sex and the City footage. Another pays for advertisement space at a basketball game just so his popcorn-loving babe can see herself on big screen as he pops the question: “Will you marry me?”
She has friends in school who drive around in Kia Optima bought by boyfriends working in Abuja.
That is her reality. You met her that way - a broke student with expensive dreams, living with a retired father and five siblings waiting every month, with gluttony for a cape, ready to dive into the old man’s pocket to gobble their own share of his pension. Sometimes they wait for months, and months turn to years, while sons become petty thieves and daughters convert to part-time prostitutes...
You met her that way - with an expensive ipad and no job. You didn’t question the Louboutin she wore on your first date; you didn’t raise an eyebrow when you saw her rocking a N75,000 swatch; you admired her head full of weaves and nodded approvingly. That weave costs N230,000. Don’t you know? Have you been living under a rock? So what are you complaining about?
After six months, the excitement of what she must have felt when her eyes settled on your good looks have worn off considerably; her true needy nature is in full bloom, and you start to rant, turn to a preacher yelling: “Money is not everything. Why are women so desperate and greedy? Money cannot buy happiness…”
Is love going to pay her fees and keep her greed for the good things of life at bay? So dad’s pension has been delayed for the fifth month. The last time he almost died on the queue waiting for hours, now he has announced to all his children- all shacked up in one sorry Nigerian University or the other- to go fend for themselves. Their only source of support is as good as dead.
Your babe is in her second year studying business administration. She has bills to pay and no clue how to get it sorted. She has a mop on her head (been sitting there for over nine weeks) that she needs to get rid of (to affix another more glorified one); her knickknacks are running out…and there you stand, with your portmanteau and a badly beaten golf car, talking about love and beautifully written letters.
Why do we like to buy trouble in the open market like this?
How do you expect a struggling student of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with zero parent/government support, and siblings who are just as deprived, to worry about love and constant pings, or care about plastic red flowers you buy once a year on Valentine’s Day?
Think!
Leave the student to focus on her life and the ugly challenges threatening to consume her. Stay away, your love is the last thing she needs. Unless that love comes with pocket money and a Hyundai saloon car, just forget it. You are complicating her life even more with your N70,000 job.
Dear lover boys, why don’t you find a woman…you know?
A woman with a job, who would shriek with joy when you ping her? One you can spend hours with talking about love and sweet nothings and she wouldn’t ask for recharge cards.
Aren’t you tired of being an ATM? It’s not like you have anything really. Your salary can barely sustain you. You’ve neglected your mother just so you can take Miss Under-graduate to the cinema every weekend to make up for the Blackberry Q300 you couldn’t buy for her.
Hian! Wake up, man! If you were my brother I’ll slap you out of this thick delirium. Be wise. Love with wisdom. With a N70,000 pay slip every month, the last thing you need is her love.
Soon you’ll start planning a wedding and children in your state of lack - the two of you walking into the arms of penury; claiming to have been captured by love. You see why you deserve a material lover? Because your brain is on permanent retreat.
Written by Joy Bewaji
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