By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

I am too ancient to understand the bytes and cookies of this new age of fast weddings and faster divorces.

You can log in to Facebook to see a lavish wedding being celebrated only to get to Twitter to see that same marriage being dissolved.

I am damn too old to keep pace with very unserious young marriage stagers of this Mkpulummili age.

In short, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired over the crashing of all the so-called celebrity marriages in good old Nigeria and all over the whole wide world.

It’s as though the www universe was created to announce sharp hook-ups, sharper marriages and sharpest divorces.

This per-second-billing abuse of the marriage industry is being arranged by movie stars, musicians and ill-assorted so-called celebrities.

Ever since that babe called Baci or Bassey did that Guinness Book of World Records cooking marathon there has been this news that some Nigerians are up in ambition to wangle the shortest marriage to make that coveted Guinness Book of World Records.

The antics of these wacky marriage abusers can always come in-your-face with the about-to-divorce couple sharing their first sex act, with all the moaning and gyration, on YouTube.

They can even showcase their dalliance on Instagram as per what novelist Ayi Kwei Armah depicted as “sex in an impossible Indian position” in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.

These characters can’t understand the simple fact that marriage is a serious business — like in show business, there must be the “show” and of course there must be the “business”.

If the business side of the show is lacking, then the marriage crashes like the old nursery rhyme known as “Humpty-Dumpty”.

The fact that a fine leading man has played the role of husband to some beautiful Nollywood screen goddesses in a dozen or so movies does not qualify the wannabe as a real-time husband.

Yes, “reel-time” is so different from “real-time” because devotion to missis must be total unlike the cut-action-cut-roll-cut-action-cut distractions of movie direction.

In the movie, there are the klieg lights shining, but in an actual marriage one must perforce negotiate very dark corners and contours.

Marriage is not about speaking American phonetics like my Nollywood buddy who calls Oshodi, wait for it, Oshoddy!

To underscore how tough marriage is, the Catholic Church, for instance, insists that one must get as far as the Vatican to see the Pope before one can get a divorce!

If you think I’m exaggerating matters, go to court!

It is an insult upon the great institution of marriage that these clowns known as celebrities end up getting married after eating a plate of Nkwobi at OJEZ Restaurant at National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

Trust “otimkpu” journalists who call themselves celebrity reporters and editors to ballyhoo the “wedding” to the high heavens as “the wedding of the century” only for the marriage to collapse before their newspapers reach the newsstands.

Then words such as “irreconcilable differences” are bandied about as the cause of the break-up of the non-union.

Their differences may have been reconcilable while they were eating the hot Nkwobi only to suddenly turn into irreconcilable once the Nkwobi gets cold in short seconds inside their tummies.

As a serious business, marriage demands cash larger than the “Lokan palliatives” being touted by the new sheriff in town.

In marriage, one must not be found wanting in performance like the new regime that is all sizzle and no suya.

The gymnastics needed in getting a lady singing goes from the bedroom to the bank and shop-room. The fact that you performed excellently last night is no excuse not to perform more excellently inside the shopping mall at high noon.

The balancing act of the phallus and the purse leaves many a lover-boy staggering in the giddy echelons of celebrity coupling and uncoupling.

This reminds me of this Nollywood dude who acted in a film on a boat in the high seas such that he then started walking up the streets and down at home in a staggering manner like he was being swayed by the waves.

His father was alarmed that his son was walking this way only for the Nollywood dandy to explain that he was walking the way he did because of the waves that kept swaying him this way and that while acting in the movie on the high seas.

The aghast father quickly asked his swaying son: “How long were you on the high seas acting?”

“Two weeks,” replied the son.

“Only two weeks, and you are already walking jagajaga like the waves,” said the father, shaking his head. “So me that I’ve been married to your mother for all of 50 years should be walking like a he-goat in action?”

And the old man promptly demonstrated the thrusting movement of a he-goat-on-heat jerking back and forth in one-corner action!

Now to end the story, this Nollywood bloke has divorced the wife he just married before going off to act the movie on the high seas — and he is now expecting four or so kids from some baby mamas.

The news and photos of the pregnant baby mamas keep coming so fast from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to YouTube I cannot keep pace before submitting this story to my editor! (Saturday Vanguard)

•(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on April 25, 2023 shows logos of online platforms, applications, social networks and technology and IT companies of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Wikipedia, Pinterest, AliExpress, Facebook, Meta, Apple app store ,Snapchat, Linkedin, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok and fashion retailer Zalando. The European Union on April 25, 2023 designated 19 online platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, as having user numbers so big they will come under stricter regulatory rules for content. The list — on which services from Amazon, Google, Meta, Instagram and Microsoft also feature — all have more than 45 million monthly active users.

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