[In] the 45 years since it was first officially celebrated by the UN, [International Women’s Day] feels like it marks regress rather than progress when it comes to the African context…
Let’s talk child marriage …, another great “accomplishment” for women across Africa. Let’s look at the case of Nigerian senator Ahmad Sani Yerima, who married [as his fourth wife] a 13-year-old girl from Egypt in 2010 when he was 49 years of age, defending his actions based on his religion.
Yerima told the BBC at the time that the Muslim faith permitted this union, and that he would “not respect any law that contradicts it, and whoever wants to sanction me for that is free to do that.”