ABSTRACT
The concept of marriage is a concept that is not new to the body polity of the Nigerian legislative and judicial arms of government and as such several laws have been evolved to protect this concept and one of such laws is the Matrimonial Clauses Act and the Marriage Act with both legislations containing guides, principles and rules to which the legal institution of marriage could be said to have been well entered into, they even go further to prescribe forms of ceremonies to which they considered to be proper marriages under the Nigerian jurisdiction .
Marriage stricto sensu means the physical coming of a man and a woman to become husband and wife, that is, the physical presence of the man and the woman at the designated place for which they have designed to be joined together.
Proxy marriage or marriage in Absentia as it now fondly called refers to a form of marriage where two prospective partners to a union want to wed but they are not physically present at the place of the ceremony. Proxy marriage occurs in a situation where one or both of the prospective spouses are not physically present at the place of the ceremony but elect a representative who goes through this ceremony on their behalf. The representatives of the spouses could either be the father, mother, sister, brother, niece, aunt nephew or even the friend of the any if the spouses. The representative of the spouse goes through the marriage ceremony as if , he/she is the on getting married and undergoes all ceremonial functions including the payment of the bride’s bride price, and may even perform the function of the receiving of the bride into the family during handing over of the bride by the Groom’s family.
The concept of Proxy Marriage is not a concept that is new to our customary laws, in fact from time in memorial our forbearers practiced what was called proxy marriages, for examples, in mediaeval times a father, an uncle or even an older brother could very well carry out a contract to marry and also perfect it on behalf of his brother or child as the case maybe.
Also, under Islamic law, the concept of the Proxy marriage is not also new, the NIkah (Islamic contract of marriage between two people) states or provides that the consent of both spouses of the marriage is required and such consent could be given by the father or legal guardian of the child where such a child is underage but does not make mandatory for bit hot he spouses to be present as at the times the marriage was being contracted. That is, if for any reason one of the spouses is unable to attend the marriage ceremony, he/she could elect a representative who could so do on his/her behalf and it would be taken that such spouse was physically present as at the time the marriage was conducted.
