How interesting can life be when you don’t have to worry about the expensive bride price? Why is some bride price more expensive than the other? How are brides categorized before a price tag is attached to them? Good news!
There is a culture that has the cheapest bride price in Nigeria, they are people from Esan. According to archaeological and linguistic evidence, humans have lived in the savannah-forest ecotone in Esanland for at least 3000 years ago.
These people were likely associated with the Nok people and came from the savannahs in the north to the southern forests. To this day, northern Esan dialects have more in common with Northern Edo languages such as Etsako and Owan than southern Esan dialects do, which happen to be closely related to Edo.
These “proto-Edoid” peoples grew yam, oil palm, and vegetables, but also hunted and gathered. Starting from 500 AD to 750 AD, these hunter-gatherers started to colonize the savannah-forest ecosystem of Esanland and the forest ecosystem of the Benin Empire. They created a pre-Esan, pre-Edo society that built advanced structures such as moats and walls around family properties.
These enclosures were, at maximum, three to five kilometers in diameter, and demarcated residential and agricultural property. Those properties enlarged to become villages, and by 800 AD, these villages coalesced to form kingdoms with hierarchies.
Modern-day digs in the region have found that these walls were in the eastern Benin Empire and northern Esanland. Settlements were close to permanent springs on the northern plateau, but never next to intermittent springs.
Despite English colonization and modernization, Esan culture has stayed consistent and rigid. Esan culture is influenced by emigration from the Benin Empire, the Igalas, and the Igbos.
Esan language, performing arts, and art have diffused into the surrounding areas, particularly to the Anioma people and the Afenmai people. Like all Esan people, the people of Uromi value their children, male or female, so unlike some cultures; the bride price is very low.
The payment of the bride price is vital to the conclusion of the marriage rite under Esan native law, which like any other customary law marriage in Nigeria.
Marriage rites of which they are varieties from monogamy to polygamy, to the betrothal, begins by fact-finding whereby the background of those intending to marry are established to be true and trustworthy.
