The decision of the Women Affairs and Social Development Minister, Mrs. Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye and her ilks to go against the good intentions of the Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Right Honourable      AbdulMalik Sarkindaji, (popularly known as Uban Marayu), is not only reprehensible, but condemnable, to say the least.

The Speaker of the Niger state House of Assembly has sponsored the wedding of 100 girls whose parents wanted to marry them off, but they were not able to do so because some of them are poor, while others are orphans . He had also planned to attend the ‘mass’ wedding for which he invited the famous Muslim cleric and Chaiman of the Kano State Hizba Board, Shiekh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, to witness the weddings. 

Traditional and religious leaders in the area were also involved in the matter, because they were the ones who solicited for the Honourable Speaker’s assistance on behalf of the girls. Out of pity, the Honourable Speaker sponsored the marriages, but not as a so-called constituency project, as being insinuated in some quarters.

But the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development said the Honourable Speaker’s intention was not right as, according to her, the girls are under aged, and therefore not eligible for marriage, yet. Further, she asked him not go ahead with the sponsorship of, and his planned attendance, at the weddings, to which he had already committed over N50 million, and another N5 million for the grooms-to-be, at N50K per person as seed money.

Impressed by the Honourable Speaker’s gesture, the Governor of the state, Alhaji Mohammed Umar Bago chipped in N10 million as seed money at N100K to each of the 100 brides-to-be.

The journey to the one hundred weddings started about four months ago when one woman approached the Honourable Speaker with a plea for assistance. According to her, the respective suitors of her two daughters are demanding for the bride money of the sum of N1 million they had paid for but had heard nothing from the girls’ parents. She told him that she collected the suitors’ money to pay the ransom for her husband and father of the two girls. But the kidnappers killed the husband after collecting the two million naira ransom.

Moved by the seemingly hopeless situation of the widow, he gave her what she needed to marry off the two girls according to Hausa tradition. The woman then shared the information with the emir and some Muslim clerics in the area, who then went to the Honourable Speaker and thanked him with the request that he should also sponsor the wedding of other poor girls and some orphans.

Maybe the Honourable Minister does not want the girls to be married and get their own children like her. After all, the girls are from the other side, which ‘is already populated enough’. How populated is China, India, US, Brazil and others, to think that the other side is ‘already populated enough’, anyway?

The minister is not alone, though. Some fault lines have broadly divided this country of ours into ‘us vs them’, with many of ‘them’ seeing nothing good coming out from ‘us’, which is called ‘stereotyping’. For ‘them’, especially their media, the other side is not known for anything but ‘backwardness’ and for ‘us’, their side or ‘them’, is not known to be truthful but shady in character.

It is often considered backwards if one refuses to partake in the moral decadence of the western world. Walking naked in public by the women is often considered as enlightenment and or freedom, but covering up by the women of the other side is on the other hand considered as backwards. The other side has been literate in Islamic education and Arabic literacy for hundreds of years before the coming of the white man on these shores, with his education and religion, considered by ‘them’ as superior.

The media from the  minister’s side of the society even made fun of the marriages by Kano State Government, through the Hisba Board, of hundreds of divorces to their new heartthrobs. The gesture, according to them, is retrogressive.

Still, it is taboo to go against practices that make the human society no different from the animal world, but one is accepted as enlightened if they engage in such behaviours. If that is enlightenment, then one would prefer to be ‘backwards’ instead.

The Honourable Minister even went to the extent of getting a court warrant to stop the marriages. But going to court for an injunction is one thing, and getting the court’s injunction is another thing, which is why the Honourable Speaker should not have cancelled attending the wedding prayers.

I wish all moneyed people from the speaker’s divide would emulate him and sponsor the marriages of some poor and or orphaned girls so as to depopulate the area of unmarried spinsters, who would otherwise fornicate in order to satisfy their human urge. 

Stereotyping ourselves negatively, is more disastrous than the known fault lines that divide the country, even if sublimely, because each side lives suspiciously with the other. And it should not be so.

So the minister and all those opposed to the help rendered by the Niger State Speaker, in our opinion, might be doing the bidding of the Western World, which prefers to see a man married to a man and a woman married to a woman as advocated by the LGBTQ movement, than to witness a normal marriage, where a man is married to a woman, as ordered by God.

Or they might be doing the bidding of shaitan (known as the anti Christ in her religion) directly. The anti Christ is always against marriage, and would prefer the collapse of a marriage than its survival or even its existence, in the first place.

Perhaps, these people would rather see more of our unmarried women roaming the streets, looking for a man with whom to fornicate, than to get legally married to a man, which is nothing new to them, but unwelcome in the Speaker’s immediate society and other places on the other side.

There are more unmarried women in the northern part of the country, on account of the Islamic faith of most of the people living there, and Islam allows the man to legally marry up to four women, a practice that is frowned upon in some places because of religious differences.

Since the Honourable Minister and many of those against this noble move by the Niger Speaker, are not a Muslims, and, likely, opposed to it, it is understandable if they are not in favour of the ‘mass’ wedding.

But the ‘dislike’ of the other side made the opponents of the ‘mass’ wedding failing to do their ‘homework’ well. If they had done that, it would have been clear to them that all the girls are of marriageable age and that many of them are not orphans but rather from a poor family. Some of those against the marriages even call themselves editors, but their action betrays their unprofessionalism and made them look like beginners in the pen pushing profession.

But as far as the Niger State Speaker of the House of Assembly is concerned, there is no going back on his sponsorship of the one hundred weddings. He told newsmen that the marriages would go ahead whether the minister likes it or not, because he had not offended his religious beliefs as a Muslim. The only reversal, he announced, was that he would not be attending the mass wedding as he had earlier planned to do, since the Honourable minister had dragged him to court.

This is not about religion, anyway. It is about doing the right thing, and helping the poor in the society. It is what the Honourable Speaker did. No more, no less.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Abuja.