ABUJA: A Nigerian Islamic group on Tuesday challenged a suit filed by a government agency against a senator, Ahmed Sani Yerima, under fire over his marriage to a 13-year-old Egyptian girl.
The Registered Trustees of Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria is seeking an order of the Federal High Court to restrain any government agency from interfering with the rights of the senator.
The Islamic body propagates Islamic laws and defends a strict interpretation of Sharia.
Defendants in the suit are the government-backed National Human Rights Commission, National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), and senate president and the speaker of the lower house of parliament.
Investigators of NAPTIP last May questioned Yerima, ex-governor of Muslim-dominated northwest Zamfara State, over the marriage.
Yerima, 49, who provided investigators with an affidavit of marriage from the Sharia Court of Appeal in Abuja, slammed the Nigerian Child Rights Act of 2003 which he said "must have been enacted in error".
The lawmaker said that he and his government had rejected the law — which forbids marriage to anyone under 18 — when he was governor between 1999 and 2007.
The Islamic body is seeking court declaration that Yerima’s rights to privacy and practice his religion have been violated.
"We are saying that the honorable senator, as a Nigerian, fundamentally as a Muslim, (that) the constitution guarantees him the right to practice his religion … the way and manner it is prescribed," the body’s lawyer, Etigwe Uwa, told journalists after a court session on Tuesday.
"His religion allows him to marry four wives without restriction on age," he said.
Uwa said the section of the Child Rights Act which forbids marriage of a girl under the age of 18 contravenes the country’s constitution which guarantees the citizen’s right to practice his religion.
Uwa said a Muslim has the liberty to "even marry a child in the womb of her mother."
Judge Adamu Bello adjourned the case till Oct. 21.
The Nigerian Senate has ordered a probe after the national rights watchdog.
Media reports have alleged Yerima paid a $100,000 dowry before marrying the girl.
He faces 500,000 naira ($3,270 dollars, €2,680) fine or five years jail term, or both on conviction, NAPTIP officials said.
