Dear deadbeat fathers, if you don’t take care of your children, you will read about their marriages on blogs

Dear deadbeat fathers, it is no longer business as usual. If you don’t take care of your children, you will read about their marriages on blogs.

Gone are the days when women toil to play the role of mother and father to their children only for these deadbeat fathers to come and reap where they didn’t sow.

I have many absent fathers boast that when their children grow up, they will come and look for them. They latch on to culture and tradition to continue to perpetrate this evil.

It is evil for you to abandon your children because you have issues with their mum or because you are separated or divorced. You don’t leave your children and expect them to care to about you when they come of age.

You are on a long thing. I’m glad that Nigerian women are no longer bending over backwards to please society when it comes to their children. They are giving out their children in marriages as the deadbeat fathers wail and quote tradition.

They claim that it is not our tradition for a woman to give out her daughter in marriage but it is our tradition for men to abandon their responsibilities towards their children and still expect to be honored when these children are getting married.

The latest gist is that Nollywood actress Ngozi Ezeonu’s daughter Ogechukwu Edwina Ezeonu got married last weekend and her ex husband came out to say that she gave out their daughter in marriage without his consent and that as long as he’s concerned, the young girl is not married.

He said that as an Anambra man who is in tune with the tradition of his people, it is an abomination for a woman to give out her daughter in marriage while the father and his kinsmen are still alive.

“I’m the real son of the soil in Igbo land and I am knowledgeable enough to some extent concerning Igbo marriage tradition in Anambra State.”

“In the whole of Anambra State where I belong, a woman does not and has no legitimate right whatsoever to give out a fellow woman’s hand in marriage. It is an abomination and a taboo.”

“As such, she has no legitimate right and authority to give out my daughter’s hand in marriage.”

If this man were close to his daughter or present in her life, he would have been informed when she met the man she wanted to marry.

He sounds so arrogant and incoherent. How can a living father say that his ex wife gave out their daughter, an adult away in marriage without his consent?

Where was he? Did he take care of his daughter’s needs? Did he know how she went to school, fed and became who she is today?

Dear deadbeat fathers and absentee sperm donors, let this be a wake up call for you. It is no longer business as usual. You can’t real where you didn’t sow. You can be present when your children are getting married if you were absent from their lives when they were growing up.

If you fail to take care of your children because you are banking on culture and tradition, you will get the shock of your lives when your children get married and you read about it on blogs and news websites.

A word is enough for the wise.