By 
HUSBAND SCARCITY
Maryam Habu Shinga
This may not be the best time for me to write on this because of misinterpretations, but I can no longer resist the push. Husband scarcity has become one of the challenges faced by many young girls today. If you go to prayer houses, majority of the intentions are prayer for a life partner. And this calls for concern.
Casting our minds back to the time of our mothers and grandmothers, was there really much husband scarcity problem? Or, maybe there were more men than women then, or there was a corresponding number of both genders. I don’t think so. Maybe then, the women had values and were prepared to build a home and not park into a built home. Then, once a young man came of age and could at least feed himself and his wife, he went out in search of a wife and the woman really appreciated him and helped him to build a future.
What am I really trying to say? Women created for themselves what we now see as husband scarcity. Today, the reverse is the case. Ask an average girl to define her dream husband. You get responses like “He has to be tall, handsome, fair, and rich, own a house at least, and be presentable.” Then she adds “God-fearing” in order not to sound so worldly.
Check the number of girls around you and the number of men who meet that standard, and you will see the problem. You hear girls say, “I cannot suffer in my father’s house and then go and start suffering with a man.”
What a wonderful dream! What if at the beginning of your marriage you have everything you want and there is no suffering but later the table turns and suffering comes? Will you run away? No one prays for suffering but it is better to start small and end big than to start big and end small.
The problem is that the preconceived idea majority of girls have of their ideal man is virtually the same. When 50 girls want the same kind of man and it is only one man who fits the bill, he can marry only one! What becomes of the 49 others? They simply start lamenting of “husband scarcity.”
Another irony of our time is that it is hard, due to economic constraints, to find a man who has just come of age for marriage and possesses all those attributes these ladies want. He is not very like to have acquired those material things legally at that age, except through Internet fraud and sundry crimes. Even the number of young men involved in crime is not enough to match all those misguided ladies searching for already made husbands.
If you look around, majority of the ladies of substance, of good value and virtue, who are ready to build a home with a man who has prospects are married and not complaining of husband scarcity. The easiest way to find a husband now is to change your view of who a husband is. A husband is that man God made and then saw that it may be hard for him to really actualize without a help mate His purpose for making him, and then made the woman and gave to him, and he felt complete and fulfilled.
MARRIAGE IS NOT A POVERTY ALLEVIATION PROGRAM. It is a mission of building the family of God here on earth. For those ladies who see marriage as a way out of poverty, it is a route to bondage. Women are HOME BUILDERS, not HOME WARMERS…
DON’T CONFUSE A MAN’S PATH WITH HIS DESTINY. Where he is today, may only be a route to where God has destined him to be tomorrow. Another truth is that you may be the only fast means to that his destination. Join in alleviating “husband scarcity”. Pick up the right values. I am not saying that you should pick anyone that comes your way and talks of marriage; not all men are husband material. What I am saying is that you should stop hinging your standards on material acquisitions or physical appearances. Look beyond the physical.
What makes a man who he is, is not what he owns or how he looks, it is what he is made of. And that which he is made of is, most times, not seen with the physical eyes, only its effects can be seen. Marriage is a permanent thing. Whatever is seen is temporary and that which is not seen is permanent.
