Emir Of Kano Sanusi Condemns Child Marriage

The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II is advocating a ban on child marriage.

PremiumTimes, reports that the Emir suggested that a ban on marriage of women below 18 years should be implemented, claiming that most of the women suffering from reproductive health challenges are products of early marriages.

Speaking at a workshop organised by the Northern Muslims Religious Leaders Forum on Primary Health Care in Kano yesterday May 24th, he outrightly condemned child marriage.

According to him, the health challenges faced when a girl is exposed to child marriage is enough reason to discontinue the practice, adding that the time has come for the Muslim community to live by the reality of economic recession and consequences of early marriage.

Furthermore, he said the era when people gave out their daughters in marriage at early ages and asked the husbands to wait till they were ripe was nothing but a deception.

He also recounted that in the past the wealthy and the commoners married 4 wives and bore between 30 and 40 children because the economy was not only buoyant but also because people were not relying on government for sustenance.

The Emir also said though the harsh economic realities now make it impossible for people to feed twice a day these days, ”unfortunately, our people do not change and somebody with virtually nothing still give birth to 20 or 30 children and this must stop.”

Sanusi further noted that there is a need to ban child marriage due  the challenges early marriage was posing.

He said: “I believe the time is ripe to take a stand on this age-long practice of early marriage, and coincidentally we subscribed to Malikiyya school of thought like Morocco, Malaysia, and Egypt who had since pegged marriage age to 17, 19 and 18 respectively.”

He then argued that since Nigeria Muslims also practice the Malikiys School of thought as these countries, ”we should follow suit and peg our own marriage ages for our own good.”

The Emir, however, urged relevant authorities to create a law that would punish anybody that gave birth to children and allowed them to suffer.

According to him, most of those neglected children not only turned victims of social vices but also engage in terrorism.

On domestic violence in marriages, he said it was not Islamic for men to hit their wives.

He added that he had already told his daughters to retaliate if they experience such ”I don’t expect my in-law to lay his hand on my daughter, but I have since urged her to retaliate any form of assault from her husband.”

Photo credit: PremiumTimes