Muhammad Sanusi, the Emir of Kano, on Thursday, February 20, 2020, said fathers who are too poor to cater to their children should beg for alms themselves and stop sending out their children as Almajiris.
He also recommended the arrest of any parent that sends out a child to beg for alms and called for enactment of laws by state governments to tackle injustices in marriages.
The Emir made the calls at a national conference by Future Assured Initiative, the non-governmental organization of Aisha Buhari, the First Lady, organized in collaboration with the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The emir said no law provides that a man should marry, have children and abandon his responsibility to them, adding that any man that was too poor to take care of his family should go out and beg himself and not send his children.
He said any man who is too poor to take care of his family should go out and beg himself, and not send his children.
On marital issues
According to the traditional ruler, “Every day, wives are complaining about their husbands who claim their rights but abandon their responsibilities of marriage; women being divorced with their husbands not taking care of the children and those children ending up on the streets, drugs, political thuggery, and violent extremism.
“No law that talks about consent in marriage, the rights of wives and husbands, domestic violence, rights of women divorced, the responsibilities of husbands under divorce situations.
“If a child is found on the streets, is the father that is responsible and can the state hold him accountable? Do you just marry and have children without any responsibilities?
“The reason Allah sends His Prophets is that there should be justice in this world. Justice in our relationship with our maker and in our relationship with our fellow human beings.”
Call on houses of assembly, police, courts to protect women
On justice for domestic abuse, Sanusi said: “Justice means that everyone is given his rights. If a man takes the privilege of being the head of the family, he takes the responsibilities of being the provider of the family.
You cannot take that privilege and a band the responsibilities. “Is it a fact that a father has the right to force his daughter into a loveless marriage?
That you have the right to batter your wife? Do you have the right to have children and push them to the streets to beg?
That when you divorce your wife, you ask her and her children to pack and go back to her father’s house and that is the end? “I can spend 100 years saying that it is wrong and un-Islamic for a man to beat his wife, but it is the governor and the state House of Assembly that should pass the law. It is the courts and the police that will make sure that the woman gets justice.
Scholars and emirs cannot do that. “So, the problem is these groups of human beings are those who will stand to answer Allah if there is no justice.
“The traditional and religious leaders have an obligation to ask for justice, but those with the political powers have an obligation to put in place the processes that will make sure that these justices are complied with,” Sanusi added.
Hattip to Vanguard
