Lege Miami: Doing Marriage the Wrong Way
By: Deji Yesufu
A vital philosophy that internet users should bring to this facility is that the internet will give back to you what you truly possess. If you are filled with garbage, most of the content that you will consume on social media will be content that will increase what you already are – making you worse off. The converse is also true. I do not know how I began to watch Lege Miami’s content. I suspect that I had clicked on a video of him, and then social media began to recommend his content to me. The videos were at first comic relief until I realized that a lot of people may be feeding on this man’s work and in the process making the marriage institutions worse than it is already in our country. This is why I felt compelled to write this essay to warn against the kind of marriages Lege Miami is dolling out to his viewers and to draw our attention back to what marriage is as defined by God.
Lege Miami’s real name is Adams Kehinde. A little search on him reveals that he is a musician and an actor. But it appears that where he has finally found his niche is in matchmaking men with women via social media. With a following of 751,000 people on Instagram, Lege comes on his social media handles and opens the space up to anyone in need of a spouse. The person, male or female, joins Lege live. Lege does a short interview of the “prospective client”. He wants to know how handsome or beautiful the person is. He asks about their work – how much money they make. He even goes to the extent of asking them to stand up and station their phone in a place where he can view their physique, etc. When Lege is satisfied with what he sees, he begins to trade.
With hundreds of people viewing his live program, many potential “clients” hook up and express a desire to enter into a relationship with the person Lege is offering. Lege wants to know how “fresh” an individual is. He is not too concerned with the character of the person; the moment a potential client appears haggard or unwelcoming, Lege removes him or her and moves to the next person. A few of the videos I have seen have led to possible relationships. Lege tells Punch newspapers that many of those he has linked up are in thriving marriages. I do not doubt this. What I however suspect is that Lege’s modus operandi will produce more problems for people in marriage eventually. It is not likely that people who go on Lege’s show will see my article: I would however be content to know that one person read this and takes caution.
Marriage is too difficult a business for one to simply go on social media, fetch a spouse, and hope to live happily ever after with this person. Two things are very clear to me from Lege’s shows: first, there is a deep yearning for companionship in our world today. Social media has made it worse by increasing our tendencies towards individualism with our increased attention to electronic devices. Rather than people building relationships with real people, people prefer virtual relationships. The marriage institution has not been helped with this phenomenon. Second, while people yearn for real relationships, they are again returning to social media to find solution to this problem. It is clear that the moment you find a spouse from social media, you will soon get tired of this person because of a culture of individualism you have built; and then you will return to social media to get another spouse. This is one reason the Lege Miami thing is not likely to work.
Another reason is that social media cannot replace traditional ways in which marriages are contrived. If our generation would not continue to increase divorce rates, we might want to return to a time when marriages were much stronger and learn from them. Rather than coming to social media, linking up with an unknown person and trying to see if the relationship with this person will work, what has happened to good old family marriages? Where are those marriages that are contrived as young people meet up in churches and strike up relationships that last a lifetime? What has happened to good old recommendations from trusted friends, family, and colleagues? I still hold the position that the best marriages are the ones families put together.
For those of us who are Christians, we should remember that of the three Hebrew Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, only Isaac was in a marriage union that was monogamous And that marriage was put by his father’s recommendation – after a servant had ventured out to search for a wife for him (Genesis 24). As our children grow older, we must have family and friends whose values we know very well. There is nothing wrong with keeping an eye on such a family with the view of linking up the children for marriage. The testimony of many old-time marriages is that the choices parents make for their children are usually better. This is just one. Then, there are the recommendations that could come from friends. Some marriages are contrived through Christian fellowships, church gatherings, etc. I know of one marriage that came about through the internet that is still working – but I think that that one is an exception.
The point I am trying to make from the Lege Miami matter is that marriage is too serious a business for one to just come on social media and then fetch a spouse. This thing is very much likely to end in heartache. There is one question Lege appears to never ask. He usually would ask if the person has children, but he never seems to ask if they have been married previously. He never asks if these people are virgins or chaste. He asked one twenty-three-year-old girl if she smoked marijuana. The girl admitted on camera she did, and he did not think there was anything wrong with putting a girl on drugs out in public. Surprisingly, a thirty-year-old guy joined up, and Lege linked the two together – one of the few successful link-ups I have seen him do. Now, I know a little thing about young women hooked up on drugs in our times, and to say the least, it is the worst-case scenario you want to witness in a home.
The way God designed the man and the woman, it is safe to say that any marriage between a man and a woman will work. The things that make for a successful marriage are not the things that Lege Miami looks out for in his potential clients. Looks, physique, and money are the flimsiest things in a marriage. In one year of being married to someone because of these things, they can all be gone. What makes for a good marriage is character – pure and simple. And You do not see character on the faces of people – you see it in their day-to-day lives. There is no way you can find such a thing on social media. Besides, if the people who come on Lege Miami’s shows are the people who possess his kind of worldview: who cuss easily; swear with reckless abandon; use profanities; etc – if these are the kind of people Lege is linking up together, I fear for the kind of marriages we are building today. Marriage between two normal people is hard already; you do not want to witness marriage between two people with warped worldviews. The marriage institution is a good thing if it is birth in the right manner. Social media is not likely to give you a good spouse.
My two cents.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY.
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