Whether you take it seriously, or you simply just appreciate the satiric nature of the app, nothing takes away from it the fact that it has been a successful one from the creators at Nigerian digital agency, Anakle whose Brideprice app has gone viral over the last couple of days. The success of it might be owing to the ‘marriage stereotypes’ among Nigerians which is a constant source of humour for a youthful population who always finds a way to make a joke about everything. Its just the Nigerian way, no one takes life too serious around here. Also, marriage is a constant source of discussion, especially on social media. What with the weekly trending relationship talk show on Twitter ‘No Holds Barred Interactive’ #NHBi, and the seeming frequent announcement of marriage engagement of couples who met on Twitter.

The app measures the ‘worth’ of females by taking into account height, skin colour, body size, country of residence, accent, educational qualification, employment status, cooking skills, beauty and facial features, and nationality. Points are measured in Nigerian naira. The humour is evident in scale and judging criteria for points. For cooking skills the highest level is Calabar, a testimony to the culinary excellence of the women of the South-South region of Akwa Ibom and Cross River, the lowest being ‘Boiling egg’ which deducts  N40,000 from your Bride price money. And there is ‘Maga dependent’ on the employment scale which deducts N10,000 as well. Apparently, Nigerian men aren’t big on their women having PhD’s. Having one sets you back by  fifty grand. A Masters degree is ok and adds N100,000 to your price money. So you reside in Nigeria? No points on that one for you dear. The biggest winners are those resident in America who get N100,000 more added to their worth. Hollywood’s influence and the reselling of the black skin to us is apparent in the scale of skin color with Lupita kind skin toned girls the highest winners at par with half-caste on N50,000. Sorry light skinned babes, you aren’t winning at this it seems.

There is what the Nigerian man wants or looks out for in a woman, this app definitely tells us that much. But again with so many ‘qualifications’ missing out from the app you wonder if we never just don’t talk about sex openly, or virtues such as kindness, honesty, civility, affection for children, even those that aren’t yours aren’t big with Nigerian men. There is no scale for Age range. You would want to think that a 22 year old damsel would have more ‘market value’ than a 35 year old desperate aunty. Perhaps an oversight from our friends at Anakle.

Body count? Virgin or not? These things are important aren’t they? Dress sense? Money management skills? Home management skills?

What about the fact that Brideprice isn’t even paid with money in several tribes in Nigeria but rather with agri-commodities and farm produce.

Maybe all that is taking it a bit too far from an app that doesn’t even intend to be taken too seriously as its disclaimer suggests. But then as its popularity grows over the coming weeks and as it receives knocks from our friends who regard the entire bride price affair as ‘sexist’ and ‘commoditising’ of our women and kudos from those enamelled by its humour, perhaps there would be improvement on the features on the Brideprice app and as we study its growing influence on social media discussions we would learn a bit more on the love-hate relationship between Nigerian men and their women.

Written by Caleb Olorunmaiye