Westernization has caught up with many African countries and their way of life has since been evolving for the better but we can’t say this for the Becheve people of Cross River in Nigeria. In this particular region, the Becheve tribe of Obanliku LGA in Cross River state which has up to 17 villages still practices one ancient tradition that subjects the girl child to a mere commodity.
Money Wife Marriage: Girl Debt Sentence Practice in Nigeria
According to research all of the 17 villages practice an ancient marriage system which is called the Money wife marriage. This tradition is said to be the exchange of a female child for money owned by the parents or to repay good.
These villages are located just beyond the famous Obudu hills with a population of about 100,000 people. In Becheve, a community in Nigeria, girls are forced into early marriages in exchange for monetary favours and the settlement of debts.
It is an eight-hour drive from Calabar, the state capital, and shares the same local government with one of the most populous ranches in Africa, the Obudu Cattle Ranch, now Obudu Mountain Resort.

One of the victims was narrating her ordeal, and she was forced into marriage to a man old enough to be her father when the man wanted to sleep with her she said no. According to her she said she told him that he has children of her age she cannot agree to such but people came and held her down for the man to sleep with her.
According to her, she was among the people who came to hold her for the man a female was among them. She subsequently got pregnant before she clocked 12. Another victim of the ‘money wife’ tradition, who was just 14 as at the time of the report said was given to an elderly man who has grandchildren and the grandchildren have also given birth.
She said the man constantly beat her to the point he told her that even if he kill her nobody would talk because she is his wife “money woman”. Explaining why this is happening to the persons who have benefited from the evil act said the parents of the girls bring them to his house whenever they think they are fit for marriage.

He also said: “They’ll bring their children to give you. Some they would bring might be about six or 10 years of age. That means those are ready for marriage. They know how to cook and do everything,” he stated.
It was gathered that the person who bought a girl gets the absolute right to do whatever he wants with the girl and children given birth to from the relationship. The buyer is the owner of the child. The man can sell his child; he doesn’t divide the proceeds with anybody.
Babatunde Onakoya, the Savour with a with Chess Mind
A Nigerian activist who introduced chess in a slum in Lagos state Nigeria Babatunde Onakoya heard this evil practice and decided to put a voice to it. Babatunde Onakoya said there is a barbaric tradition known as “Money wife” in a remote village in Cross river state called Becheve where girls as young as 10 years old are being sold into marriage.
He said he decided to travel down to learn more about how the girls are being robbed of their childhood. He spent the next few days doing extensive research on the “Money Wife” practice in Becheve and he was utterly shocked and enraged by some of the discoveries he made.

It was the first time he had ever heard of such practice in Nigeria. According to him, he said: “I knew we needed to do things differently if we were ever gonna have a chance at fundamentally solving this problem and saving these girls.”
He told his team the Chess in slum team about it and they started working on staging an intervention. The money wife is a custom in which a girl child in the community is sold out to a man by her parents as a wife in exchange for money as little as 5,000 naira (10 dollars), Food items, or to pay a debt.
How it works is that a “rich” man in the village is approached for a loan that is to be repaid by handing over a daughter to him. In the case of the unavailability of a daughter, the lender waits till they have one.

So most debts are incurred before the girl child is born, this practice ensures that once a girl becomes a money-wife, she is considered dead by her family and must not return irrespective of how she is treated by her husband or his relatives.
Upon the death of the man(In most cases, the girls are married off to old men in their 60-the the 90s), the girl is given to his next of kin as a wife. If the money wife dies without having a child, her parents are obligated by tradition to give another girl child as a replacement for the dead one.
The girl is surrendered to the lender as a wife to use as he pleases. The girl will have no rights and her opinion is not sought in the matter as she is practically enslaved and put to work on farms which they cultivate for their husbands. She is not allowed to get an education no matter what.
The men in Becheve cherish this practice as a status symbol as it earns them acclaim amongst their peers. For the innocent girls, their entire childhood is stolen from them and their existence is reduced to being mere sex slaves. The physical and psychological trauma that these girls have to face is something we can never fully understand.
When brought this up on Twitter someone came out to agree to the practice saying he served there during his NYSC days in 2008. He said just because he gifted a family #1000 the father of the home told him that when he is leaving for his station he should take one of the daughters with him.

The person continued and said he thought it was a joke until he noticed one of the daughters started doing close to him and he had to tell her that he did what he did because of a kind gesture but to his surprise, the father asked why he is rejecting a gift from his family which means the girl only an item and that can be used to repay good did or debt.
Babatunde Onakayo said ending this child marriage in all communities like that is very delicate as it could worsen the experience of the victims if it’s not stopped. He is now considering a very smart and Holistic approach to intervening.
He plans on using the chess game to penetrate the hearts of the people and he hopes it goes beyond the normal hashtags which can fizzle out and then the victims go back to the evil life again.
He has been able to arrive at the destination and he and his team the #chessinslum team are in for the rescue they hope to save the girl child from this evil tradition.