A Man Who Would Publicly Propose To My Daughter Without My Consent is Not Yet Born — Anayo Nwosu

I was with Mazi Azianuka right inside his living room. The heat oozing from his anger was enough to roast a yam. 

Which Nnewi or real Igbo man wouldn't be so infuriated? Mazi Azianuka's daughter, Ukwunnu who was returning home from Canada after 7 years of university education nearly made her father commit murder. 

Thank God I was around and was able to nip the murder in the bud.

The young girl who had allowed western education to cross a cultural boundary in her head had without natural intelligence, introduced a strange male visitor to the father as her fiancé. Fian wetin?

"How? When? Where?" the father wondered. 

The father had suspected that something was amiss when the daughter asked him not to bother picking her from Asaba airport that she would come home to the village by road from Lagos with her "friend".  

Mazi Azianuka, as a policy, does travel in the same vehicle with all the members of his family to minimize impacts of any fatal accidents. They travel in batches. 

The daughter was aware of this traditional travel arrangement and exploited it. She was to arrive a day after the parents.  

She called a night before to announce that she would come to the village by road due to bad weather. 

"Some Lagos boys must have started plucking okro in my farm without my permission", Mazi Azianuka's inner mind kept telling him. 

The ring on the daughter's middle finger which was strange was a clear give away sign but Mazi Azianuka chose to be blind. 

He never asked until the New year eve visit of Dr. John Thomas Ochonganoba, native of Amichi, a neighboring town.  

He could remember overhearing the the daughter telling her mum about one "cute" Nigerian doctor who trained in Canada but had to return to Lagos to manage his father's big hospital. It was a women's talk. 

It was becoming clear why Ukwunnu declined her father's advice to do her PhD before returning home. She has suddenly developed dislike to living in Canada. 

Everyone around except the man of the house seemed to have met or known Dr. J.T. 

The rant of "Dr. J.T is here" nearly made me and Mazi Azianuka miss the second Tottenham's goal against Chelsea. My host and I didn't know when another visitor entered the house and was even being served food in the dining room. 

After eating and drinking Mazi Azianuka's food, the emboldened visitor had the temerity to insult his host by planting a loud kiss on the cheek of Ukwunnu at the dining table caring less whosoever that heard the sound. 

Ukwunnu confirmed the sound of what we suspected when she brought the Dr. J.T before her father in the living room and introduced the guy, the visitor and a stranger to his father as her fiancé. 

"Alu emee!" Mazi Azianuka bellowed and went for the young man's jugular. It took my stronger hands to dislodge his gripping murderous arms. 

How far can't today's young Igbo girls go in a bid to keep up with the Joneses? 

Why accept a ring or accept to marry a man without first securing their parental consent? 

It's a taboo for an Igbo father to be seen as regularizing an already concluded transaction he was not privy to. 

A tail does not wag a dog. And no one can throw a javelin without first showing the missile to the sky. 

Mbanu! No man, I repeat no man, has ever been born, the man who shall attempt to give a ring to any of my daughters before my consent. 

If that's all about civilization, let me remain in the cave.