Many people are familiar with the Obudu Ranch Resort in Obanlikwu Local Government Area of Cross River State which is four hundred kilometres away from Calabar, the state capital. Its beautiful and alluring environment makes life pleasurable and the comfort attracts thousands of visitors every year. However, what many people who visits the Ranch Resort are not conversant with is the rustic tradition called ‘Money Marriage’ practiced by the people of the 18 villages of the Becheve community who inhabit the base of the mountainous area.

‘Money Marriage’ is akin to modern day slavery. It is a culture where girls, some as small as three years, are given out in marriage to men, old enough to be their great grandpa, to settle one form of indebtedness or the other by poor parents. The girl so given out loses all her rights, including to education, as she becomes the “property” of the man who has the rights do whatever he wishes with the girl and if, per adventure, she dies during the course of the marriage, her family replaces her with another girl. And if her husband passes away, another family member inherits her. The debt in question may be as meagre as N3,000 borrowed during the burial of a family member, to pay hospital bills, or to undertake one form of communal activity of the other. The debt, oftentimes, increases as the ‘husband’ visits his in-laws with gifts which monetary value is calculated and added to the initial sum collected by the family.

According to [url]acemag.com.ng[/url], As a ‘Money Wife’, the girl spends her entire life working in farms or hawking her body to other men to raise money to fend for her husband and her children and the children from the man’s other wives. This is one of the reasons for the influx of girls to the Ranch Resort during events like weddings, seminars, workshops and the mountain race to hawk their bodies to raise funds to meet their obligations. Any money so raised is usually handed over to the husband. The head of the community, said that the average Becheve man seeks to have a ‘Money Wife’ because the children from her are the children the man can look up to as his own.

They have what we call love marriage where the man marries a woman he loves but the children from that marriage do not belong to the man but the wife. Whenever she like she goes with her children but the children of the ‘Money Wife’ belong to the man and he can use any of them for anything including ritual and nobody can question him,” In the community, any Becheve man who has no ‘Money Wife’ is not seen as worthy of being called a man because, when he dies, his homestead fades away as his wife would go away with her children. “If you don’t have a ‘Money Wife’, when you die, you will

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Meh. Another African tradition. I bet it had a reason back in the day. Nowadays it's only seen as archaic.