By Stephen Ojo
As part of social responsibility, the Speaker of the Niger State House of Assembly Rt Hon Abdulmalik Sarkindaji has accepted to sponsor the wedding of 100 girls from his Constituency in Mairiga Local Government Area of the State.
The Speaker explained that the girls are getting married to their long standing suitors.
“The beneficiaries are those whose parents don’t have the financial capacity to arrange their marriage including those whose parents have died”, he explained.
He said, “the decision to take responsibility to foot the bills for the marriage of these girls is borne of my sincere sympathy for the parents, some of whom are dead. Let me make it clear that almost all these girls have suitors but their parents have no resources to meet their marriage expenses as required by their customs and traditions”.
He explained that some of the beneficiaries are also daughters of gallant vigilantes who paid the supreme price in defence of the constituency against banditry, adding that, ” this other category are those that have lost their parents to insecurity in the area and have nobody to finance their wedding even though they have their suitors”.
The Speaker explained that
the girls are not being married out against their will neither are their husbands being forced on them, insisting that they already have suitors of their choice but only that the parents and relatives do not have the means to marry them out.
He said, “according to the tradition of our people, you cannot marry out a girl without accompanying her with some essential needs to make her comfortable in her husband house. Such items include room furnitures, such as bed, mattress, kitchen utensils among others.
These are things these girls are lacking. This is the responsibility I agrees to shoulder and relieved the parents of such burden”.
It was learnt that 170 girls have been captured for the intervention of the Speaker in this marriage sponsorship out of which 100 of them are in the first phase and that marriage ceremony would soon hold for the remaining girls.