Despite existing laws and African Union and United States Charters against forced marriages it has continued thrive with most cases going unreported because of ignorance and other factors. ELEOJO IDACHABA examines some of these cases and why they thrive.
Thirty two-year-old Hadiza Usman was married off by her father in 2007, she was barely 15 years old at the time. She was about to proceed the senior secondary school when her father forcefully gave her out in marriage to a man old enough to be her father truncating her education.
In order to consummate the marriage, her husband, simply identified as Mallam Iliyasu, brought her to Dawaki Village, a suburb of the FCT, according to family source, with the intension of separating her from her family members he feared could influence her to leave him.
After 12 years in the forced relationship, Hadiza, who had three girls and a boy, however, ran away from her husband leaving the children behind.
Blueprint Weekend gathered that Hadiza was forced to flee to her home state, Taraba, in January this year because despite her deteriorating health her husband was still bent on having more children by her. This as her hardly took care of her and the children. Besides, he was said have concluded arrangement another wife to join them in the one-room apartment they still shared in Dawaki Village after four children.
Expectedly, after she left her husband brought in another child-bride, who is said to also less than 18 years old. Unperturbed, Iliyasu is said to be making plans to give his 12-year-old daughter, Fadila, out in marriage to a much older man.
Blueprint Weekend checks revealed that Fadila, who is still in primary school, has also run away from home on hearing about her father’s plan.
Speaking to our correspondent, a friend of the family, who gave her as Peace, said: “I heard the girl has run away because she didn’t want to suffer the same fate as her mother who left them in January because she could no longer continue in that marriage.”
On Fadila’s whereabouts Peace simply said, “I don’t know but people said the mother secretly arranged to take her away from the man so that she would not be married off the way she was married off by her own father. Some people said she is somewhere in Abuja but no one knows where she stays.” Blueprint Weekend further learnt that Mallam Iliyasu may have set up her daughter’s marriage in a barter exchange with the man who arranged his new wife.
In 2014, the report of 14-year-old Wasila Umaru made headlines across the world after she poisoned her 35-year-old husband and his three friends.
Her husband, Umaru, it was gathered, died the same day along with his friends, Nasiru Mohammed and Alhassan, as well as a female victim, Indo Ibrahim, who also reportedly died in hospital while receiving treatment for poisoning.
Wasila had confessed to committing the crime because she was forced to marry a man she did not love and was arrested and subsequently jailed. However, her lawyer rallied support from national and international women groups that highlighted that she was tried as an adult rather than in a juvenile court.
Her lawyer Hussaina Aliyu, persisted that her case should be treated differently and succeeded in upturning her conviction over what analysts termed an attempt to punish her over the infringement of her fundamental human right.
This is the plight of many children in Nigeria especially in north. According to the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF), Nigeria has the third highest absolute number of child-brides across the world with 3,538,000 and the 11 highest prevalence rate of child marriage globally.
It said that the menace is mostly common in the North-west and North-east parts of the country where between 57 and 68 percent of girls are forcefully married before their 18th birthday. The global body noted that the trend is particularly common among the country’s poorest, rural households and especially the Hausa/Fulani ethnic stock.
A 2017 World Bank study estimates that child marriage costs Nigeria USD7.6 billion in lost earnings and productivity every year.
Also, Action Aid report at the ‘Conference on the Social Protection’ of the girl child 2018, under the Child Rights Act 2003, stated that the minimum legal age for marriage is 18 years
It noted that, “As of May 2017, there were still 12 Nigerian states (11 of which are located in the north of the country) that did not include the Child’s Rights Act 2003 in their internal legislation. It follows that in those states, local laws are applied, most of which are Islamic Law provisions and the minimum age of marriage in some of those states is as low as 12 years.”
In 2013, the federal government stated that efforts have been made to sensitise states about the Child Rights Act in order to improve on its enforcement but since then, there appears to be no serious concerted efforts in that regard.
Blueprint Weekend research shows that there is also a lack of harmonisation between the Child Rights Act 2003 which sets 18 years as the minimum age of marriage and the Sexual Offences Bill 2015 which sets the minimum age of sexual consent at 11 years. All these, analysts say put the girl-child at risk.
According to the International Women Health Coalition, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), in the northern part of Nigeria, 45 per cent of girls are married usually against their will by age 15 and 73 per cent of them are married by age 18, which is perhaps one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. The global body also said that only 2 per cent of 15-19-year-old married girls attend school which again is a continuation of the cycle of poverty and are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, highly vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections including HIV and face a high- risk complications including death during pregnancy and child birth.
It therefore called on the international communities and the world at large to ensure that children should have childhoods and not be forced into marriages.
It further called for help in order to put an end to early and forced marriage and the damage it causes to a girl’s health and her well-being. It noted that in Minna, Niger state, for instance, where conservative Sharia Islamic Law is in effect, the International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights is helping to prevent child marriage there through educating girls and empowering them with the life skills necessary to make healthy and informed choices. How far this can go remains to be confirmed in view of the trado-religious and conservative nature of that society.
Why it thrives
Writing on Child Marriage/Betrothal in Nigeria, Mrs Chinwe Abara, identified child marriage as any marriage contracted with persons below the recognised age of 18 stipulated by the United Nations as being the age of adulthood. Interestingly, she said the Nigerian constitution also recognises the age of 18 as the legal voting age registrations and other national identification programmes.
The causes of forced marriages across the country, she noted, include a combination of cultural and socio-economic factors like life-threatening poverty which compels most parents to marry their girl children to rich and affluent men with the intention of securing a living for both parents and children.
An example of this, she said was the recent happening in an Internally Displaced Person’s (IDP) camp in Benue state where parents were reported to have married off their daughters to men in order to earn a living in the camp.
She further stated that the issue of loan redemption might cause the girl child to be married off at an early age. “The girl child may be held in bondage to a husband because of the inability of her parents to pay back loans in which case the child becomes the sacrificial lamb.”
Speaking further Mrs Abara said, “Societal belief in certain erroneous norms may make many parents to have the impression that early marriage helps to prevent and manage the promiscuity of the girl-child, but promiscuity is not applicable to one gender. Because of this, some parents, rather than consider abortion, opt for marriage as a way of sparing themselves and the girl-child from embarrassment in the society.”
She noted that the unbridled sexual urge of some affluent persons in society to marry young virgins whom they think are free from sexually transmitted diseases make such men to immorally condescend into luring parents of such girls into giving out their daughters in marriage for pecuniary gains. “Those parents are also eager to boost their ego through production of grandchildren,” she noted.
Religious, cultural, financial causes
In an interview with Barrister Angela Okoye, the Public Relations Officer, Child Protection Network (CPN) based in Ilorin, Kwara state, she said the reasons for early/ forced marriages in Nigeria are multifaceted.
According to her, it could vary from religious, cultural to financial reasons. Some tribes in Nigeria especially in the north, she said, believe a girl is ripe for marriage once she reaches puberty which, she said, is totally wrong, no matter what any religious or culture stipulates.
“The emphasis on virginity makes some parents insist on marrying off their daughters before they become sexually conscious or active for fear their family name would be put to shame if the girl gets involved in premarital relationships. Because of this, several families push their daughters into forced marriages.
“Also, due to poverty and inability to provide for their education and general welfare, they resort to marrying them out in order to shift the burden to the husband’s family. This, however, is a sign of gross irresponsibility on the parts of the parents in question.”
Way forward
On the way forward, she said, Child Protection Network, which is made up of several civil society organisations, working in the interest of the child has over the years intervened in several cases of child abuse and even forced marriages.
“We have over the years worked and are still working closely with Federation of Women Lawyer (FIDA) and Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development to provide legal and shelter support for girl child whose right is under threat for which the law enforcement agencies had always given us maximum support,” she said.
The PRO noted that, “The domestication of the Child Rights Act should be the priority of all state governments as the risks attached to forced marriage which include exposure to premature sexual experience, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and numerous complications during pregnancy/ delivery is what no one should wish an enemy, not to talk of one’s child.”
She, therefore, called on the media to help create more awareness about the contents of the Child Rights Act, saying many rights organisations depend largely on reports and referrals before they can intervene.
“Whatever reasons anyone can give for forced marriage is unacceptable and an infringement on the rights of the girl child who is most often than not married out to an older male she had no prior knowledge of,” she said.
