Women tagged ‘sugar mummies’ in Abuja have joined a massive movement protesting against the fact that the society sees nothing wrong in men having much younger wives but frowns upon a woman who is married to a man she is older than.
Some of the women who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja complained that they had been discriminated, judged and labelled “sugar mummy” for being married to men they were older than.
Bose Ade, mother of two, whose husband is 8 years younger than her shared with reporters that she had been married for over 10 years and the age difference between them had not affected their love in anyway.
“At first, it was very difficult for me to accept his marriage proposal because I was far older than him with over eight years. But I was later convinced by his persistence and support from his family that he was not dissuaded by our age differences,” Mrs. Ade said.
Esther David is another business woman who resides in Abuja and faces the same problems in the community shares also:
“Our society tends to judge women negatively for marrying younger men, even if that relationship was borne out of love and respect for each other. But the same society sees nothing wrong if a man marries someone that he is old enough to even be her grandfather,” she lamented.
These women urges other women to ignore all attacks on them, urging other women that are facing similar challenges to ignore gossip and concentrate on building their homes.
However, Idris Samaila, a man living in Abuja asks women not to be bothered by the age differences between partners or their soon to be partners as long as there is mutual trust and respect.
“Age is just a figure that people put so much emphasis on. It does not matter if a woman is older than her husband or the husband is older than the wife as it is commonly practiced in our society. The main issue we should be concerned about is how to build our homes within the tenets of our religious believes, as well as sharing love and understanding.’The claim that marrying a younger man would make him disrespectful to one in the future is a flimsy excuse, because I have seen instances where a matured man marries a woman like his daughter’s age mate and she still does not have respect for him.’’ He shared.
He urged Nigerians to cease from discriminating against any man or woman who marries a younger spouse and said that they should encourage the sanctity of marriage within the religious or traditional belief so as to reduce the rate of illegitimate children in the society.
