Child Bride: Yerima Responds To Allegations

PHOTO: SENATOR AHMAD SANI YERIMA.

San Francisco, April 29, (THEWILL) - Senator Ahmad Sani Yerima on Thursday in a BBC Hausa Service Programme said he is not bound by the provisions of the Child Rights Acts and that his marriage to a minor, a 13-year-old Egyptian girl is a private affair.

The former governor of Zamfara State and Senate Minority Whip, who is currently being investigated by the National Assembly for his action said Zamfara did not domesticate the law hence he could not have violated any law. He said reports that the girl is 13 years old were false insisting that it is nobody’s business.

The former governor wedded the minor at the National Mosque in Abuja.

Yerima said, "It is true that I got married but it is not true that I married a 13 year old girl. But what I want to say on this issue is, when I was governor, I said on several occasions that Allah has made me to take life like any other Muslim. All the things that Allah said we should do and all the things that the Prophet said we should do, I have tried to do them.

"I have not done anything that violates Sharia, so I am not bothered about anything if anybody accuses me and I don’t think I have committed any offence," the senator explained.

Refusing to clear the air on the girl’s age, he said’ "There are laws laid down by Allah regarding marriage. In my position as a Muslim, I followed all the procedures for marriage in Islam. If I had violated any provision of the law in Islam, I would have been disturbed, the issue of age does not arise.

"She is Egyptian. There are women that Allah prohibits us from marrying, there are those he permits us to marry. I married the one Allah permits us to marry. The entire controversy in this marriage, it is the handwork of my political opponents and those against Sharia. Remember that I introduced Sharia in Zamfara in 1999."

Yerima is not new to controversies. In 2006, he married a 15-year-old.

The Egyptian Embassy has said it has not been briefed formally hence it is unable to act on the matter but women groups have accused Yerima of exploitating a minor. Some analysts have also called him a pedophile.