Ex-spy chief Sejusa rebukes Ankole over high bride price, banishment of unmarried pregnant girls

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Former co-ordinator of intelligence services Gen. (rtd) David Sejusa has rapped some people of the Ankole region for putting a hefty price tag on a bride and banishing of their daughters who get pregnant out of wedlock.

He says high bride price is among the reasons some men and women have failed to get married.

“The girls are here; they have failed to get married [because] someone asks for a bride price (okujuga) of 20 cows and shillings 60 million. For me, I ask for 8 cows [for my daughter] and I give them to her—all. I don’t need them,” he said in Runyankole in a video that has gone viral on social media.

Sejusa, who made the remarks recently while addressing a gathering in a yet to be identified area in Ankole, added: “I also give her money when I am giving her away (okuhingira).”

However, one of his followers on X, formerly Twitter, disagreed with him in her reaction to the video.

“I don’t think it’s the bride price stopping us from getting married. We simply don’t want to,” Annah Ashaba, who says she is a human rights activist and teacher in her X bio, told the bush war fighter in a post she tagged him up on Tuesday (September 2).

Sejusa responded, clarifying that he didn’t say it was only bride price stopping women from getting married.

Rather, he said, bride price is one of the reasons.

“But also, [I] talked about other important factors: mindset and cultural practices. For example, I discuss how the Baganda treat their daughters who get pregnant out of wedlock, and what the Nkore do to theirs! Joy vs banishment!” he wrote.

In the video, Sejusa says he has been against the issue of high bride price.

In March 2021, he also took to X and said in “Ankore during the reign of Omugabe Ntare I Nyabugaro (1500s) cattle were decimated” in the region.

“There was much hunger in the Kingdom and to marry, bride price was paid in [the] form of enyonza (wild berries),” he said.

The custom of paying bride price, which is nowadays demanded by families and fiercely negotiated, is widely practised in parts of Uganda and Africa.

The family of the groom pays it in the form of money, presents, or a mixture of both, to their future in-laws at the start of their marriage, and it’s sometimes paid in one go.

In Ankole, it has undergone many changes and innovations, but the basic guidelines are the same.

It is an exchange of gifts from the families of the boy and girl to signify a new bond. Because the boy’s family gains a new member, it serves as a token of appreciation and compensation.

Cows and goats are the preferred gifts. The girl’s family asks for a number of cows, which include those they will sell to raise money for the gifts they have to buy for her as she starts her new home.

These gifts are mandatory and can cause squabbles if they are fewer in value in relation to the number of cows the boy’s family gave.