Poor men to be legally barred from polygamy - Emir of Kano

Nigeria’s second most influential Muslim leader – the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II has disclosed that there will soon be a law which would stop men from taking more than one wife if they did not have the means to support them.

The Emir averred that for people in the largely Muslim north of Africa’s most populous country, there was a clear link between polygamy, poverty and terrorism, the reasons that necessitated the proposed law.

He said a sub-committee of scholars in the Kano palace had been working for over a year on the bill, which will be passed by the State Government into law.

Local media quotes the former governor of the central bank as saying:

“Those of us in the north have all seen the economic consequences of men who are not capable of maintaining one wife, marrying four. They end up producing 20 children, not educating them, leaving them on the streets, and they end up as thugs and terrorists.

“It is a big law which covers a whole range of issues from consent to marriage, to maintenance to divorce, to maintenance of children to inheritance. It will be the first time in Nigeria that a Muslim law on personal status will be codified,” he added.

He however stressed that there was nothing wrong with polygamy for as long as it was practiced properly adding that at all material moments women needed to be given the opportunity to thrive.

The powerful Muslim leader, who is next only to the Sultan of Sokoto in the country’s northwest was speaking over the weekend at the 50th anniversary of the death of a Nigerian ambassador, Ambassador Isa Wali – the then High Commissioner to Ghana – died on active duty on February 19, 1967.

The event was graced by the Vice-President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo and a former president of Nigeria, Yakubu Gowon.