A Nigerian Islamic group on
Tuesday challenged a suit filed by a government agency against a senator, Ahmed
Sani Yerima, under fire over his marriage to a 13-year-old Egyptian girl. The
Registered Trustees of Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria is seeking an
order of the Federal High Court to restrain any government agency from
interfering with the rights of the senator.
The Islamic body propagates
Islamic laws and defends the Sharia, or strict Islamic code.
Defendants in the suit are
the government-backed National Human Rights Commission, National Agency for the
Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), and senate president and the
speaker of the lower house of parliament.
Investigators of NAPTIP
last May questioned Yerima, ex-governor of Muslim-dominated northwest Zamfara
State, over the marriage.
Yerima, 49, who provided
investigators with an affidavit of marriage from the Sharia Court of Appeal in
Abuja, slammed the Nigerian Child Rights Act of 2003 which he said "must
have been enacted in error".
The lawmaker said that he
and his government had rejected the law -- which forbids marriage to anyone
under 18 -- when he was governor between 1999 and 2007.
The Islamic body is seeking
court declaration that Yerima's rights to privacy and practise his religion
have been violated.
"We are saying that
the honourable senator, as a Nigerian, fundamentally as a muslim, (that) the
constitution guarantees him the right to practise his religion... the way and
manner it is prescribed," the body's lawyer, Etigwe Uwa, told journalists
after a court session on Tuesday.
"His religion allows
him to marry four wives without restriction on age," he said.
Uwa said the section of the
Child Rights Act which forbids marriage of a girl under the age of 18
contravenes the country's constitution which guarantees citizen's rights to
practise his religion.
Deregulation, the magic wand, we've been told is the only solution to our petroleum needs. Nigerians, the federal government insists, must embrace deregulation if they need petroleum products or face the fate of returning to the medieval era of using firewood and stones or at best acquire plenty of donkeys from northern Nigeria, if they must move around.
Jos, the Plateau state capital, boiled yet again recently leaving in the wake of it hundreds of lives lost and properties worth billions of Naira destroyed. A good number of those who survived crisis have been economically displaced and may have to start life all over again.
Hey Ladies, In the last publication we
talked about being independent as a lady and highlighted so many points, but we
want to continue exploring the independent state of mind placing emphasis on
when the quest for independence could turn into arrogance in homes or amidst
friends.
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