14 Year Old Child Bride Facing Death Penalty for Murdering Husband
14-year- old Wasilat Tasi’u is on trial for the murder of her 35-year-old husband. Nigerian teen was married to a man that she didn’t love. According to Zubeida Nagee, a women’s rights activist in Kano, “She protested but her parents forced her to marry him.” From a poor rural family, Wasilat is accused of murdering her husband, Umar Sani, by lacing his food with rat poison. Forced marriages and child brides common in the poverty-stricken northern Nigeria region. Her case calls into question the legality of trying a teenager for murder under criminal law and the rights of child brides….
Kidnapped School Girls in Nigeria Forced to Marry Extremists
Scores of girls and young women kidnapped from a secondary school in Nigeria by Boko Haram militants, are being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors, a civic organization reported Wednesday. The armed men snatched more than 280 schoolgirls, between the ages of 16 and 18, in the north-eastern Nigerian village of Chibok. Abductors claimed two of the girls have died from snake bites. A Borno state community leader told The Associated Press that the Boko Haram terrorist network is negotiating over the students’ fate and is demanding an unspecified ransom for their release. Nigerian Federal Senator Ahmad Zanna said…
Islamic Militants Set Children on Fire in Nigeria
Armed Islamic militants have killed 29 students and an English teacher in an attack on a boarding school before dawn Saturday, in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria’s embattled northeast. Militants doused a dormitory in fuel and lighting it ablaze as students slept, survivors said. The attack thought to be conducted by members of the Boko Haram sect, whose name means “’Western education is sacrilege”. Boko Haram which controls an area 143 miles away in Maiduguri city, capital of neighboring Borno state, has been behind scores of attacks on schools in the past year. Survivors being treated for…
Nigerian Farmers vs. Royal Dutch Shell
“The scale of the pollution is enormous: twice as much oil has been spilled in Nigeria than was in the Gulf of Mexico. Only there (Nigeria) it’s never been cleaned up.” – Friends of the Earth Netherlands spokesman, Geert Ritsema The headlines on January 30 were somewhat ominous: Dutch court rejects claims made by Nigerian farmers. Court sides with Royal Dutch Shell. Nigerian farmers lose bid to hold Shell accountable. But why? In a world where headlines sell, isn’t the sexier story “Nigerian farmer scores victory against oil giant in landmark environmental suit”? Because that’s what happened. In 2008, four…
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