On forced marriages and conversions

Another time bomb is ticking. As usual, we are all standing akimbo. Those who feel outraged have resorted to social media mobilisation and hate vending. You receive a message spewing forth hate against adherents of another religion with details of the perceived ‘crimes’. Because it is relentless and confronts you whichever way you turn you […]

Another time bomb is ticking. As usual, we are all standing akimbo. Those who feel outraged have resorted to social media mobilisation and hate vending. You receive a message spewing forth hate against adherents of another religion with details of the perceived ‘crimes’. Because it is relentless and confronts you whichever way you turn you wonder if you’re the only one stranded at this junction to national disintegration. Why can’t we discuss problems openly instead of resorting to subterfuge?
That was how some people openly declared that the missing 219 Chibok girls were a figment of the imagination of the Northern elite who were only blackmailing President Jonathan. Last week after the release of 21 of the girls by Boko Haram, I met one of the nay-sayers at a function and asked him if he still held the view that no girls were missing. He looked away from me and quoted one of my favourite phrases, “No be every foul referee dey see”. I told him he owed me an apology on the matter but he wriggled away in the usual attitude of his generation as he cooed, “B-r-o-s!” I digress.
I think it was Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma who warned us many years ago that no nation on earth has survived two civil wars. He did add, also, that one of the most intractable wars known to man was religious war. Therefore when developments that could pit adherents of one religion against the other occur, it is the place of public commentators to mount the rostrum and warn society before the damage becomes unmanageable.
Coming from a lineage peopled by Christians, Muslims and African traditional religion practitioners, I have never had problems with whatever faith anyone professed. My grandfather was a notable Muslim but my father was a Christian. Most of my uncles and aunties on that side of the family are Muslim. My mother’s family was Catholic although. Many years ago when the mosque in our family compound was to be renovated, I received a donation request. I had no choice. This was family matter. I had to chip in my quota. All of us did. The mosque was renovated. It’s our family pride. To hell with a religion that separates brother from brother.
So, when my father died, the officiating reverend father had to ask several times, “Are we in a mosque or a church?”; to which the mammoth crowd of Muslim relatives who had taken up vantage pews in the church responded, “We are in the church!” The priest then prayed for the family. “May nothing divide your family”, he prayed. A resounding Amen shook the rafters.
The above informs my attitude to religion. Most of us are accidental Muslims/Christians/Buddhists, Orisha devotees, etc. We were born into the religion. We could have been born into another.
So, let’s tell each other some home truths as brothers and sisters. I haven’t been able to digest the series of forced conversion of minors and subsequent marriage of such minors without parental consent by some Muslim elements in the Northern parts of Nigeria. I have tried to analyse this issue as dispassionately as I can, but I still can’t see the logic. The Ese Oruru case in which an underaged girl was abducted from her parents in Bayelsa and taken to Kano where her abductor claimed to have converted and married her without the knowledge and consent of her parents, is well known. But I will leave that aside because it is currently in court.
There was the case of Charity Uzoechina who was reportedly abducted and married off without her parent’s knowledge or consent in Bida, Niger State. But the latest one just gave fuel to the campaign of discontent currently being waged on social media. The family of Isiyaku Tanko of Warkaza community in the Kudun Kankara Local Government Area of Katsina State alleged that their 15-year-old daughter had been abducted and given away in marriage at the Katsina palace. The girl would have resumed in Senior Secondary for the new academic term but for her abduction. That claim was refuted by one of the king makers, Nuhu Abdulkadir, the ‘Kauran-Katsina’ who said that the girl’s case was referred to the Emir by the police and that on interrogation they found that the girl had embraced Islam voluntarily He said that the girl had indicated her interest in marrying Jamilu and that the Emirate Council married her off on the payment of N50,000 dowry.
But is it lawful?  Section 27 subsections (1) & (2) of the Act states that: (1) “No person shall remove or take a child out of the custody or protection of his father or mother, guardian or such other person having lawful care or charge of the child against the will of the father, mother, guardian or other person. (2) A person who contravenes the provisions of Subsection (1) of this Section commits an offence and is liable on conviction (b) Where the child is unlawfully removed or taken out of the State in which the father, mother, guardian or such other person who has lawful care of the child is ordinarily resident, to imprisonment for a term of ten years.
Section 277 of the Act defines a child as “a person under the age of eighteen”. Many of those who have spoken in defence of abductors and the traditional institutions which tolerated them have claimed that the girls  are adults because they have attained puberty. But the law does not talk of puberty. The law stipulates 18 years.
All of us – Muslims, Christians, animists, atheists, Ifa devotees, Buddhists and whatever else we profess, have a lot of work to do to weld our country together. In the interest of national cohesion, we can’t have one set of laws for the goose and another one for the gander. In the Holy Quran, Surah Al-Baqara (2:256) says, “There is no compulsion in religion”.
These abductions must stop.