Wednesday, September 30, 2009

FORCED MARRIAGES

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I recently learnt that forced marriages are on the rise in Nigeria especially in the northern part of the country.

It has gotten worse to the extent were young girls and ladies are held hostages in their own homes by their own relatives which brings me to the case of Fatimah Shuabu Liman age 20 and Talatu Liman 21. Both victims were brutally beaten and held against their will for as long as 3 months before their cases was brought to the notice of Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA). Statistics shows that, large percentage of forced marriages occur within the Muslim community.

Another case occurred sometime in January or February which I also read in Punch; A man originally from Niger but has been residing for a while here in Nigeria with his two daughters age 18 and 12; then out of the bloom, he told them they will be getting married in about a months time; to their amazement and those of the people living around them; a marriage ceremony was conducted in the presence of their fathers family and their suitors without their having a say and then bundled off to their grooms houses in Badagry and Ajah. It should be noted that the grooms where not present at their wedding and that both of them live in a room apartment.

The question now is why do some parents force their children into marriage? According to the father of the two girls, he gave them out to marriage because he could not afford to send them to school anymore; secondly,, to avoid letting them get pregnant by neighborhood guys which I will narrow down to poverty but in his case I would say he had other reasons because both grooms are financially in the same category he is which is poor. But in Fatimah and Talatu’s case I will call it greed.

Culled from Punch march 14, 2009, http://www.wrapaifl.org/wrapa.html

POLICE BRUTALITY

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Where are we heading to in Nigeria? I don’t know, I don’t know how such brutality could be done to a young man of 25 by an agency of the state which is suppose to protect lives and property within the society.

In a society govern by laws, in a state under the umbrella of the constitution which proclaims that nobody is above the law; then something must be done to give succor to Ojo Jimoh, a furniture apprentice who was mistakenly arrested as an armed robber in 1995 and thus spent ten years of his life in prison without trial. No wonder Nigeria lost out on the recent ICC election in New York; who would want a country with a Bad human right record on ICC council seat.