“My name is Amaka, a single mother with two children who are doing very well in their school. I am 40-years-old and it is by choice that I am not married after the fathers of my children showed me the real bad side of men and this turned me off men and I promised myself that I will not be saddled with the problems of marriage.
I am a businesswoman with interests in oil and gas as well as importation and my business in doing very well. I have three houses, two in Lagos and one in my hometown. My children are well taken off, even better than some kids who live with both parents.
I believe it is my relative success that either scares men away from me or they simply want to be with me for what they can get.
Though I am not worried about my single status, my family is making a mountain out of it, as they keep reminding me that no self respecting woman should refuse to stay with a man.
They all believe I am loose and therefore, can’t keep a man. Only if they are in my shoes. They have been on my case, throwing jibes and insults at me at every opportunity.
And these are people who are very comfortable running to me for financial assistance for their businesses and children’s school fees.
Anytime I refuse to give them, they will remind me that I am a single, useless woman and that my attitude made the fathers of my children to leave me.
There was a time I took my children home for a holiday and my son went to pluck oranges from a tree in my late father’s compound but his brother, my uncle, stopped him, and told him he should be doing that in his father’s compound and not that of his grandfather.
When I went to confront him, he insulted me to no end, calling me terrible names that left me in tears.
The last straw was when the traditional ruler of my town wanted to give me a chieftancy title. My uncle had the guts to mobilise the people against me, saying it would be unheard of for a single mother to be given a title.
My problem now is why we Africans feel that marriage is the beginning and the end for a woman and the one who is not married is seen as a prostitute.
Is it a must for a woman to get married?
Amaka.”
