Child Not Bride: The Issues by Inyingi Irimaha

It is no longer news that the Senate has not been able to summon a majority enough to remove a clause in the Nigerian Constitution that grants the status “of full age” to a personwho has been married. Section 29 of the 1999 Constitution says:

1) Any citizen of Nigeria of full age who wishes to renounce his Nigerian citizenship shall make a declaration in the prescribed manner for the renunciation.

(2) The President shall cause the declaration made under subsection (1) of this section to be registered and upon such registration, the person who made the declaration shall cease to be a citizen of Nigeria.

(3) The President may withhold the registration of any declaration made under subsection (1) of this section if-

   (a) the declaration is made during any war in which Nigeria is physically involved; or

   (b) In his opinion, it is otherwise contrary to public policy.

(4) For the purposes of subsection (1) of this section.

   (a) “full age” means the age of eighteen years and above;

   (b) Any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age.

According to Senator Yerima, who moved the motion against normal protocol for a re-vote, a removal of this section violates the religious tenets of Islam. I am not aware of any Muslim scholar who has risen to speak up against him. In fact, some have even pointed out a section of the Koran which seems to suggest that a girl has come of age after her first menstrual flow.

This article is not aimed at arguing whether Islam propagates girl child marriage or not. I want to believe that as with the slavery system practised by the Jews, and endorsed in the Christian Bible, there must be a valid reason why the Koran makes this provision.

I also want to believe that every religious provision has a tendency of being abused. For this reason, every civilized and modern society, which, despite diversity, has come together under a social contract, makes laws that are as free from religious bias as possible and makes provisions that will protect all citizens’ rights.

For example, we do know that The Nigerian Constitution does not outlaw traditional religion. I am also aware that traditional religion often involves human sacrifice. Would a traditional religious worshipper, if represented in the senate, then ask that a provision be made for human sacrifice?

Have people not gone to prison for being found with human heads even though they are using it to further their religion? Does not the constitution guarantee a freedom to practice your religion?

Evil has often been perpetrated in the name of religion.

Ten years before the writers of the Nigerian constitution sneaked in this and other spurious elements into the 1999 Constitution, the United Nations adopted The Convention on the Rights of the Child. This document stipulated among other things the age at which a person ceases to be a child. The OAU Assembly of Heads of States and Governments adopted the African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (CRCW) a year later. Nigeria signed and ratified both documents in 1991 and the year 2000. In 2003, we adopted the Child Right Act.

The CRA stipulates that no Nigeria child shall be subjected to physical, mental or emotional injury, abuse or neglect, maltreatment,torture, inhuman or degrading punishment, or attacks on their honour or reputation. Yet, each state in the Nigerian Federation needed to domesticate and adopt the Act. The Child Right Act 2003 makes it an offence punishable with up to five years imprisonment to marry an underage girl.

Senator Yerima is walking around free causing “mayhem and foolishness” partly because his home state of Zamfara has not adopted the CRA. Ordinarily, the National Assembly should have tabled the Child Right Acts before all State Assemblies before it was adopted in 2003. For some reason, they did not do that. And so it is even more challenging at this time to begin to get the various states to domesticate and adopt these laws, especially those states where the religious sentiments are highly unfavorable to the adoption of the law.

Nigeria practices a “Federal system of Government”, therefore, each state has to domesticate and adopt the CRA. Perhaps, the fact that only 16 of the 36 States in Nigeria have adopted the Child Right Acts should have been an indication that it would be difficult to achieve a two thirds majority in the Senate to delete the clause in Section 29 (4b). Less than two thirds of states in Nigeria have adopted the CRA.

Can this clause still be deleted? Yes.

Protocol has been broken once; we have a precedent that it can be broken again. The more important question is: will it happen under the present senate? The answer? I do not know.

35 senators said it should not be deleted, 14 abstained. So even though a majority of the senate does agree that this clause should be struck out, this majority cannot carry the vote.

Can the people get about 7 of the senators abstained to change their minds and support this cause? We need at least 86 of the members of the National Assembly to vote in favour of a deletion.

This Fact that a senator from Edo and another from Ondo voted against this clause being removed is instructive. Perhaps, we, the people, have not come to understand how important the legislative arm of government is. If we did, we would be more alert to the credentials of the people that are in the senate and what they spend their time doing there.

The senators can vote as they please, perhaps because, they do not feel accountable to the people. Or perhaps, they are speaking for their people who they have kept poor and uneducated so that they can no longer find their voice. The problem is systemic.

More importantly, this debate has brought to the fore once more the need for a constitutional review. For example, Section 3(l)(e) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1970 makes a marriage void where either of the parties is not of ‘marriageable age’. But nowhere in the statute is the term ‘marriageable age’ defined. This has led people to recourse to the common rule. Thus, Marital Act 1949 which states that “marriageable age is fourteen years in the case of a boy and twelve years for a girl.

Now, more than ever, it is necessary that legal luminaries sit and sieve through the Nigerian Constitution and point out all inconsistencies and ludicrousness therein so that when the next assembly begins seating, we would have found work for their highly overpaid idle hands.