By Lillian Okenwa
Many are still in doubt over the authenticity of a video that has been making the rounds over cyberspace, where a senior citizen from Kano state married an 11-year-old girl.
Already, the video has garnered 2,274 retweets, 2,186 quote tweets, and 3,770 likes.
See video. https://twitter.com/Ozoadaz/status/1636090944020783106?s=20
The ‘groom’ said to be a local Kano Alhaji, has however defended his actions, maintaining that the marriage was initiated out of love and mutual consent. The question is, can an 11-year-old give legal consent to marriage? Can she even give informed consent?
In the video interestingly, loud happy voices of adults, particularly women could be heard in the background, saluting the ‘couple.’
Notwithstanding that 34 of the 36 States of the Federation have fully domesticated the Child Rights Act (CRA, 2003), a law that deals with issues of child abuse, child labour, and forced marriage, among others, Child marriage remains a contentious issue in Nigeria, where regional disparities and cultural practices have long preserved the tradition.
Kano and Zamfara are yet to domesticate the Act.
During the 10th anniversary commemoration of the International Day of the Girl-Child in Abuja on 11 October 2022, members of the Children’s Parliament raised an alarm over the betrothal of underage girls to old men for economic reasons. A young girl activist from Yobe State, Khadija Badamasi, made a revelation about the disgraceful act in her state.
“Yobe State, where I hail from, due to poverty, has the largest number of child brides in North-East Nigeria. In my community, most people are farmers, and due to poverty, parents borrow money to cultivate their farms. Hence, they end up having to give their girl-children in place of the debts.”
In due time perhaps, there might be disclosures as to whether the recent development between the child and the Alhaji has some economic undertones.
Psychologists and mental health experts however note that in order to have inhibited sexual pleasure with children, many pedophiles hide under the cloak of tradition, culture, and sometimes religion, to marry little girls.
Not a few Nigerians would recall that despite the outrage that greeted his 2009 marriage to a 13-year-old Egyptian girl, Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima on Sunday 28th July 2013, told the Sunday Trust Newspaper that ”if the vote on the child marriage issue came up in the Senate again” he and his supporters ”would win a million times over.”
Yerima is right. He would win again and again. The indifferent attitude that has been displayed by a large number of Senators to the plight of the girl-child, pedophilia, and infant marriages in Nigeria is evident. It is noteworthy that during the Yerima brouhaha at the Senate, two female Senators, Aisha Jummai Alhassan from Taraba state and Zainab Kure from Niger state, abstained from voting against child marriage.
Roz Ben-Okagbue, lawyer, accountant, and activist shared some thoughts in her article Eradicating child marriage; is the removal of S29 the answer?
“It is also a proven fact that early marriages lead to poorly psychologically developed women who produce infants with late physical and cognitive development…The most disturbing factor however is the health implication of early marriage and childbirth.
“The young teenage body is neither equipped for sex nor childbirth and often results in vesico vaginal fistula (VVF) which is a condition that renders the girl child incontinent. Early sex has also been known to cause cervical cancer and other ailments. One can only imagine the pain and depression that these young girls are subjected to whilst their counterparts around the country are concerned with education and other teenage preoccupations such as social media and music.
“Some argue that early marriage protects the girls from modern social ills such as promiscuity and unplanned pregnancies and therefore the practice should not be stopped. Tragically none of those advancing these arguments are willing to subject their own children to early marriage rather than education; nor have they come up with a solution to the social problems to the society caused by these early marriages…”
Rights activists have condemned the child marriage to Kano Alhaji, stressing the potential physical, psychological, and educational consequences faced by child brides. Save The Child International, a Non-Government Organisation recently noted that in northern Nigeria 78% of females marry before they turn 18.
As of January this year, over 473,565 Nigerians have signed an online petition calling for the ban and criminalisation of child marriage in the country. In the meantime, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) 2022 report revealed that 22 million girls between 13 and 17 years are already married in Nigeria.
As it stands, Nigeria has the highest number of child brides in West and Central Africa.
And although the Child Rights Act which prohibits marriage below the age of 18 appears to conflict with the constitutional provisions, Nigerian lawmakers do not seem to have any plans for this subject.
