Governor slams rights groups over Bida polygamist

The Niger State governor, Babangida Aliyu, has criticised human rights groups for defending the Bida-based record polygamist, Alhaji Abubakar Masaba, who has 86 wives. He said the groups had failed to offer assistance to the women he had kept in the house.

Aliyu made the remark at the opening of the National Gender Dialogue in Minna, noting that the groups should have focused their attention on the plight of the women in Masaba’s house.

He said it was wrong for the groups to encourage Masaba to continue with the practice which, according to him, is contrary to Islamic tenets.

Aliyu said the groups should have criticised the act in the strongest terms because Islam did not allow anyone to marry more than four wives.

The governor said the conditions allowing Muslims to marry more than one wife were stringent enough, noting that polygamy had gone out of fashion because of technological development.

He said the rights of women should be protected so that they could perform better than they were doing at present.

Aliyu said that traditions and practices that made women objects of entertainment and ridicule should be discouraged as “women are not only equal but superior to men being the custodians of culture, language and learning”.

On his signing into law of the Child Rights Act, Aliyu said he did so to adequately protect the rights of children and women thereby ensuring sound education and good life for them.

The World Bank Country Director in Nigeria, Mrs Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, in an address said that Nigeria accounted for 40 per cent of maternal mortality in the world.

She called for efforts to reduce the rate in the general interest of the society.