Area, Niger State, has forcefully married out one Janet Habila, a
Christian girl to her Muslim boss, one Nasiru, a tailor, without her
parents’ consent.
This decision by the court has sparked an outrage by the parents of
Janet who have vowed to challenge the court decision with their last
drop of blood.
Janet Habila, 16, was an apprentice in Nasiru’s tailoring institute in
Erena, where her father had enrolled her to learn the trade after she
refused to further her education beyond primary school.
According to the SunNews, Janet’s father, a devoted church leader with
the United Mountain of Grace in Shundna village and Janet herself, until
recently was the leader of the Sabo Rayi (new life) group in the
church.
Janet was enrolled in the tailoring institute in 2016 by her parents as a way of empowering her, but
rather than learning the trade, the parents were
shocked to receive a notification of her marriage through a Sharia court
in Erena.
Nasiru, a Nigerien national who settled in Erena, was said to have
approached the court to join him and Janet as husband and wife without
seeking the consent and approval of the parents.
According to a source close to the family of the girl, Nasiru was said
to have craftily organized some Muslim men and women in the area to
stand as the parents of Janet in court to enable the marriage to take
place.
Habila Gambo, Janet’s father told Sunday Sun that unless the decision by
the Sharia court, presided over by Umar Shehu to forcefully marry his
daughter out to her Muslim boss without his consent was reversed, “it
will eventually lead to a possible religious crisis in Erena.”
Gambo warned that even if such illegality had happened elsewhere and
they get away with it, “Erena and its environs would be thrown into
confusion and possible anarchy by the practice of forced conversion and
marriage.
Narrating what happened, Gambo said:
“Sometime in 2016, I enrolled my daughter, Janet in Nasiru’s tailoring
institute as an apprentice to learn fashion design since she refused to
continue with her education. She never disclosed to me that Nasiru was
asking for her hand in marriage.
“But to my surprise, on March 16, 2017, I came back home and met a court
summon, asking me to report at the Sharia Court, Erena. On getting to
the court, I was told that my daughter had converted to Islam and that
her marriage had been fixed for 2:00pm that same day.
“I told the Sharia court judge that as a father of Janet, I was not
aware of such arrangement because my daughter never discussed anything
like that with me. Therefore, I was not going to accept it and I would
not be part of it.
“But to my surprise the judge told me that the court only wanted to
inform me and that was all. He said that the marriage would go on as
planned even without my consent.
“My daughter had never told me that she wanted to convert to Islam not
to talk of marrying a Muslim, I paid a lot of money to train her and I
would not allow this to happen while I am alive.”
He promptly reported the matter to the Niger State Police Command
through a formal letter, urging the police to intervene and rescue his
daughter from what he called “unlawful marriage” to Nasiru.
“I am urgently appealing to the police command to intervene to stop any
religious crisis that may erupt as a result of this abuse of office by
the judge and the criminal act of this Nasiru,” Gambo said
Sunday Sun gathered that following the complaint by Gambo, and to
prevent a possible breakdown of law and order, the police promptly
arrested Nasiru and detained him at the State Criminal Investigation
Department (CID), Minna.
However, when asked to narrate what transpired, Janet told the police
that she could not recall what actually happened but that she discovered
that she was taking every instruction from Nasiru.
Janet who looked sober when she was first brought to the police headquarters, said in Hausa:
“I was confused, I didn’t know what happened, but I was taking every instruction from him (Nasiru).”
When asked why she didn’t inform her parents of Nasiru’s intention to marry her, Janet said:
“I was afraid to let my parents know because of the consequences and I
was equally afraid to turn down Nasiru’s love advances even though
inside me I didn’t like the idea.”
After taking her statement, Janet was handed over to the parents and
were asked to return to the police after five days while investigation
into the matter continued.
However five days later when Janet and her parents returned to the
police headquarters, there was a mild drama as Janet demanded that she
should be allowed to say something, which, according to her, had been
bothering her since she was handed over to her parents.
When she was given the opportunity to express herself, Janet took her
parents by surprise when she declared that she was not returning home
with her parents as she was ready to join her husband, Nasiru.
A visibly shaken father of Janet broke down in tears and wept
uncontrollably as he watched his daughter being handed over to Nasiru by
the police because the court had earlier pronounced them husband and
wife and it was only the same court that could dissolve the marriage.
“This will never happen in my life time. My daughter is not a stray
animal, and even a stray animal has owner. Nobody can take my daughter
from me for free without my consent, I will challenge this with the last
drop of my blood.”
Meanwhile the mother of Janet, Asabe Gambo got the beating of her life
when she went to visit her daughter in the home of Nasiru by his
relations, who described the mother as an unbeliever who came to poison
the mind of Janet.
Narrating the experience, Asabe said:
“I only wanted see my daughter when the women in the house gathered and
started beating me and calling me unbeliever who should not be welcomed
into the house.
“They told me that my daughter was now a Muslim and, therefore, did not
need any unbeliever around her. They didn’t allow me to even sight my
daughter with my eyes. I am seriously in pain, as a mother who carried
her pregnancy for nine months,” she lamented.
“I want God to take my life instead of experiencing this kind of
situation as a mother. This is quite unfortunate, I don’t want to
believe that this is happening to me. My daughter’s sudden change of
attitude is not ordinary. As a Christian, I strongly believe that God
will surely pass his judgement over this unfortunate experience. My
daughter will surely regain her senses and return back home.”
Forceful conversion of Christian girls and marrying them off to Muslim
suitors through the Sharia court in the state without the consent of
their parents remains a great concern and a threat to peaceful
co-existence among the two major religions in the state.
Back in 2013, 24-year-old Charity Uzoechina, a student of Federal
Polytechnic, Bida and a daughter of a pastor with the Redeemed Christian
Church of God, RCCG, suffered a similar fate when she was taken into
custody in the palace of the Etsu Nupe and married off to a Muslim
without the consent of the parents.
Charity had left her parents in Abuja to further her studies at the
Federal Polytechnic, Bida, Niger State, unknown to her parents that it
was the beginning of many days of sorrow.
Instead of the formal education she had gone to Bida to acquire, the
young Christian girl was allegedly pursuing her new faith of Islam at
the palace of the Etsu Nupe.
For the parents, the pain was not just that Charity abandoned her
Christian faith, but that she was completely separated from them.
She was alleged to have converted to Islam on her own volition and changed her name to Aisha.
However, contrary to these claims, Pastor Raymond Uzoechina had insisted
that his daughter was a victim of forced conversion to Islam.
Like in the case of Habila Gambo, the RCCG pastor, called on security
agencies to investigate activities at the palace of the Etsu Nupe,
Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, to ensure that many people there had not been
forced to convert to Islam and then held against their will.
“Apart from my daughter, there are so many people at the palace. There
is need for the police to investigate and ensure that the people are not
suffering the fate of my daughter,” Uzoechina had said, stressing his
belief that his daughter was kidnapped and hypnotized, making her to
lose her sense of reasoning.
As happened in the case of Gambo, Uzoechina had received a phone call
from an aide of the emir, asking him to come to the palace.
Recalling that agonizing experience, Uzoechina said:
“On getting to the palace in Bida, the man said two women brought my
daughter to the palace saying that she had embraced Islam and withdrawn
from school. Those women even claimed they had taken her through the
rudiments of Islam and had also started looking for a school for her.
At this juncture, I demanded that I am going home with her. But the man
declined, saying only the emir had the power to allow the girl go with
me. They took me to the emir but the emir refused my plea, saying I
should come back the following week.”
Pastor Uzoechina got the greatest shock of his life when he tried to
take his daughter but was told that she had been placed under the
custody of the Sharia Court, which ordered that Charity be entrusted to
the Etsu Nupe, who should employ a qualified Islamic scholar to teach
her Islamic customs.
Source – SunNewsonline.com