A public affairs analyst, Michael Adeleye, has described Senator Ahmed Yerima’s arguments about the legality of marrying underage girls, as an attempt to ‘defend the undefendable’.
Speaking on Sunrise Daily, he said “When I listened to Senator Yerima, yesterday, I began to ask questions. Are we living in a society where some laws seem to supercede or reign supreme over the law of the land?”
In his opinion, if a law comes out of a religion and tries to reign supreme over the laws of the land, then I think it’s questionable.
He faulted Senator’s Yerima’s claim that the parents of a girl are the ones to ascertain her maturity. “A parent cannot ultimately decide, but they can give consent”.
Although the particular law in question, Section 29(4b) of the Nigerian constitution, addresses the issue of citizenship, Mr Adeleye argues that a 9, 10 or even 13 year old female cannot be qualified as a ‘woman’ owing to the fact that such an individual does not have the mental capacity to make important decisions.
“Do you think they’re going to be able to make a decision on what’s going to happen to their lives?
He called for a review of the Marriage Act which has not been adopted in all 36 states of the federation, while making reference to the many conventions on the standard age of marriage to which Nigeria is a signatory.
