Marriage fixer prophet

I thoroughly enjoy this Tedtalk Nairobi by Caroline Mutoko, my take on it is what I hold dear – women of today must play their part to build a future for the coming generations of women. Leaning in, as Ms. Mutoko puts it is no longer enough, a lot was fought for before our time, hence many things were a lot easier than it was for women before us.

One thing that I notice in a place like Nigeria is that often in times the most courageous women look the other way when other young women were being lead astray especially when this is done by a self-proclaimed men of God – we watch and get confused internally as we sure know the end is disaster but chose to be quiet because speaking out to enlighten the women of the likely consequences might hurt the ego of the men.

Take for example the case of a group of women being made to think getting married to men they barely know is the best option for their lives because their prophet says so.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend shared a clip of a church program that looks like a scene from a Nollywood movie, a few young men in the congregation who wanted a partner were in a queue, young ladies in the congregation who are supposedly desperate for  husbands were asked to line up behind their preferred men – the prophet said he was going to ‘marry for some people for this church… I will sponsor all the marriage in one day,’ hearing this statement, the congregation cheered.

In the end behind each man, there are a few women, some up to 7. Men were instructed to take a look at these women behind them, mastered their faces and after the service, they need to introduce themselves to their choice – this all done during a church service.

I am only learning of Prophet Jeremiah Fufeyin of Christ Mercyland Deliverance Ministry for the first time. Watching a few minutes of his church service online, he is charismatic, loves dancing, people seem to believe everything he says.

So many things are going on in Nigeria that we brushed aside but in the real sense is social malice with serious consequences. The practice whereby a religious leader declares himself as the ‘marriage fixer’ is the genesis of a bigger problem in the Muslim north today. It all started with the religious leader, now in many parts of the northern states, the state government takes it upon themselves to see that all women must be married, so they paid for the marriage to be a third or fourth wife to someone they barely knew. And in a couple of years after a child or two, they are back on the market waiting for the government fix, and those children are often thrown in the streets, hence we have Boko Haram replacement so easily. Kano alone has over one million street kids.

Now in the south, just as we love to copy just about anything that is socially awkward from the north i.e pilgrimage in place of schools/hospitals, we are doing it here, in the name of Jesus as opposed to Allah – but in the end, it is bound to have the same outcome.

Here I wondered, where are the mothers in this church were they thinking of their prophet erratic behaviour? If one has to pick a pick a husband like one does fruits in a bazaar paid for by a stranger prophet – after the marriage with no job to fend for oneself, what will be the end of this?

Both potential husbands and wives in this clip are educated, at least up to secondary school perhaps even higher. If this happens in the north, we say they are illiterates, so we the southerners and educated – why do we keep copying the same ill-fated lifestyle?

Correlation between this story and Ms. Caroline Mutoko’s Tedtalk? Not much, I just think women who learn to invest in self would work towards getting a job to fend for self first, then life partner will eventually come if that is what they want. Being treated like a cattle whereby anyone comes to take a pick isn’t the way to go even if one is in a religious congregation.

Sankofa

At a training session with a fellow Nigerian. The lady was quite passionate about Nigeria, she hopes to return home after her retirement to set up a practice with her son – she would love to give back in her own way.

Hope is good, it is hope that has kept us still believing in a country crumbling on itself, that one day enough people will realise nothing will change without us changing our focus.

I enjoy meeting people from different parts of Nigeria especially when talking about important social issues, to learn if things are done differently in their parts –  we are all in the same boat, enough of us just don’t want to acknowledge that much.

The lady is from Edo and in her 50s. Her age is relevant here to show how little has changed over the years.

Conversation started on the ‘others’ and their rigid views of the world. In the end I was glad we both agree everyone has a role to play to steer the country in the right direction – we have been made to finger-pointing for way too long that we don’t pay attention to our own closest neighbours who aren’t necessarily acting in the best interest of all.

Take education for example, from long time ago, southern Nigeria have embraced western education – this much we are always eager to point out, however for the last 30 years quality of our public school education is on downward spiral, this is obvious on our streets.

Not funding public education means a sharp rise in private schools which many people could not afford  – can we from the south, the ‘enlightened ones’ blame the north for that?

Just because a group decides keeping people around them ignorant by denying them any form opportunities to be independent thinkers, should we continue to do the same even when we are well aware of the consequences?

Perhaps the best way to see this is to stop worshiping those who are elected to represent us at the top. We should hold our representatives (from the south) to accounts and stop taking them seriously when they are pointing to the ‘others’ as the bad guys.

And the self-appointed messiahs who we know are not acting in our best interest need to be shown many instances where they have failed to support us.

Gender issues is a good example here, the GEO bill was raised to highlight many key areas where Nigeria women today are still being treated as a less of. The bill was raised by Senator Abiodun Olujimi, a southerner, it has faced many backlashes and now being shelved collecting dusts.

When GEO bill was being discussed last year, the only strong and loud opposing voices we heard were from the northern religious leaders – which I actually appreciate, at least we know what we are working with.

In the south none of our outspoken christian leaders spoke, they all kept quiet as they prefer not to be identified as the one who oppose GEO bill – I am sure there are plenty of bible verses to back up their preference.

My new friend is religious, far more than I am. Gender inequality is one subject that bothers her too, here she shared her experience of a church in Nigeria where there are handbooks for women and children to guide them as they navigate this sinful world. This church has no handbook for men as they were born to know all from birth and women from babies to old age must be guided by those who didn’t need to follow guidance handbook – how interesting.

The above is the view of many Nigeria christian leaders on women ability and reason their view on gender issue is hushed.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with this lady, it is nice to chat with a religious Nigerian whose sense of reasoning is not clouded by tribal or religious sentiments.

While there are enormous work for Nigerians, we can not continue to pretend all is well when the oppression is coming from our tribe or our preferred religion – if we can not see unfairness in the way we are being treated with the so called ‘our own’, how can we ever be united to fight for against external forces?

 

Sankofa “You must reach back to reclaim that which is lost in order to move forward”

New music, old dance

‘When the music changes, so does the dance’ This is an adage that serves as a reminder  of importance of awareness to the changing world.

 

There is a lot of assumptions made on behalf of Nigerians, most of which were not true representation of what Nigerians stand for or genuinely believed.

For about two weeks now, there has been discussions about secondary school curriculum and how Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) has been deliberately merged with Religious and National Values by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) while Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) still maintains its status as a stand alone subject.

Regardless of the purpose of the proposed amendment in the curriculum, any conversation around religion always get attention of Nigerians.

The news going around was that the changes was meant to islamise Nigeria – I still do not understand how this could possibly be believable in Nigeria.

Why is all the fuss? What is wrong with replacing CRK/IRK with Religions and National Values?

 

Nigeria top pentecostal pastors were not left behind, they reiterate how important it is that we keep CRK in the curriculum and of course they jazzed up their message to make people think that is all that we needed to lead a happy/fulfilled life.

I have nothing to say about these pastors drumming on this non issue – all of the three big names mentioned grew up in a Nigeria when we had fewer churches on our streets. Now, with more churches, more religious preachings, people are fed with false hope, distractions from reality on the streets with promises of wealth and eternal home as if there will be a separate heaven for Nigerians and they are the gatekeepers.

Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has this to say:

“it would lead us to a godless nation with violence and all forms of ungodliness as the order of the day” – the statement was credited to CAN president, Rev Samson Ayokunle.

Thinking on the CAN president’s statement – which part of Nigeria is ‘godfull’ today? Funny people – Nigeria is so ‘godfull’ that northern Nigeria had to leave CAN to form a separate body last year citing corruption in the top office as their reason for leaving to create their own more representative group of Northern Nigerian Christian Association (NNCA). 

Like all subjects, periodic reviews are important to see how to best get important message across to learners. NERDC were appointed to do specific jobs, we all can see the influence of religion in our society – why must we continue in the same old way and wishing for better times?

In this case, I thought instead of CAN and top religious leaders speaking on behalf of everyone, why not encourage NERDC to do a nationwide or south-wide survey to get figures on what people are thinking about religious studies in secondary school?

Deut 17:6  says  “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses…”

I did CRK in the first three year of secondary school, I still have a picture of my teacher in my mind’s eye – if the course was not compulsory, I would not have sat in that class.

Everything I remember about bible teachings today are from home and involvement in church activities. It is parents’ responsibility to teach their children religion of choice.

A few people I spoke with on the subject agree that Nigerian students likely to benefit more from religious studies being merged with national values, might even awaken people to the reality on ground as opposed to outward proclamation of religiosity that leaves many reciting verses that bear no resemblance to the life on the streets.

If I had to raise my children in Nigeria today, I’d rather get them to study Religious and National Values where they are exposed to a religion of their choice as well as how that fits into today’s Nigeria realities.

The outcry was to get people thinking Nigeria is about Them Vs Us however, in reality southern Nigeria education is heading towards downward spiral with too much emphasis on religion and far less on other very important subjects that get people employed for today’s world.

School is meant to open minds to all possibilities not to further create needless division/isolation.

We are at a different time, we need to get comfortable to dance to the rhythms of today.

In the west of our dear land

I received a text message a few weeks ago warning people not to use their photo or that of their family members for social medial profile because there are messengers of devil lurking around determined to take children of God away.

This message came to me from a friend that I respect, we’ve known each other for a long time, so I replied asking her to think about that message for a second in relation to the present situation in her family, town, state and Nigeria and to see if there was any sense in it.

It is interesting the number of messages people forward without reading or believing it.

Why is it so hard to give common sense advice without making everything about religion, devil, or God? Wouldn’t it be enough to get people to understand the need for a bit of privacy while on social media without scaremongering people with nonsensical tales?

Thankfully, I no longer receive chain messages that only serve to propagate myths or scare the daylights out of people. However, occasionally, I receive ‘gems’ from new friend/acquaintance, such is the case the other day when someone in a group that I belong sent a ‘warning’ text.

The text was long, but the gist of the story was that we should not pick a call from a number with country code +263. Two different numbers were provided. The reason for the warning was that the person on the other end is a ‘devil’, he has managed to kill 11 people via calling them on the phone. There is something about blood sucking devil in the text.

This message was not directed at me, if I was not part of this group, the sender would not have included me, here I can’t really be bothered.

Out of curiosity I checked to see where the ‘blood sucking devil’ is calling Nigerians from, it turns out to be Zimbabwe.

Why would someone in Zimbabwe want to suck Nigerians blood, don’t they have their own people or do Nigerians have special sweet blood?

The +263 warning text is a bit easy to crack, I sense some Televangelists competing for the same audience, my people are one step ahead making sure they scare folks from listening to morning devotion from rivals – Oh well, I know this message will go round the world and come back before people realise the motives behind the texts.

Let’s assume that it is true that there are some agent of darkness somewhere who really wanted to kill people through WhatsApp calls, why would anyone target Nigerians when there are plenty options of people using VOIP around the world?

Whenever texts such as these are sent to people, there is always a sense of urgency to act, ‘send this message to all your friends and family members’ even if forwarding such a message makes one look like a  douchebag, deed is done before they had a chance to ask simple question such as:

Why is it always us spreading rumours that make no sense?

People are facing enormous challenges with skyrocket inflation, kidnap for ransom and on top of it, an absentee President – do people need more miserable tales to scare them of one more thing they need to do or not do so as not to die?

Do people actually still believe this? It seems so. If they don’t we would not have more churches than schools today. I have seen a building with three different churches – everyone competing for a share of the market.

“In the west of our dear land…” is the first line of my secondary school anthem, the line came to me today while I was thinking about how much some people rather than using technology to inform and educate, they insist on using it as a tool to further instil fear into the people.

Many people genuinely do need help, may their eyes be opened in good time.

Deceit

“Would you like to hear a bizarre story?” A friend asks.

“Of course I love bizarre stories, who doesn’t”

The story goes that a lady is behind on her mortgage repayment. The bank had sent the last reminder letter. Now court is involved, she wants to appeal to see if she could be allowed a couple of months grace to sort out her finance issues.

The problem has been going on for a while, needs £10k to clear mortgage debt and must provide evidence to show she’s financially capable to get the payment going for the near future, otherwise her house is at stake. At the court a friend who was there to provide moral support decided to ask the mortgage lady a few questions just to understand what lead to this backlog. Mortgage lady lost her job and it has been taking too long to get something stable. She had £8k in savings reserved for occasions such as this, but somehow she lost the savings too.

Lost all savings? How?

When the mortgage lady was going through her challenges, she confided in her pastor. The pastor got closer and promised to help with job hunting so she wouldn’t have to lose her home.

The catch? She must provide £8k as payment for the work involved – the prayers, the fasting and the pleading to the village enemies back home.

At this point, I have heard enough. I have heard manipulators can be pretty hard to spot, but I could not stop asking why and how would anyone part ways with the only backup in such manner? Why not spend that to clear lion share of the debt?

Needless to say, she lost the house.

Case like this is sad as it is not at all easy to get on the property ladder in this country. And again, how can we better inform our people against scammers such as this man of God?

Another case that has been going around for a couple of months was the case of a guy who visited Nigeria in 2015 from the States. During his stay, he met a Babalawo (not unlike many pastors but with different tools and tend to be tribal) who promised to help him become rich. He is a cab driver in the States.

Kazeem, the cab driver claimed he paid ₦4M to Babalawo in total. Babalawo claimed he only received ₦380k. Bottom line was Kazeem several thousand naira out of pocket and still driving his cab. He would like his money refunded as the charm/potion has not worked.

Poor Babalawo now is being dragged about by Lagos police for failing to provide working get rich charm.

The case here is that Babalawo’s charm did not work as promised. If Babalawo was made to pay back what he had collected/jailed, would it be okay for Nigerians to ask all the prosperity preachers for a refund too? Just thinking out loud.

Good luck to Kazeem getting his refund in Lagos.

Trying times

It was only two months ago we were hit. My girls talked about the school reinforcing that we must not be cowed – life must go on. We talked about it at home and watched videos encouraging people not to give in to fear. Kids tend to be okay if adults around are.

This time again with higher casualties, any lives taken away through act of terror is sad but to target children?

We have a discount leaflet for an indoor event as something to do sometimes next week during the midterm. I could not help but think perhaps we should avoid crowded areas for a little while. And I am the one that’s supposed to be strong, need to try harder.

Radio chats about Monday night attack are slightly different from that of two months ago, everyone is upset and want assurance. This evening some callers are pointing fingers to clues to spotting terrorists, other callers spend most of the time isolating religion from it.

Security in town now is quite noticeable, which should be enough assurance to make anyone relax, but somehow I can’t stop thinking this is a reminder of the time we live.

Prayers and thoughts to the families and friends of those whose lives were cut short and those recovering at the hospital.

Help for mental health patients

It is extremely hard to have a family member with mental health illness in Nigeria, societal stigma is just one hurdle, another one is people making up all sorts of reasons they think one has mental health problem, most of the reasons has one denominator – village enemy. Bigger challenge I think is not knowing where to go for help.

There are so many projects going on in Osun state but this rehabilitation project is highly commendable. I first read this detailed article last month about O’Rehab, the government apparently is working with five different psychiatry units in SW. They follow what they termed 4 Rs – retrieval, rehabilitation, repatriation and re-integration.

It is also good to know that patients are being helped with technical training to help integrate them into the society.

‘The Ilobu rehab center of the scheme trains healed patients on diverse vocational skills like soap making, bead making, tailoring, hair dressing and various crafts after they would have been treated”

Understanding of mental health is pretty bad, I know we have a long way to go, but state government taking active steps to help people off the streets is a massive step forward to get people talking about mental health, its prevalence and understanding of different types there are.

Here is a very good example to shows how mental health patients are treated even by their own family:

“We presently have the case of a 29-year-old female lawyer who after law school and service, developed a mental challenge and we picked her up, it was during rehabilitation that we discovered that she is the daughter of a renowned person in the society but we can’t mention names. The father showed up and said it was when her trouble became too enormous and she became a threat to them that he abandoned her to her helpless mother who took her to churches where she was chained and which aggravated her condition.”

I appreciate that this example is used, there are too much that is packed in that paragraph. It shows how even a family member can easily pushed their own kin out of ignorance.

I am also glad to read that the state has started to clamp down on what they called Unqualified Rehabilitation Homes In Osun. Apparently one was found along Iwo-Osogbo road a few days ago and they have confirmed the premises is unacceptable.

“… the Government has moved fast to evacuate the emaciated mentally challenged persons who were found to be in different deplorable states of health to its facilities at the state hospital and rehabilitation home while the State Police Command continues with its full investigations.” Osun.gov.ng

I am elated to read this. These unqualified rehabilitation homes is non other than faith homes and traditional healers. The condition people are exposed to is appalling, people are chained and heavily drugged.

This is progress that should make us all happy.

Here are the 5 hospitals that Osun state has partnered with to help treat people with mental health illness from Osun:

• Ladoke Akintola University of Technology teaching hospital, Ogbomosho
• Obafemi Awolowo University teaching hospital, Ile Ife
• Yaba Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos
• Aro Psychiatric Hospital in Abeokuta
• Government Hospital, Asubiaro Osogbo

It is always nice to read of good progress that touches hearts from home. More power to everyone working on this scheme.

Witch, sexism and christianity

Those who can make you believe absurdity can make you commit atrocities – Voltaire

With technology we get regular updates of this ancient display of cruelty melted on innocent people in our communities.

Around Christmas last year there was a photo of an elderly lady circulated around, she was thin and frail. She was found climbing an electricity pole and in no time people gathered and made up their stories about her – the easily believed one was that she got tangled up in electric cables as she was returning from a witch meeting, so turned back to human as the cables were too strong for her feather. Thankfully, there were enough sensible people in the crowd as the woman was helped down the electric pole.

Dementia is not widely understood/talked about in Nigeria. I have heard people saying it is àrùn àwon alákọ̀wé (disease of the educated ones) as if something in our DNA is changed just by being educated.

There are always hints to many madness in our society – publicly humiliated ones are often elderly, poor and more often than not, are women.

I knew just one man ever that was accused of being a wizard, he was feared, no one ever thought of hurting him, people can only gossip and never to his face. A  few years ago when I asked my dad why that chief was accused of being a wizard despite no evidence of him doing bad thing to anyone. My dad’s explanation shed more lights to the dark side of how women are perceived in our society. He told me that this man who inherited substantial farmland was a bully and selfish. He had four wives and more than a dozen children, he used his children to work the farm from very early age. OK. His sin? People could not understand how someone who had so much wealth refused to support a few children in school, who does that if not a wicked person? The most educated ones amongst the children only had primary school certificate at the time when others with less wealth are doing more for their children.

I grew up to know this man in his 70s and of course the rumour of being a wizard so I learned to look at him with side eye and never think anything bad because he was so powerful and capable of reading thoughts.

But why didn’t people stone this man because of unfounded rumours and yet the same group of people are eager to humiliate, shame and ready to kill a woman for similar wild imaginary tale?

Nigeria christianity and witch hunt:

Today I came across another incidence of an old lady, this one, according to Olofofo adugbo ‘neighbourhood gossip’ it happened at The apostolic Gospel Church somewhere in Lagos. The woman looks old and thin. She was on the floor rolling around to hide her face from the stones being thrown at her. Video clip too upsetting to post here.

The crowd were yelling:

Ki lo wa se nibi? Ta lo ran e wa? – What have you come to do here? Who sent you?

Here people calm one another down:

E duro na, e ni suuru – Wait, be patient.

E je ka gboro l’enu re – Let us hear words from her mouth.

This last line is telling. Because these church goers are somehow convinced that lack of electricity, jobs, fair distribution of wealth, security can now be blamed on this helpless old woman – they now talk to her as one would a child or worse, inferior. What a people.

Church accused witches get the worse treatment because ministers spend time reciting bible passages as if it was written yesterday. I like to remind myself that the Oyinbos that introduced christianity to us stopped the killing of women on the basis of rumours long time ago – ‘1716 was the last time a woman was hanged publicly in England and 1747 was the last time a woman was burned for being a witch anywhere in Europe’ (Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature).

This was possible for the Europeans due to substantial research that proves that anyone would say anything under pressure and when facing death. So why do we still allow our people to be brainwashed into humiliating innocent old people like this? I will never understand.

One way of ‘connecting the dots’ is to understand that we are not all perfect, and that old age has its many surprising sides – it is a whole new challenges for many of our elderly regardless of gender. Disease such as Dementia, a gradual deterioration in ability to think and reason like younger years is very common.

As Steven Pinker pointed out in his book that witch hunts is vulnerable to common sense – I totally agree with this sentiment, especially in a country like Nigeria with so many social and economic challenges, it is pointless trying to cite obvious objective examples.

All I can say is that since we will all grow old one day, a little act of kindness will go a long way to treating old women who come our ways, men too of course but I know we seldom torment old men.

We are no longer in isolated world, symptoms can be researched to educate one another rather than leaving all our fate on faith leaders.

Wealth creation and religion

This is nothing we haven’t heard before, but sometimes message sinks in better when we all see and hopefully points raised can help to reason together.

I strongly believe all of the factors mentioned in the video are spot on for Nigeria.

See what the narrator said on corruption and offshore accounts in 1:29. Yesterday another news was flying around about Switzerland releasing Abacha’s loot of $400m minus $79m fee charge. Nigerians were questioning Switzerland decision of charging that much fee. It is not easy to conceal stolen fund. Switzerland fee is called Owo omogo (fee for being ignorant). They didn’t come to Nigeria to snatch our money, it our own people who went out of their way to hide their loot.

If we are so hurt, we will all work together and choose better leaders in future.

2.40 is about religion – “the less people believe, the richer they stand the chance of being”

In Nigeria religious issue is slightly worse than many other countries because population is almost equally divided so now we have Christians working very hard to match up whatever the north is up to in Muslim world – they have won the fight over pilgrimage now. If the north decide to waste limited resources on pilgrimage so are we in south. We are even. Lucky for Mecca and Jerusalem, they’ve got committed tourists for life.

Another news going around is that Nigeria Christians (interestingly a senator from Plateau sponsored the bill) are working to pass a bill for their own christian court too so we can be on par with Sharia Law. I hope this one passes too.

It sounds insane, I know but this one may be the last straw that Nigerians need to finally realise religion and governance can not work together, not here in Nigeria at least.

Money ritual killers sentenced

Apart from jungle justice whereby perpetrators get dragged into the streets to have a taste of their own medicine, I can not recall anytime in recent times that a ritualist has ever been duly prosecuted in Nigeria.

I am elated for Jacob Ajayi’s family that at least they can have some sort of closure on his case. The story goes that Mr Ajayi’s body was found severed in a septic tank somewhere in Ilesa.

“…the headless body of the victim was later recovered from a septic tank with his genitals and other parts of his body missing.”

When it comes to human body rituals, body parts missing means they were removed for sacrifice purposes and in turn someone somewhere has been promised of enormous wealth due to this.

How does this even make any sense in 2016? Well, the murderers have their gullible clients, the sad part is that they often get away with killing unsuspecting victims, so the money making-medicine man often had nothing to loose.

The four criminals were all given 14 years jail time and death sentence by Osun State High Court presided by Justice Kudrat Akano – I didn’t even know death sentence is still a thing in the SW.

I hope in the coming days we have more information leading up to the death of Mr Ajayi.

According to Punch Newspaper, this case happened in 2012, it must have been such a long journey for the family to get justice in 2016. Maybe Ajay can finally rest in peace now.

Now I wonder if this case is related to the recent clip going round about money ritual as discovery of the ritual den was around the same time, nonetheless I think this is a great development to show people killing innocent humans for money is criminal. The clip shows how these human parts money ritual works, often in an isolated piece of land to avoid attention.

I hope Osun State will continue to oust these criminals within.

Against child bride

Sonita Alizadeh’s music video is very powerful and inspiring, makes me think there is hope in the horizon for victims of child bride. Her life’s story is similar to millions of Nigerian girls sold into child marriage. Through the help of her supportive friends, she escaped and now using her music to share her story so other girls can seek help.

I especially like that Sonita’s music is in her local language so the message can out as intended.

Who knows, maybe enough people in northern Nigeria will see this to realise escapees can not be bullied into silence for ever. Eventually, young girls susceptible to this tradition will learn and rebel, I only hope it is sooner than later.

 

Gender and Equal Opportunity Bill

Earlier this year, Nigeria senators tossed out the proposed bill that was put together by well-meaning Nigerians on the ground that the bill was not in line with Nigeria culture/religion. Yesterday and today, I learnt that the bill did not pass the second reading. From what I read we have a document with significant edits to the one that was presented in March this year. gender_and_equal_opportunities_bill_national. 

Edits to the original proposed bill means that section 19 of the original document about moving the age of marriage to 18 years old so that both parties involved in a relationship are mature enough to consent to the union is now out of the window.

To that I say; only last week was Alhaji Dangote soliciting for international help to feed the internally displaced people in the northeast. Amongst many things he spoke about was the recent 9 year old girl marriage event he witnessed. Aftermaths of childbride have never being the problem of the north alone, it is all of our problem,

Here is where I am hoping our traditional leaders in the south can pull their weights and  lend voices to important issue.

There are so many things going on in Nigeria that at times when we take a step forward, somehow the leaders tend to find a way to drag some topics that makes one feel we are taking 10 steps backwards.

Here is a new one for today, and reason I hope Nigeria women home and diaspora need to get involved in whatever way that we can to stop NASS as they seem not to realise this is insanity.

As it stands now, my children have Nigeria citizenship because I am a Nigerian, being a woman did not stop that however, if the edited GEOBill got passed, Nigeria women married to non Nigerians will no longer be able to apply for citizenship through their mother.

Why is this new addition?

A few years ago a friend of mine from Senegal shared her story of fighting against similar law in Senegalese constitution that prohibits children having citizenship through mothers. They collected lots of signatures with many influential progressive citizens lending their voices, in the end, Senegalese government did the right thing and as of September 2014, children can claim citizenship from their mother. If we were to cite religion for this new addition – Senegal is 94% Muslim, yet they see the light.

It is shameful enough that in 2016 we are stuck in the past on gender equality issues but to think that the Senate are debating on stripping women of the little human rights should really bother every Nigerian.