Nigerian Minister of Women Affairs, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, has filed a suit at the court of law to restrain the Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji, from marrying off over 100 orphaned girls.
She also petitioned the Inspector-General of Police over Sarkin-Daji\u2019s plan pending the completion of investigations.
The Lawmaker had earlier announced his plans to marry off the orphaned girls who lost their parents due to banditry attacks frequenting the northern region of the country.
He said he had acquired materials for the event scheduled for May 24, and promised to pay dowries for the bridegrooms.
Sarkin-Daji’s plans have been met with several backlash from Nigerians and other civil societies.
However, Kennedy-Ohanenye said the plan is unacceptable, and that the future of the girls should be a priority.
She said the ministry will take responsibility for the girls\u2019 education and vocational training.
The Minister said, \u201cI want to let the honorable Speaker of the House in Niger state know that this is totally unacceptable by the Federal Minister of Women Affairs and by the government.
\u201cBecause there is something called the Child\u2019s Right Act and I said it from the onset, that is no more business as usual.
\u201cThese children must be considered, their future must be considered, the future of the children to come out of their marriage must be considered.
\u201cSo I have gone to court. I have written him a letter and written a petition to the IG of police”.
She continued, \u201cAnd I have filed for injunction to stop him from whatever he is planning to do on the 24th, until a thorough investigation is carried out on those girls, find out whether they gave their consent, their ages, find out the people marrying them.
\u201cAs the speaker did not think about empowering these women or sending them to school or giving them some kind of training support financially. The Women Affairs have decided to take it up and we are going to educate the children.
\u201cThose that do not want to go to school, we will train them in a skill, empower them with sustainable empowerment machines to enable that child build his or her life and make up her mind who and when to get married.
\u201cIf for any reason the speaker tries to do contrary to what I have just mentioned, there will be a serious legal battle between him and the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigerian Minister of Women Affairs, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, has filed a suit at the court of law to restrain the Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly, Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji, from marrying off over 100 orphaned girls. She also petitioned the Inspector-General of Police over Sarkin-Daji\u2019s plan pending the completion of investigations. The Lawmaker had earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/img_3027-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":503,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanwomanmag.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}