That cradle robbery in Bayelsa

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The media roared at an illegal mythology this week, and the Bayelsa State Government pounced on the culprits. It so happened that in broad daylight, a 54-year-old had married a four-year-old child at an elaborate ceremony in Akeddei community in Sagbama Local Government Area of the state. As the story broke, the government summoned the parents of the unsuspecting bride. Of course, the culture of kidnapping brides is global—ask the Romani in Europe, the Tzetzal in Mexico, or the Kyrigz in Kyrgyzstan with their “ala kachuu”, meaning “catch her and run.” Many women, the society holding a knife to their throats, have proceeded from fetching water in a stream to the brutal embrace of a husband, denied the courtesy of knowing their own “day of joy”. But the current case, a powerful instance of cradle robbery, speaks to the hold of primitive norms on a supposedly modern society.

The December 2 wedding between the child and the man, one Elder Akpos, was allegedly at the instance of her parents. But Dise Ogbise-Goddy, chairperson of the state’s Gender Response Initiative Team, and Paniebi Jacob, director, Child Development in the Ministry of Women Affairs, Children and Social Development, gave no quarter. They decried the marriage for being “repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience.” Said the officials: “That is why the state government did not hesitate to assent to the passage of the Bayelsa State Child Rights Law. We are taking steps to rescue the child from all the key actors in relation to this illegal ceremony that they tagged a “mere spiritual” affair. Working with the Bayelsa State Police Command, we shall ensure incidents like this do not occur in the state again. Bayelsa State is children-friendly and this case will be pursued to a logical conclusion.”

Apparently, the offending parents had received spiritual intelligence that Elder Akpos was their daughter’s husband in her previous life. The child even “narrated,” in language that only the initiated could hear, “how she had been moving over the years from place to place to be given birth to by different parents, searching for her former husband.” That was not all. The little bride actually volunteered the information that if she was not allowed to marry her husband, she would die. It was in a bid to avoid this tragedy that “the people of Akeddei decided to organise a glamorous wedding ceremony to mark the union of the two previous life lovers.” The world is indeed going downhill: while this hogwash is going on in Bayelsa, some girl in Bristol is being transitioned to a boy because some LGBTQI lunatic wants a global takeover.

You see, in ancient antiquity, those days when the ancestors communed freely with demons, someone had decreed that cradle robbery was a form of protection, and society’s mad men had promptly laid a siege to the bodies of children and pubescent girls. Today, Northern Nigeria, teeming with child brides, best epitomizes this malady, although Niger Republic, where 76% of girls are married off before 18 and 28% before 15, is statistically the country with the highest rate of child brides in the world. And the political beneficiaries of this biological robbery aren’t letting up, principally because the State has been a big letdown.

Child marriage should rank among war crimes given the extent of its evil, but worldwide, one in five girls ends up in its trap. Africa is home to more than 130 million child brides and as of January 2023, Nigeria had an estimated 22 million child brides, the population of Benin Republic and Togo combined, never mind that a 2017 World Bank/ICRW study estimated that ending child marriage could generate Nigeria some $7.6 billion in earnings and productivity. If those brides escaped to any of Niger, the Central African Republic, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, or Guinea, they would walk into the leprous embrace of lechers. Nationally, 30.3% of girls in Nigeria are thrust upon marriage before they turn 18 and 12.3% before 15. Only a miserly 1.6% of boys suffer this indignity. Specifically, child marriage is the norm in the North-West and North-East, where 52% and 51.1% of women aged 20-24 are typically bundled off to a husband’s home, not a matrimonial home where they have a say. Bauchi typically has the highest rate, with 73.8% of its women aged 20-24 married off before 18. Although under the Child Rights Act 2003, the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 years, the Human Rights Watch argues that “child marriage remains prevalent in Nigeria because the federal and state governments have not adequately enforced laws to prevent it.” That’s it: the state has no say.

Because the so-called marriages are an imposition, the victims have often taken drastic, criminal measures to exit the union. Do you still remember the case of 14-year-old Wasila Tasi’u, who dispatched her 35-year-old lord, Umar Sani, to the great beyond in Unguwar Yansoro, Kano? Wasila had been married at 13 and was eventually released from detention, unlike another 13-year-old who killed her husband but remained on the death row despite a ruling by the West African Community Court of Justice invalidating her sentence on the ground that she was a minor.

Actually, there is supposed to be a Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Law across Nigeria which prescribes a maximum of 2 years imprisonment or a fine of N500,000 or both for forced marriage, but no one has faced its fangs till date. There is a strong link between early marriage and poverty, but the apostles of culture, the cradle robbers who hide behind the need to stop premarital sex, just don’t care. They have tasted what it means to molest a child and are never going to desist until thrown behind bars and subjected to hard labour. Besides, the information organs of the state have to penetrate the recesses of every state, alerting people to the dangers of child marriage.

In the instant case, if Elder Akpos needs a bride, let him hook up with a full-grown woman. The idea of deciding for girls, or indeed for anyone, how their marital life should run is one of the most egregious afflictions facing this society. The victims are denied the right to be human, to choose who (not) to love, treated like cattle in an abattoir. It is a crime against humanity.

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