Senator Ahmed Yerima of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, was, on Thursday, granted bail after pleading not guilty to a 19-count corruption charge relating to his alleged diversion of 1 billion Naira ($5 million) while he was governor of Zamfara state between 1999 and 2007. He was the first northern governor to introduce sharia law which eleven other northern states have emulated. Zamfara state is one of the poorest and most educationally backward of Nigeria's 36 states.
In 2010, Senator Yerima married a 13 year old Egyptian girl (both pictured above) after he had paid her parents $100,000. His current misadventures with the law courts seem to point to the origins of the funds for the dowry he paid. The fact that the 'marriage' took place in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja, where it is illegal to marry any female under 18 years of age, shows the contempt with which the states that have implemented sharia law in Nigeria regard the secular laws of the land. The federal laws are supposed to supersede the state laws, but the governors of the 'sharia states' continue to play the feared "freedom of religion" card, and in a country as fractured as Nigeria, it is wise to handle such a potentially explosive situation carefully. Nigeria has a chequered history of ethno-religious skirmishes and violence which has claimed thousands of innocent lives, and the Boko Haram insurgency can be classed as one of these.
While Senator Yerima's case may have been adjourned until the 1st of March, he still has not answered for his illegal marriage to a girl who is the same age as his grandchildren, his religion, and 'religious rights' be damned. He will of course see nothing wrong in embezzling funds meant for the education of children in his state since he believes that girls who should be in school should be married to old men, and provide an outlet (or inlet; forgive the tasteless pun) for their perverted sexual desires.
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