{"id":15906,"date":"2018-09-21T21:22:33","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T21:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15906"},"modified":"2018-09-21T21:22:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T21:22:33","slug":"nigerias-young-daughters-are-sold-as-money-wives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15906","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria’s young daughters are sold as ‘money wives’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Becheve, Nigeria<\/strong>\u00a0– In this sleepy village, in the shadow of the Obudu mountains in Cross River state, an ancient tradition continues that child protection workers say condemns young girls to a life of slavery and sexual exploitation.<\/p>\n

Girls as young as five in southern\u00a0<\/span>Nigeria<\/a>\u00a0are still being sold to settle their parents’ debt as part of a tradition known as “money marriages”.<\/p>\n

Five-year-old Miracle was married for money a few weeks ago. She now lives with missionaries who say she’s proof money marriages are real.<\/p>\n

She was bought to replace her late teenage sister – who was herself was a replacement wife who couldn’t have a baby with her new owner.<\/p>\n

Another young girl, Rose Inyite, is lucky as she was rescued nine years ago.<\/p>\n

“I was about 10-years old when they gave me out. My father died when I was seven years. At 10 years, they took me out,” she said.<\/p>\n

However, Onomatopee Sunday Ichile, a community leader, said the practice has been banned.<\/p>\n

“That thing was there, but it stopped I think in the ’90s. And the money woman they are talking about, it’s not that people come out and say that I am looking for a woman to marry. It happens when someone falls sick, or one has a police case, then they borrow money. But the most prevalent is borrowing to pay tax,” Ichile said.<\/p>\n

Age-long tradition<\/h2>\n

The so-called money wives can face decades of slavery and sexual exploitation as they are passed from one owner to another.<\/p>\n

Missionary Richard Akonam has devoted his time to rescuing girls who’ve been sold off. In nine years, he has freed 21 young women.<\/p>\n

“The man goes to buy a girl outrightly. An uncle can even betrothe a girls before she is born. The man will wait even after 40 years. If the man dies, the brothers can still go to get their brother’s money wife,” Akonam said.<\/p>\n

Only a small number of the girls sold into slavery are rescued.<\/p>\n

Organisations working to support the victims say they’ve been threatened on many occasions and warned to stop their work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Becheve, Nigeria\u00a0– In this sleepy village, in the shadow of the Obudu mountains in Cross River state, an ancient tradition continues that child protection workers say condemns young girls to a life of slavery and sexual exploitation. Girls as young as five in southern\u00a0Nigeria\u00a0are still being sold to settle their parents’ debt as part of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}