A delegate at the National Conference Senator Sa’idu Musa Dansadau has called for the establishment of a body that will protect female divorces and their children in northern Nigeria.

Dansadau, who lamented that the menace is mostly restricted to northern Muslims, wants state houses of assembly in predominantly Muslim northern states to set up the body he wants called Women and Children Islamic Rights Commission to ensure divorces get protection.

“The way and manner Muslims in the northern part of the country divorce their wives, I am not aware of any community anywhere in the world where wives are divorced with impunity like in the northern part of the country, especially in Hausa communities of the North.

“Where you find a person marrying a wife at the age of 16 to 18, after she had reached the age of 55 or 60 and after giving birth to six or eight children, the husband will just divorce her. That is just pathetic.

“The most unfortunate thing is that when they divorce these wives, they allow the wives to go with the children because they feel if the divorces go with the children, it is a relief to them, they don’t have to feed the children, they don’t have to pay for their school fees, medical bills and others.

“The wife that is being divorced doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to even feed the children, not to talk of paying their school fees and you know where you have a child without father, such a child will not have the moral training required of any child not to talk of a child acquiring the kind of education he should acquire at the time he should acquire it,” he said.

He urged northern states to even consider the Egyptian model where “a man must own his house before marrying a wife and upon divorce, must leave the house for the wife and children” including other responsibilities he must shoulder.

Credit: DAILY TRUST