Africa’s first Nobel Leareate, Professor Wole Soyinka on Friday, June 12, 2015 advised President Muhammadu Buhari against signing a bill sponsored by former Zamfara State Governor and current Senator, Ahmed Sani Yerima, authorizing the marriage of children.
Speaking via a statement issued to mark the commemoration of June 12, Soyinka noted that the version of the Child Rights Bill pushed by the APC Senator was a “regrettable” version aimed at empowering the “clique of paedophiles” and which was quite different from the one initially sponsored by Senator Chris Anyanwu.
He said: “All you need do is ‘marry’ even a six-year old under any local laws, and do whatever you want with her. Through marriage, she is already an ‘adult’. Her ‘defiler’ is now fully protected by this law. She is not. The current bill is the ancient story of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. End of story? Yerima and his fellow perverts are having the last laugh.
“President Buhari – and here I make my first imposition on his presidency – should never place his assent on such a nefarious distraction. Its implications doom the victim to afflictions that churn the stomach even to think of the human toll.”
