The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, has called on states to enact laws to tackle injustices in marriages just as he recommended the arrest of fathers that send out their child as Almajiri to beg for alms.
He said the Koran did not back the irresponsibility being witnessed in marriages as well as parents forcing their children into loveless marriage, and therefore charged men to take full responsibility for their marriages, especially in economic terms, by marrying only when they can take care of a wife and having children they can cater for.
Sanusi said rather than arresting the innocent boys, any parent who turned his child or ward to an almajiri should be arrested.
“Everyday, wives are complaining about their husbands who claim their rights but abandon their responsibilities of marriage, women being divorced with their husbands not taking care of the children and those children ending up on the streets, drugs, political thuggery, violent extremism.”
He recalled how in 1999, 12 States in the North adopted the Shariah laws without any need to reform the laws out side of the Muslim Criminal law.
He asked: “Do you just marry and have children without any responsibilities? The reason Allah send His Prophets is that there should be justice in this world. Justice in our relationship with our maker and in our relationship with our fellow human beings.
“Justice means that everyone is given his rights. If a man takes the privilege of being the head of the family, he takes the responsibilities of being the provider of the family. You cannot take that privilege and a band the responsibilities.
“Is it a fact that a father has the right to force his daughter into a loveless marriage? that you have the rights to batter you wife? Tou have the right to have children and push them to the streets to beg? That when you divorce your wife, you ask her and her children to pack and go back to her father’s house and that is the end? I can spend 100 years saying that it is wrong and un-Islamic for a man to beat his wife, but it is the governor and the state House of Assembly that should pass the law, it is the courts and the police that will make sure that the woman gets justice. The Scholars and Emirs cannot do that.”
The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, also advocated for digital solutions that could make parents more responsible for their children.
“The problem of Almajiri is not just a problem of a particular section of this country, it is a problem of each and everyone of us.
“Like the Emir of Kano said, we shouldn’t blame them, we should blame those that brought them to this world. It is very important we look at other ways and means of how to better the lot of their lives.”
“We need to promulgate laws that will force fathers to be very responsible for their children. We can even link it to BVN. Today, everything is digitalised, we have to link children to those irresponsible fathers, producing children that are becoming menace to the society.”