CHAPTER ONE
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background to the Study
The choice of a mate is a problem that human beings share with most other animals, because successful reproduction is central to natural selection. Peahens choose among most attractive peacocks, female elephant seals and even promiscuous chimpanzees exercise choice about their chimps with which they will be promiscuous (Broude, 1994). In every human society in the world, methods have been evolved for people to pair up and eventually get married in order to establish their own families. For most of the societies, this process was largely controlled by parents and kins in early days. Parents usually had direct control through strong community and kinship networks that exerted pressure on youths to conform to traditional norms. Only few societies, if there is any, allow young people to choose partners without the approval of parents and/or other relatives. It is when people remain in their communities or places of birth, that the bond of strong kin, networks is crucial in mate selection (Ekiran, 1996). Although mate selection process was once controlled by parents, it has now become much a matter of personal choice by the young lovers.