A then 19-year-old Adunni*, a university student, thought she was going for Thanksgiving rice. Instead, she found herself backing away from her own surprise traditional wedding ceremony.
This is Adunni’s* story as told to Princess
The red dust from the compound was already settling on my black shoes.
I could taste it in my mouth, that metallic, dry taste that comes with harmattan, mixed with something else I couldn’t name. Fear, maybe. Or the bitter taste of realising you’ve been played.
“May God bless this union that stands before us today,” the pastor was saying, his voice filling the compound, loud enough to feel like it had nowhere else to go but inside me.
Union? Which union?
My brain felt like it was moving through congealed oil. I looked around frantically, really looked this time. The white and gold ribbons tied to every pillar that I’d somehow missed when we arrived. Flowers arranged like someone had been planning this for weeks, not hours. His family members standing in perfect rows behind us, all of them wearing different shades of the same colour.
The exact same colour scheme as the wrapper and blouse he’d tried to force me into that morning.
“Just wear this one,” he’d said, holding up the outfit that matched his perfectly pressed agbada. “For the Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll wear something similar,” I’d told him, already suspicious. “But I’m wearing my own clothes.”
Now I understood why he’d looked so frustrated when I came out in my simple blouse and wrapper.
My hand was trapped in his so tightly, like a bird he was afraid would fly away any second. His palm was warm and sweaty, or maybe mine was. I couldn’t tell anymore.
This was supposed to be a Thanksgiving. We were supposed to eat rice and praise God for His goodness that year.
Nobody told me I was supposed to be the Thanksgiving offering.
I pulled my hand out of his so fast, his ring scratched my palm. The small, sharp pain felt real in a way nothing else did.
“Mummy! Hm! Mummy, ooh!” I called out to my mother somewhere in that crowd of smiling faces, my voice cracking like a teenager’s voice should.
Then I started walking backwards.
Slowly at first, like someone testing whether the ground would hold their weight. Then faster, like I was rewinding a film I desperately didn’t want to see the ending of.
Back. Back. Back, I stepped.
His sisters started whispering urgently to each other, their eyebrows creased into confusion or in some people’s cases, anger. His mother’s smile froze on her face like someone had captured her image, mid-laugh. The pastor stopped talking. Everyone was staring.
But that was not my business. I kept moving backwards until I was completely outside the decorated area, out the gate, until I could breathe again, until the taste in my mouth was just dust and not the metallic flavour of my own panic.
The whole thing started so innocently that it almost makes me laugh now.
I was coming back from my mother’s office with her that afternoon, both of us tired from the long day and the sweltering heat, looking for any taxi that wasn’t already packed with too many passengers. I’d just finished 100 level, spent the most amazing long vacation eating my mother’s food and sleeping in my own bed until noon. I felt accomplished, ready to tackle 200-level with everything I had.
Then this man materialised.
Just appeared on the office street corner like he’d been waiting there all day. His corporate shirt pressed so sharply you could see your reflection in it. Shoes polished to mirror brightness. Everything about him screamed money, success, and importance.
He tried to stop us right there, tried to talk to me while my mother was standing beside me, looking confused and immensely offended.
We walked faster, practically jogged to the first taxi we saw. But he didn’t disappear. He got into his car and followed us home like some kind of romantic stalker and creep.
When my mother finally agreed to hear him out, probably because he looked so respectable, so clean, so unlike the university boys who usually tried to toast me, he told her the most insane thing I’d ever heard.
He said he’d been praying for God to show him his wife. Said God had given him a vision of a young woman’s face, my face, and he’d been searching the entire state for me ever since. Said when he saw me on that street, something inside him just knew.
“He seems like a serious man,” my mother told me afterwards. “Very committed to his faith, very clear about wanting marriage. But remember what I always tell you, education first.”
I was affronted that she had anything good to say about that man, but as she said, education first. I clung to those words like a life jacket.
When he started calling, I would answer because my mother said I should be polite. When she eventually gave him my direct number, I would pick up because rejecting calls felt rude.
Our conversations were exhausting marathons of him talking and me listening, wondering how one person could have so much to say about a future I’d never agreed to participate in.
He would call and immediately dive into these elaborate descriptions of the life he’d planned for us. The house we’d live in, a big one, he assured me, with house staff and a garden. The car he’d buy me, always that Porsche with my name as the license plate, because apparently that’s the height of romance. How I’d decorate our home, support his career, and raise our children.
Never my dreams, my education, my own timeline for my own life.
I was 19, neck-deep in 200-level coursework, trying to figure out what I wanted to study, what career I wanted, who I was becoming as a person. But in his mind, I was already his wife, already living in his compound, already finished with the messy business of growing up and making my own choices.
The promises escalated like a fever. Cars, houses, jewellery, international trips. An entire fantasy life he was constructing around me like the perfect golden prison I’d never asked for.
But in the year-plus that I knew this man, he never spent a single naira on me. We went on exactly three dates, and I suspect his sisters paid for at least one of them. All those grand promises about Porsches and houses, but he couldn’t even buy me a bottle of Coke.
He talked about marriage the way other people talked about the corruption eroding through Nigeria: inevitable, already decided, just a matter of time.
“You know, since you’re in 200 level now,” he said during one particularly suffocating phone call, “and you’ll be finishing school soon anyway, we should do the traditional marriage first. Before the white wedding. Just to make everything official, so you can have a ring on your finger and people will know you’re taken.”
The casual way he said it made my skin crawl. My upper lip curled.
“Why would I want people to know I’m taken when I’m still in university?”
“Because it’s what God wants for us. I’ve been praying about this. I’ve been dreaming about this. This is our destiny.”
I told him no. Not just no, but hell no. I’m not negotiating. It’s not up for discussion. And it’s definitely not happening.
I called my mother immediately after that conversation, my voice shaking with indignation. “Can you imagine what this man just told me? He wants me to do traditional marriage in 200 level!”
“Never,” she said firmly. “You finish your education first. Marriage can wait.”
So I thought that was settled.
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When he invited our family for Thanksgiving at his compound, it seemed harmless enough. Nigerian families do this: big Thanksgiving services, lots of food, lots of praise and worship. My mother agreed we should go. My aunt, who was visiting, said she’d join us.
It was supposed to be jollof rice and praise songs.
He picked us up that morning, carrying a beautiful traditional outfit. The fabric was expensive, the embroidery intricate, the colours perfectly coordinated with what his family would be wearing.
“I had this made specially for you,” he said, holding it out like a peace offering. “For today’s Thanksgiving.”
Every alarm bell in my head started ringing at once.
“That’s thoughtful,” I said carefully, “but I’ll wear my own clothes. Something in similar colours.”
His face fell. For a moment, I saw something flash across his features; anger, maybe, or disappointment so sharp it looked like pain.
“But it matches perfectly with—”
“I said I’ll wear my own clothes.”
I chose a simple wrapper and blouse that would fit the colour scheme without making me look like his bride. When I came out dressed, he stared at me for a long moment, probably calculating whether this would ruin whatever he had planned.
But he didn’t say anything else.
The compound was buzzing with activity when we arrived.
People everywhere, all dressed beautifully, all smiling like they were attending the social event of the season.
Everything was too perfect. Too coordinated. Too much like a wedding and too little like a simple Thanksgiving or a grand one for that matter.
But I was focused on finding somewhere to sit and mentally preparing for what I assumed would be a long service followed by that rice I’d been promised since morning.
I wasn’t looking for the signs that I was supposed to be the bride.
When the service started and we were asked to come forward, just us, not everyone, just him and me, I thought maybe it was because we were special guests. Maybe because I was the university student that his family wanted to encourage.
I wasn’t thinking about how his entire extended family had somehow materialised for this “simple thanksgiving.” I wasn’t questioning why my aunt was taking so many pictures, or why his mother kept touching my shoulder like she was blessing me. I can only remember scanning the crowd for my mother and finding her nowhere.
By the time I understood what was happening, the pastor was already calling down blessings on our heads like rain.
When I got outside the premises, still looking for my mother, and starting to feel the slightest bit safe, his sisters ran out after me.
“Sister, it’s not a traditional marriage, oh,” one of them said, her voice gentle like she was coaxing a frightened child. “We’re just blessing the union. Just acknowledging what God has already revealed to us.”
I wanted to laugh until my ribs hurt. Or scream until my throat was raw. God revealed what to who? The same God who watched me spend an entire year politely trying to escape this man’s fantasies? The same God who heard me tell him repeatedly that I would finish my education before even considering marriage?
“Which union? Do I look like an idiot to all of you?” I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded when everything inside me was shaking. “When did we discuss this? Did any of you even consider if I actually want to marry him? We haven’t built anything that resembles a relationship, not to talk of marriage.”
But even as I spoke, I could see them nodding like I was just being difficult, like a small child who didn’t understand what the adults had already arranged.
I remember hissing and turning away from them sharply. My eyes locking with my mother’s.
“Mummy!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “What is this? Are you seeing this? They want to marry me o! That 32-year-old fool wants to marry me by force. I’m just finishing 200 level. I’m 19! Nineteen! Is this what you want for me? After shouting education, education upandan?”
My voice broke into a half-laugh, half-sob as I clapped my hands together. “Heheh! No be small matter oh.” Looking at his sister, I yelled, “So una decorate ona house finish to deceive person! That your brother! Even if it was a union blessing, did I fucking ask to be blessed together with that?”
Her face crumpled, like she couldn’t decide between shame and defense. She mumbled something about how he had convinced her that he was well-to-do, a good man from church, that he’d promised to take care of me.
By then, the whole compound was in chaos. People were stretching their necks to the gate, pushing past each other to see. Even those inside the service had abandoned the pastor mid-prayer to come and watch the drama unfold.
I turned again and caught sight of him walking towards us, agbada flowing, that ridiculous confidence still written all over his face. Rage lit up in me so hot it burned away the fear.
“You!” I spat, marching a few steps closer so he could hear me over the murmurs. “May thunder fire this nonsense dream you’re building. You think because you had a vision, my life is now your property? God did not send you. You lied to me, you lied to my mother, and you tried to disgrace me in front of everybody.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd, but I did not care. My whole body was shaking, but my voice carried like a whip.
Before anyone could grab me again, I spun on my heel, stormed to the road, and hailed the first keke that slowed down. As the driver pulled off, I didn’t look back. Not at the compound, not at the ribbons or flowers, not at the man still standing by the gate.
I just let the dust rise behind me, swallowing the chaos I’d left there.
“You scattered everything,” he told me during one of the angry phone calls that came after.
“You destroyed what God was trying to build.”
“God was trying to build a marriage through your dirty lies?”
“You just didn’t understand what was happening.”
“I understood perfectly. That’s why I walked away.”
For months, he called with different strategies. Sometimes angry, accusing me of being stubborn and disobedient to God’s will. Sometimes pleading, telling me I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Sometimes manipulative, describing how hurt his family was, how disappointed his mother was, how I’d destroyed their plans.
But never once did he apologise for trying to trick me into marriage.
Never once did he acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, marrying someone requires their enthusiastic consent, not just their unwilling physical presence.
I finished university with a good grade.
I dated people who asked me out properly, who talked about our future as something we’d build together, not something they’d dreamed up and expected me to step into.
I learned to trust my instincts, especially when they were screaming at me to run. But I still think about that Thanksgiving morning sometimes. How close I came to losing everything to someone else’s vision of my life. How easy it would have been to just stand there and let it happen, to avoid disappointing his family or embarrassing my mother.
I think about how many young women don’t get the chance to walk backwards from their own surprise weddings. How many girls are taught that politeness matters more than their own consent, that disappointing adults is worse than sacrificing their own futures?
Most of all, I think about that moment when I yanked my hand away from his and started moving backwards, and how it felt like the most important decision I’d ever made in my young life.
Because it was.
*Names have been changed for privacy
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