Lamido Sanusi, Kano's 'progressive fraud', takes aim at child marriage in Nigeria

Lamido Sanusi II, Nigeria’s second highest Islamic authority, is on a mission to end child marriage.

As the emir of Kano in northern Nigeria, one of 13 states where there is no minimum age for marriage, he is well placed to understand the issue. Yet Sanusi, a hugely symbolic religious figure, is at pains to point out that it is a social rather than scriptural problem.

“Every day you’re dealing with young girls who are withdrawn from school and are married, often into abusive or vulnerable situations, then divorced and left with nothing,” says Sanusi.

“There is an idea in the north [of Nigeria] that child marriage is Islamic, but it is not an article of faith, it is something societies decide for themselves.”

Although the legal age for marriage is 18, the Nigerian constitution allows states to set their own limits. This gives child marriage a legal and cultural foothold in regions across the country, including Kano and other areas of the largely Muslim north.

According to Girls Not Brides, a coalition of more than 700 organisations working to end early and forced marriage, 76% of girls in Nigeria’s north-west are married before they turn 18.

The UN Population Fund is working with the government to end child marriage by 2030. In Kano, it is specifically working with the state government and, significantly, the Kano emirate council, to set a legal age limit.

Sanusi has proposed setting the legal age at 17, or younger provided consent is given by a judge. But his views have ruffled feathers in the conservative region, not only among local clerics who believe any age restriction on marriage is unacceptable, but also among campaigners, who want an outright ban on marriage before the age of 18.

“What I’m proposing is a ‘third-eye’,” Sanusi explains. “Our approach has been to offer reforms that can pass, because, if you say you are outlawing child marriage completely, they [the religious establishment] will respond that you can’t prohibit what has not been prohibited in Islamic law. But you can say it needs to be regulated.”

Zubaida Abubakar, a UN Population Fund programme analyst for adolescent sexual and reproductive health, feels Sanusi’s plan is “not ideal”, but recognises the challenges he faces.

“We’re still working to end child marriage, but at the same time we recognise his campaign is a huge step forward from two years ago,” says Abubakar. “When we had this discussion then, people were saying the age should be 13.”

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