Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

Marriage as the crystallization of eternal life is also the bedrock of a formidable society. But societies are decaying with the damning pronouncements that they are as a result of failure in family values. Igbo societies are not left out in this trajectory of societal decay. This paper thus avers that the only way of getting back the society to its original purpose is to rebuild our marital institution. But why is marriage very important in the affairs of every society? Is marriage as it is presently contracted expressing the desired ideal for the evolution of human society? Since family is the atomic unit of human society, how responsible should it be to the upliftment of human society? Questions as the above are the motivations for this paper. In the traditional Igbo society marriage was never contracted between two individuals but between two families. But the contemporary notion of marriage as between individuals and not families could be seen as the root cause of the incessant problems in marriages. With the breakdown in marriages and the attendant families therefrom, societal values have nosedived in such a way that things have fallen so much apart. In this work, therefore, my intension is to show that the decay in modern Igbo society is traceable to the jettisoning of aboriginal Igbo marriage pattern for western style. It is my contention that unless we revive our customary marriage institution, we can never extricate ourselves from this total breakdown of values in Igbo land. In order to appreciate the uniqueness of Igbo marital institution, we shall do some little comparisons across culture

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