My take on the Child Not Bride Movement

A few days ago, I signed a petition online [Change.org] to stop the marriage of underage girls in Nigeria. Just like most of you, I didn't read what I was signing against. I didn't know the details of this law, I only went with what I saw/read on facebook, twitter, bbm etc. So I went researching on this topic, just to become fully aware of this situation. Then I came across this article online and it answered a lot of my questions. Read the article after the cut......

Yesterday, several people in my social media networks sent me links to a couple of change.org petitions which urged the UN and other Human Rights Organisations to stop the Senate, the House of Representative and the Nigerian government, from altering the constitution in a way that would allow for child marriage. By then, I had seen the headlines on some blogs, and was fulminating inside, thinking of writing a scathing post, or something.

I went over to sign one of the petitions, and there was a link to a Premium Times article that initially reported the constitutional amendments currently being voted on by the Senate. These parts of the report below caught my attention immediately.

Section 29, allows citizens who are of age to renounce Nigerian citizenship if they wish. For that purpose, the constitution says, 18-year-olds and above shall be considered to be “of age”.
In addition, a woman or girl who is married, shall also be considered to be of age-a section that could be interpreted to imply that even a day old child, once married, shall be considered to be of age.
The Senate’s amendment committee had proposed that definition be deleted.

According to this article we are talking about a woman's right to renounce her citizenship of Nigeria, and at what age and marital status. This is faaarrr from what the social media has turned it into. The article goes on to talk about the details of "Section 29 of the constitution"; you can read the whole article HERE .

This article made me realize how fast information, whether wrong or right, travels through the internet. What we should be fighting against is making the constitution more woman and child friendly. We also need to be fighting against the law that does not allow the National House of Assembly to make laws covering Muslim women and children.