Sexual Market Value, Divorce, and the Nigerian Couple: A Market Analysis
The SMV Framework
Sir Dickson's thesis on Sexual Market Value (SMV) posits that human sexuality operates like any other commodity market, labour, capital, or goods, where exchange occurs based on perceived value, and that perceived value is heavily indexed to age. Specifically, a woman's sexual desirability peaks in youth and declines with age, while a man's desirability peaks later, rising in proportion to his financial and social status. This asymmetry in the timing of peak value between the sexes is the engine that drives the market's dysfunction.
This is not mere theory, the evidence is visible in the growing population of unmarried Nigerian women aged 30 - 40, both in Nigeria and in the UK diaspora, a demographic reality that signals a structural breakdown in how matches are being made and sustained.
The Market's Two Transactions: Lease vs. Purchase
I expound on Sir Dickson's framework to distinguish two modes of participation in this market:
A. Leasing: short-term arrangements (flings, situationships, casual relationships) where value is exchanged temporarily, with no expectation of permanence.
B. Outright Purchase: marriage, where a man makes a permanent, legally binding acquisition, historically formalised through bride price and the biblical injunction that "a man shall leave his father's house" to seek a wife.
The critical insight, and the one that connects directly to divorce, is that these two transactions are governed by entirely different motivations, yet, they draw from the same pool of participants, and crucially, they do not happen simultaneously for men and women.
The Timing Mismatch: The Root of Divorce
Consider the archetypical case: a 33-year-old Nigerian man marrying a 32-year-old Nigerian woman.
Her journey through the market:
In her early-to-mid twenties, she was at peak SMV. Older, financially established men - "sugar daddies" and "big bros" - leased her commodity. These men, having already climbed the economic ladder, concealed the struggle behind gifts: phones, chocolates, trips, and attention. To her young mind, this generosity was maturity. She had no reference point for the years of grinding that produced it. What she absorbed instead was a standard - a baseline expectation of what men do, what men provide, and how men treat women. By 32, she carries multiple body counts, a finely tuned sense of entitlement, and a definition of male maturity that was written by men who were 15–20 years ahead of where her future husband currently stands.
His journey through the market:
Culture and biology conspired against his early participation. He was socialised to understand that access to the market is conditional on financial capacity, that is, without money, he would receive, at best, reluctant and loveless engagement (pity fuck). So he delayed, focused on building, and by 33, he is stable enough to participate meaningfully. But rather than leasing, which would have been the rational market entry point, he goes directly to purchase. He marries.
The collision:
Inside the marriage, she unconsciously benchmarks him against the men of her leasing years. He is found wanting, not because he is inadequate in absolute terms, but because he is being compared to men who were decades ahead of him when she knew them. She reads his stage of development as immaturity. He reads her expectations as unreasonable. When he raises the question of shared financial responsibility in the home, she meets it with contempt, because the men in her formative years never asked her to split anything.
She married to exit the market, He married believing he had finally entered it. Both are disappointed, and the divorce follows.
1. You can't grow the economy without steady power
2. Poor people don't spend; no spending, no economy
3. A poor economy means no one can pay for power
So...
The pathway is the government providing subsidized power to enable residents to boost income.
The World Bank folks telling you to scrap power subsidies are from nations that subsidize power.
There is this egbon I worked with when I first entered obodo oyibo. Anytime we were having lunch and discussing Naija matters, this bros would drop tears, no matter how short the duration was. I was never moved, maybe because I had just left the country, but bro SOJ will always cry.
There are people like that who are emotionally attached to Nigeria to the extent that news from home will always move them to tears.
You can't see how people are suffering in today's Nigeria and not feel sorry for the people.
Nigerians are like a whale in the ocean that is crying because of thirst.
The suffering in the land is uncalled for. It is unnecessary.
“I will build our healthcare sector and make it better. I will prioritise love and unity among all Nigerians, regardless of the state they come from. I will tackle insecurity so that our farmers can return to their farms. I will also deal with criminality in government and use the money recovered to create employment opportunities for our youths.”
— The Presidential Candidate of our great party, the NDC, Mr Peter Obi assures Nigerians.
The fact that Baba Obasanjo wasn't Hausa or Igbo and Nigerians could live through his eight years without the kind of tribal tension you're describing doesn't mean tribalism has never played a role in our politics. Nigeria's political history is much more complicated than that.
And if we're going to talk about governments creating problems, let's be consistent. PDP created its own problems too, and some of those problems didn't disappear when PDP left power, we're still living with some of their consequences today. APC has created its own problems, and many of those consequences may outlive APC too.
That is why my hopes aren't high, regardless of who gets elected. I'm not saying we shouldn't demand better from whoever is in power, I'm just realistic enough to know that changing the person in Aso Rock doesn't automatically erase the problems created by previous governments.
“The current Nigeria government has taken everything from the poor Nigerians, nothing is working for the common man. If they could take the fresh air too, they would have. Even their brainless supporters shouting 4+4 are suffering a lot, many of them beg for a living but still stand by their w!cked leaders”
Nollywood actor Laide Olabanji
The rent in this state is costlier than 50% of Italian cities. No, I'm not exaggerating.
In fact, the price of houses in this state competed shoulder to shoulder with American cities.
This dungyard.
This clueless moron @tokunbo_wahab is only obsessed with social media wars.
“Some Nigerians abroad need to learn how to read the room. Some of you don’t understand what Nigerians back home are going through. Did you people think you love Nigeria more than those of us in Nigeria? I got so angry watching videos of Nigerians abroad celebrating Independence Day, because on that same day, 20 NYSC members were kidn@pped.”
— Lady bl@sts Nigerians abroad who marched in the streets to celebrate Nigeria’s 66th Independence Day.
Zero commercial plane crashes in last 10 years.
SIXTEEN military plane crashes in last 10 years
After back to back commercial plane crashes in the early/mid 2000s, OBJ set the NCAA straight with crazy reforms & it has since reflected in the numbers.
The Military is exempt from NCAA regulations (ngl I get why) and this is also reflecting in the numbers.
In aviation, corruption & complacency are recipes for disaster.
Moral Of The Story: this won’t stop until sweeping reforms are made in whatever bodies that oversee our military’s aviation.
Osinbanjo, NOI, Akinwumi, Obi even El-Rufai in different political parties will make for an interesting and highly enjoyable election process...
But Nigeria is a place where Talent goes to die.
You think it is about Obi being a South Easterner? Who gives a fvck about his state? You think Soludo or Orji Kalu will run for Presidency and we will take them seriously? E no go better for them if they even try it.
Obi is just better than the other 2.
Like I've said before, give us Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and I'll campaign for him.
You think it is about Obi being a South Easterner? Who gives a fvck about his state? You think Soludo or Orji Kalu will run for Presidency and we will take them seriously? E no go better for them if they even try it.
Obi is just better than the other 2.
Like I've said before, give us Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and I'll campaign for him.
Keeping everyone (including Africans) completely ignorant about Africa and the central role it plays in the economic and natural world is a core feature of Europeanised education, not a bug.
You're not supposed to know that the DRC is the most resource-rich country in the world, with an estimated $24 trillion sitting under its soil. You're not supposed to know that the rise of "western civilisation" from the 15th century on was entirely made possible by European contact with Africa, and that the resources and labour extracted from coastal West Africa from 1492 onwards are the entire reason why both American continents exist in their current form.
You're not supposed to know that both WW1 and WW2 were essentially wars fought over the right to African colonial domination and expansion, and that even the uranium that was used in "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from Shinkolobwe uranium mine in eastern DRC. You're not supposed to know that the reason the country of France exists in its current form is because tens of thousands of conscripted West African soldiers fought and won against the Nazis in Europe, and the French thereafter shipped them back to West Africa and massacred them at Camp Thiaroye in Senegal to avoid paying them their due wages.
You're not supposed to know that there was nothing cold about the so-called Cold War, because the vast majority of the hot theaters it was physically fought in were on the continent of Africa. (Zimbabwe, DRC, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Angola, Eritrea, Zambia etc). You're not supposed to know that the ongoing Ukraine war and the war in the Sahel are in fact the same conflict being fought by the same 2 sides, and that the reason France is desperately pushing funding and arms to Ukraine even as it falls into internal crisis is that Ukraine is acting as its proxy army in West Africa, as it tries to regain its lost colonial territories there, especially Niger where the cheap yellowcake uranium for its famously cheap nuclear energy used to come from before the 2023 revolution.
You're definitely not supposed to know that the entire global economy and system of trade as you know it is built on ruthless extraction from Africa and ensuring that Africa does not control anything it exports. You're not supposed to know that "Italian leather" doesn't come from Italy - it comes from Kano, Nigeria. You're not supposed to know that "Swiss chocolate" does not exist because cocoa does not grow anywhere in Switzerland or Europe - it comes from Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria. You're not supposed to know that Israel and the UAE control the global diamond and gold markets even though Israel has no diamond mine and the UAE has zero gold mines, because both resources are literally being stolen from the DRC and Sudan on an industrial basis.
You're basically not supposed to understand that the entire geopolitical world as you know it, rests entirely on extraction from Africa, poverty of Africans, and your own ignorance about where everything you use comes from.
Completely deliberate 500+ year-old feature, not accidental bug.
How did school teach us about the Amazon so much & never once mention the Congo Basin? It's the world's largest tropical carbon sink. The planet is literally breathing through it & nobody thought we should know 😳
Obasanjo is not an Hausa or Igbo man. There was no tribal fight those eight years. In fact, till tomorrow, we are all in awe of baba.
If you can’t see this APC government is the problem, you’re a fool. If you still think a government working so hard to fvck up your life is a tribal government, you’re even more foolish.
Are the policies not affecting your everyday life like it is affecting others? You’ll never be alright.
Back home, still no light. After pointlessly spending hours stuck in standstill traffic waiting for Mr President to pass, I’m finally back home…. and guess what? Still no light.
Yeah, I had to buy fuel at N1,700/litre so I can at least rest my head first.
Hold on… YES, you’re right. N17,000 for just 10 litres of fuel.
Of course, it’s black market, because apparently all the filling stations collectively decided today was a good day to have no fuel or simply not sell the one they have.
As a patriotic Nigerian, I’m supposed to pray for the country, speak positively and not “de-market the Giant of Africow”
Anyways… Yoruba language is what is important and congratulations to us 🇳🇬🤝