Ibrahim Kanuma winces for his teenage daughter’s hand in marriage as he recalls the moment a 63-year-old man asked him. The proposition had not been uncommon in northwestern Nigeria’s remote, dust-blown state of Zamfara, but he considered the suitor too old for their only child, Zainab (13).
“Whether or not he previously been aged up to 50 – okay. But that old, he will quickly perish and keep her lonely, ” states the civil servant in their workplace in Gusau, their state money.
To safeguard his school-aged kid through the crushing stigma of widowhood, Kanuma alternatively offered their blessing to a union having a “reasonably aged” colleague – in their 40s – and even though this type of betrothal is unlawful.
The recent outcry over child marriage is puzzling for Kanuma and many others in northern Nigeria.
Zainab’s wedding is forbidden under Nigeria’s Child Rights Act, which bans marriage or betrothal before the chronilogical age of 18. But federal laws and regulations compete with age-old traditions, in addition to ten years of state-level sharia law in Muslim states. Continue reading “We inform you of Nigeria’s kid brides in bondage”