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Simi Jolaoso,BBC Information, Lagos
Not less than 100 younger ladies, 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 have 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 wedding ceremony, for the younger ladies 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 compelled into it,” Ms Kennedy-Ohanenye stated in a press release.
The BBC understands {that a} requirement for the ceremonies to proceed was that each 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 wedding ceremony was organized to “rejoice the younger ladies uniformly and provides them a way of togetherness”.
Ms Mariga, like lots of the households, was given gadgets in direction of her daughter’s wedding ceremony and dowry fee, together with a mattress and stitching machine from politicians.
A lot of the younger ladies have misplaced family members to assaults by armed bandits, who recurrently goal civilians throughout the north-western Niger state.
Extra reporting by Nuruddeen Isyaku Daza
