THE NIGERIAN CHILD MARRIAGE CONTROVERSY.....A Reflection of The True Problems of Our Societies

Its been a while since I deemed it sincerely necessary to comment about events taking place in my dear country Nigeria, partly because of school work and also because the social media today has evolved into a platform for people who want to excite themselves that they have the best opinions and insights about everything, and posts upon posts not necessarily caring about the effect on the reader, but rather satisfying an inner yearning for praises and admirations...(everyone wants to be seen as the intellectual and be praised for being one, many a time several likes and comments by friends on the post will do for a dose of “Yes, Mo brilliant gan”)...the other category of social media posts is perhaps the larger chunk of people who just want to conform as to being in the loop of what is going on, (“Yes, me sef I current”) with the faintest knowledge about the events on which they comment. Yet another group are those who just can’t see when something is enough said..(a o need la ti tenu moro ni gbogboo gba, once a thing is enough said, don’t stress it) this group I would say give me the most reasons to want to mind my own.

Yesterday morning after a long sleep-in (trying to catch up on sleep from a very stressful week) I woke up to posts on facebook about the ongoing issue of child marriage or no child marriage, I thought of it first to be not as popular, until all the petition requests started flying in from right left and center #US CONGRESS #UNITED NATIONS e.t.c and all the posts of “give her education not ejaculation” which gave me a good long laugh in the solitude of my room and was a good way to start my morning along with the other likes of the statement which I wont be able to elaborate on, the one about “pen or no pen” (if you actually saw it I’m sure you just giggled…see dem dirty minds all of una). Yes I am laughing because, this matter is not worth getting enraged over if we take the time to enlighten ourselves on the true situation of things as I have painstakingly done since yesterday (because I didn’t want to turn out stupid by being completely wrong on my facts)

However funny I may make it seem just to de-stress myself, a part of the issue continuously bothered me, the part that scopes the primordium of the true problems of our society.
The part that shows why we may never be able to erase the developmental gap that exists between the developing countries and developed countries. A true and fast growing problem in our society, the lack of the zeal to understand the fate of the human race through studying and understanding the history of the human race.

Many great minds and countries have understood the pathways by which intellectual growth of a people can be ensured and sustained, even though some have used it as a tool to suppress mankind from growing to their full capacity as created by God, by deleting or concealing part of historical knowledge that is crucial to man’s intellectual growth, some have also used it through study and understanding, to put their nations and organizations far above others by orchestrating long term covert operations  that are guided by the expected outplay of human tendencies that have been learnt through studying history. “Part of where you're going is knowing where you're coming from” you’d be surprised who said this, however familiar the above phrase seems, many have yet to understand how powerful it is as a tool to solving many of the world’s problems from disciplines of sciences to humanities. But what have we done instead, we’ve given in to ignorance and we’ve taken pride in commenting on things we know very little about. Even if we claim not to be professionals in all fields, we can at least find answers from the amazing (but yet dangerous tool) known as the World Wide Web. That’s the least we can do rather than joining the bandwagon of ignorance that exists in our world today.

It wont surprise me to find out that a very large percentage of people who have made comments on the ongoing issue have yet to read the section of the Nigerian constitution that brought about this event. But, I will do readers in that category, a favour in listing a couple of things they would have found out if they did a little more research or they listened to more beneficial news rather than checking out the latest entertainment news online all day.

Here are some of the things you would have found out if you were patient,

·         The sections of the constitution in question was never about child marriage or marriage age of a female, rather it is about the laws relating to the conditions surrounding renunciation of a Nigerian Citizenship , the only connection of this section of the constitution to the ongoing confusion is the definition of an adult female. Stating that a female is of age as long as she is married (check section 29(a) of the Nigerian Constitution downloadable from google)

·         That the confusion was generated by a misguided interpretation of an unverified news report in the Nigerian Thisday newspaper.

·         Or perhaps the very obvious one that democracy allows in states that are ruled by religious laws to practice laws that are permissible in their religion.

 

Some other points to make about the religious arguments that tends to sprout from this will be that,  eventhough I have my personal reservations about marriage age, I want to state that Islam as I know never forces anyone to marry their daughters at a young age, but only recommends that the father does his best to protect a daughter who is sexually matured (meaning after puberty which occurs In varying ages in different races and cultures) from falling into engaging in illegal sexual intercourse and that if she is willing to get married at an early age, it is better for her as a protection. Is that too bad to want in a world where girls of ages 10-14 engage in sexual intercourse with numerous partners, where pregnancy in that age seems not to be out of the ordinary, where neighbourhood prostitution to my amazement and sadness is growing exponentially, where concerned fathers are almost having a heart attack imagining what their young teenage girls might be engaged in (thinking of what they did to girls of that age in their time).

Perhaps it might surprise you more that most of the theological history suggests that the average marriage age for a girl in biblical time was between the ages of 12-14, that was when girls were honoured, to the point that God decided to honour Mary with a divine conception, perhaps it will surprise you more to know that Mary herself was between the age 12-14 when she got pregnant with jesus (Peace of God be upon them both). The age of  mary is kind of similar to yerima’s wife’s age at marriage isn’t it? Do you then realise that jumping to blame and criticise people without adequate knowledge of the matter is something only ignorant people do? Are you also then going to say that God encouraged paedophilia by giving mary the pregnancy of jesus which in its clarity shows Mary to be of age to get married and have a baby? Or would you also care to know that Ben Carson one of the greatest Neurosurgeons of all time was born of a mother at the age of 13 (at least I read that from the book “Gifted Hands”…a book we should encourage all our young people to read as I would say it is infectiously motivating). So who actually made the definition of paedophilia and marriage age? Maybe people of countries where you would not want to imagine your daughters practicing what the little girls in those countries are practicing.

Am I saying that everyone should practice early marriage? No, but whoever wants to practice it due to His or Her religious recommendations shouldn’t be brought out and crucified for doing so if we claim to be in a country ruled by democracy and where freedom of religion is allowed.

Although, seeing how much damage our politicians have done to our Dear Country Nigeria, none of them the politicians (including Yerima) will be worthy of any exoneration. That been said it will still not be enough to jumble up unverified facts to make up an opinion on an issue.

This should be a reminder that whenever we want to give opinions on issues we should observe some patience and try to understand those situations to the best of our abilities before we comment on them.

I have written this piece based on my intellectual and religious inclinations and I won’t shy away from that, because I believe the best we can do as a people is to protect our identity with dignity and sincerity and also know that there are people who hold contrary opinions and we must respect them. We can only base our discussions on historical and intellectual facts and not fallacies.

 

Tope Oluyadi (July 2013)