At least 100 young women, including many orphans, have been married in separate ceremonies in Nigeria following widespread outrage in the country.
Friday’s event was initially planned to be a mass weddingbut the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, filed a court order to stop it, fearing that some girls were underage.
She reversed that decision after reaching an agreement with the Speaker of the Niger State Assembly, Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji, who supported mass marriage so that young women would have individual ceremonies.
“I did not intend to prevent marriage, but to ensure that girls were of marriageable age and not forced into it,” Kennedy-Ohanenye said in a statement.
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The BBC understands that a requirement for the ceremonies to proceed was that all women involved had to be of legal age, which is 18 in Nigeria.
Minister Kennedy-Ohanenye said she would provide all brides with scholarships and a monthly stipend for the first six months of marriage.
One of the brides’ parents, Mallama Amina Mariga, told the BBC that the mass wedding was organized to “celebrate the young women in a uniform way and give them a sense of togetherness.”
Ms. Mariga, like many of the families, received items for her daughter’s wedding and dowry payments from politicians, including a bed and a sewing machine.
Most of the young women have lost family members to attacks by armed bandits, who regularly attack civilians across the northwestern state of Niger.
Additional reporting by Nuruddeen Isyaku Daza
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