After months of legal motions, stop-and-start court proceedings and behind-the-scenes negotiating, prosecutors in northern Nigeria on Wednesday announced they would move to drop charges against Wasila Tasiu, a child bride who was accused of killing her newlywed husband and three others.
Tasiu was arrested in April of last year in her rural village in Nigeria’s northern Kano State. Her attorney said she confessed to police to putting rat poison in the meal of her husband, Umaru Sani, who shared it with three other people. All four died.
Tasiu and Sani had married 17 days earlier, but Tasiu said she didn’t love the man, and was forced into marriage by her father. All this happened when Tasiu was either 14, according to her family, or 11, according to Tasiu’s lawyer. (Official birth records are rare in much of rural northern Nigeria.)
The case sparked uproar within Nigeria and overseas, fueled in part by erroneous reports in some local and international news outlets saying that Tasiu could face death for her crimes (that was never true; Kano State law prohibits the death penalty for minors) — but it also presented a dilemma for authorities in Kano State.
On the one hand, Tasiu had confessed to killing four people. But she is also a young girl raised in a village with no paved roads and no school, where polygamy and child marriage are common. Her attorney says she was forced to marry — and sleep with — a man she didn’t love. She killed, yes, but she was also backed into a corner. Full story...
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Tasiu was arrested in April of last year in her rural village in Nigeria’s northern Kano State. Her attorney said she confessed to police to putting rat poison in the meal of her husband, Umaru Sani, who shared it with three other people. All four died.
Tasiu and Sani had married 17 days earlier, but Tasiu said she didn’t love the man, and was forced into marriage by her father. All this happened when Tasiu was either 14, according to her family, or 11, according to Tasiu’s lawyer. (Official birth records are rare in much of rural northern Nigeria.)
The case sparked uproar within Nigeria and overseas, fueled in part by erroneous reports in some local and international news outlets saying that Tasiu could face death for her crimes (that was never true; Kano State law prohibits the death penalty for minors) — but it also presented a dilemma for authorities in Kano State.
On the one hand, Tasiu had confessed to killing four people. But she is also a young girl raised in a village with no paved roads and no school, where polygamy and child marriage are common. Her attorney says she was forced to marry — and sleep with — a man she didn’t love. She killed, yes, but she was also backed into a corner. Full story...
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