This investigation looks into the practice of forced marriages on young girls in several communities in Niger state.

Over 200 residents, in Saganuwan-Kulla village, near Etsu Audu, Gbako Local Government Area (LGA), swooped on the community head’s compound on Sunday, July 16, when The ICIR visited the community. The crew sought to interview the parents of a teenager, Amina Abubakar, one of the victims of forced marriage in the state.

Usman Alhassan is the head of Saganuwan-Kulla community. Amina’s father had died before her wedding. Alhassan sent for Amina’s mother; she was far away on the farm.

The chief then sent for Abubakar Tauhid, Amina’s uncle, to speak on behalf of the family. Tauhid has led the family since Amina’s father died.

Alhassan knew about Amina’s wedding. He expressed disappointment in the girl and said nobody forced her into marriage. He narrated all he knew about the wedding and argued that her family did it with her consent.

Tauhid’s arrival attracted more than 200 villagers who besieged the building and threatened to deal with the reporters for having the guts to question the villagers over their daughter’s marriage. The crew eventually escaped by a whisker after briefly interviewing Tauhid.

That is the usual mood in most communities where a girl forced into marriage has absconded from her husband’s home. Many villagers see the girl’s action as conflicting with their culture and the Islamic religion, which is the predominant faith in the state.

Amina Tauhid Abubakar
Amina lived with her uncle in Minna from childhood until 2020, when her mother withdrew her from school to marry a man her late father had chosen for her before his death. She was then in primary four.

The soft-spoken girl had hoped to become a doctor in a country where only four doctors attend to 10,000 people and possibly help reduce the country’s maternal and child mortalities, which are the second highest globally.

She is among the 26 million child brides in Nigeria, according to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) data.

The ICIR reports that child marriage is one of the abuses children face in Nigeria, and the challenge is not limited to Niger State alone.

Thirty-four of Nigeria’s 36 states, including Niger, have domesticated the Federal Government’s 2003 Child Rights Act enacted to protect children like Amina, but the trends in child brides in her state cast a shadow on the operationality of the Act.

The ICIR reports that child marriage breaches the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Nigeria is a signatory, and the fundamental human rights enshrined in Section Four (chapters 33-36, and 38-41) of the Nigerian Constitution (1999) as amended.

With out-of-school children hovering around 20 million and 133 million people living in multi-dimensional poverty in Nigeria, tackling child marriage remains a huge task for any level of government in the country.

Amina was the only one who could speak pidgin English among all the four girls interviewed.

“There are two reasons I didn’t like the man my parents chose for me. The first reason is that my father told me how he forced my sister into marriage. Every day, I see my sister and her husband fighting in their house located near our compound.”

“I see my sister, who is already married off, every day. We live in the same neighbourhood. I don’t want to live this type of life. Even my mother, that was how her parents married her off to my father. They said that was how they would marry me off, and I resisted.”

Amina said she woke her mother every night, Kneeling and pleading that she let her choose the person to marry instead. She explained to her mother the kind of family she wanted, but the mother wouldn’t listen.

“She always ignored my pleas. I cried every night. Nobody cared about how this affected my health. I was always left alone in a sad mood.”

“Since I was born, I’d never begged anyone over anything as I pleaded with my mother not to force me into marriage. I continued to plead, and she insisted that I accept her decision. I later hardened my heart that I would never allow myself to be forced into marriage even if it requires that I die,” said Amina.

When it dawned on her that her marriage was inevitable, she presented four men from the village at different times as suitors, but her mother declined to endorse any of them.

Her siblings and extended relations ignored her pleas for help that would make her escape her mum’s decision. Whenever she needed anything in the house, her mother referred her to the man she wanted her to marry. This further compounded her troubles.

She became more miserable, watching her dream of becoming a medical doctor fly past her reach.

She said of her wedding experience, “After I had severally resisted the marriage proposal by my family, they took me to one man called Iyakatu. They chained my legs. When the legs began to swell in the night, they removed the chain because of the swelling and took me straight outside in the night and poured water on my head.”

Pouring water on a girl’s child is a symbol of marriage among Nupe-speaking people, a predominant tribe in Niger state. It’s done at dawn in front of friends and family to signify she is now married.

“They said they had already done the wedding for me to marry the person they chose. At 6:am, they prepared everything they would use for the wedding and brought the marriage dress to me. I wore the cloth and was sobbing.”

“I lived with the boy they married me to for 15 days but didn’t allow him to touch me. My parents always locked the man with me inside his room so he could have sex to enable me to become pregnant. They always locked the door with a padlock” Amina stated.

She said after they had failed to force her to have sex with her husband, they bundled her to a man in Makagi village, Muhammadu Baba (poplary called Alhaji Makagi), in Agaie LGA in the state.

Two of the four girls interviewed said their parents took them to the man they described as very influential in the area. They claimed he had charms and possessed healing power. The state’s Child Rights Agency staff and the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) corroborated the girls’ claim.

According to many sources, the man hypnotises girls who refuse their parents’ marriage choices. Makagi village is about 40 kilometres from Agaie town, and Bida to Agaie is 37 kilometres. Commuters spend hours on the highly dilapidated highways where articulated trucks fall off daily.

Amina claimed she didn’t know how her husband found it very easy to have sex with her after returning from the man. “I didn’t even know the time he did it. I got to know about sex when I woke up the following morning. I was in the village for 15 days and escaped at night after fasting.”

Amina fled into the bush at midnight and trekked for two hours before reaching another village belonging to the boy she had wanted to marry.

Days later, through a lawyer, she filed for a divorce at a Sharia court. The court separated her from the marriage and ordered that she return the bride price.

The court ruled that she can marry the man of her choice after observing her Iddah – the three months a divorced Muslim woman or widow observes before marrying another man.

During this investigation, she was observing the Iddah in the custody of Abubakar Mahmood, district head of Etsu Audu.

Mahmood attested to the claim that the man in Makagi administered love potions and gave concoctions to girls rejecting marriage. He described the state’s high rate of child marriage as “worse than slavery.”

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/brides-by-barter-inside-story-of-young-girls-forced-into-marriages-in-niger-state/

The Child Rights Bill is yet to be domesticated in most Northern states due culture and religion. Hopefully when they do so, things will get better.

So federal power no reach there. A case involving a minor you called it religion and believe. And your imprisoned people involving in the same act. It's sounds stupid

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