Much Ado About Nothing -By Namse Peter Udosen

In the last few days, social media has been swarmed with posts about Stingy Men Association of Nigeria. It probably started as a joke but many men and boys have made a bandwagon of it. Nigerians are easily sucked into the bandwagon effect. While trying to wrap my head around the whole hullaballoo, the women struck with their moniker, Stingy Women Association of Nigeria. Damn! The shocking thing was the image used by the female group: a woman with knotted legs. The ‘gbas gbos’ between the male group and the female group has revealed the poor quality of thinking among Nigerian youths. The products of a society that has been forged in dangerous stereotypes.

Many years ago Colonel Emeka Ojukwu wrote “The biggest industry in Nigeria is the industry of creating dichotomy. Nigerians can turn any differences into a vindictive battle with no holds barred. We see it in sports banter, politics, religion, ethnicity, geographical location, course of study, sexual orientation and over a thousand more. Dichotomies occur in other societies but we have the penchant of taking it to another level.

Back to the issue of Stingy men and women. The discourse has been largely pedestrian and serving to reinforce silly gender stereotypes. It is a reflection of murky waters societal values have been bathed in. For a society that prides itself in religiosity, many of the positions are in contradiction of the two self-acclaimed major religions.

The Urban Dictionary entry: stingy; ungenerous: unwilling to spend. This definition has the connotation of applying to material things, money, food, jewels, etc. However, in reality, people are willing to spend on what they like. A little analysis of economic and sociological principles can help us get to the heart of the matter.

At the most basic level, economics attempts to explain how and why people make the purchasing choices we do (spending). This seems to be at the heart of the gender war in Nigeria. Four key economic concepts—scarcity, supply and demand, costs and benefits, and incentives—can help explain many decisions that humans make. We are getting somewhere. However, if we had taken our O’ Level Economics more seriously we would not be in this mess.

Scarcity implies that resources (money) are scare and must be applied to satisfy unlimited wants and needs. Here comes another problem, the average Nigerian (especially the loud ones on social media don’t know the difference between wants and needs). It is a product of demand and supply. Supply and demand, in economics, is the relationship between the quantity of a commodity that producers wish to sell at various prices and the quantity that consumers wish to buy. Due to limited resources, not all demand and supply can be met at all times. This leads to what is called opportunity cost and scale of preference (costs and benefits). An individual has to make choices between alternatives using the scale. That is a basic summary of the economics of every human being. It should be noted that these concepts are relative in line with different amounts of resources available to different sets of people. This is the point where it gets complicated. The economic principles are sound and empirical, Ceteris paribus! Human beings are unpredictable. So we should consider the sociology of stinginess.

Mr Namse is a billionaire. He has an array of exotic cars. He has investments in many sectors. He is the first of five children. He has many uncle and aunties and as a social guy many friends. He meets sexy Vivian asks her out on a date. He pays the bills for the food and drinks and drops her at home. Vivian thinks Mr Namse is stingy because he didn’t give her money. Why? Due to prevalent poverty, schooling without education and a poor value system over the years, many Nigerians have developed an absurd sense of entitlement. So we can’t blame Vivian for calling him stingy. Subsequently, Namse and Vivian have sex and start a relationship. Vivian sees the sex as the value she brings to the table. She is a product of a patriarchal and materialistic society. She is culturally imprinted with dependency. She sees cars, houses and flexing, she doesn’t see the bills Namse pays to maintain those things. She doesn’t see his family members that he sponsors their schooling. She doesn’t see the pastor that calls every day for Church support. She lacks a basic understanding of the concept of the fact that resources are limited. She doesn’t realize that there is what is called a scale of preference. Most importantly she fails to realize that Namse may be spending more money and resources on another woman who is not even having sex with him but is giving him value. She is a victim of society. She does not realize she too has a choice. She is weighed down by expectations and can’t rise to create her own choices. She fails to see that everyone makes choices from their scale and that opportunity cost’, is the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one particular alternative is chosen over the others. In simple terms, the opportunity cost is the loss of the benefit that could have been enjoyed had a given choice not been made.

A vicious cycle of expectations, abuse, distrust, and bitter is thus set in motion. Stereotypes of women want money and men want sex is created. Unfortunately, it’s the women who lose in the silly game. The logo of the woman in the logo in buttresses the transactional relationship that has been falsely created between money and sex. So, men place an embargo on their money and all they could come up with was to block their clitoris? I think it is a disservice to all the great women doing marvellous things in the world and making their own money. It is a slap on the face of women who spend money to have great sex with guys on their terms and dump them. It is disrespectful to women and girls who through dedicated academic rigour comes out tops in classes across the world.

I hope Nigerian youths become more critical thinkers and stop jumping on every emotional bandwagon that comes their way. I hope they read this.