A minimum of 100 younger girls, together with many orphans, have been married off in separate ceremonies in Nigeria, following widespread outrage within the nation.
Friday’s event was initially meant to be a mass wedding, however Girls’s Affairs Minister Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye filed a court docket order to cease it, fearing that some women had been underage.
She went again on that call after reaching an settlement with the Speaker of the Niger State Meeting, Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji, who supported the mass marriage ceremony, for the younger girls to have particular person ceremonies.
“I didn’t intend to cease the wedding however to make sure the ladies are of marriageable age and weren’t being pressured into it,” Ms Kennedy-Ohanenye stated in an announcement.
The BBC understands {that a} requirement for the ceremonies to proceed was that every one the ladies concerned needed to be of authorized age, which is eighteen in Nigeria.
Minister Kennedy-Ohanenye stated she would award all of the brides scholarships and a month-to-month stipend for the primary six months of their marriages.
One of many brides’ dad and mom, Mallama Amina Mariga, instructed the BBC the mass marriage ceremony was organized to “have fun the younger girls uniformly and provides them a way of togetherness”.
Ms Mariga, like most of the households, was given objects in the direction of her daughter’s marriage ceremony and dowry fee, together with a mattress and stitching machine from politicians.
Many of the younger girls have misplaced family to assaults by armed bandits, who frequently goal civilians throughout the north-western Niger state.
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