Senate will revisit child marriage –Lawmaker

[Mirror]

The Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women and Youths, Senator Helen Esuene, has promised that the National Assembly would soon revisit the child marriage issue.

She said: "On our own side here, we are still looking at the laws and we will still revisit it in good time. I want to assure my sisters out there that we are doing everything within our ability to protect womanhood, the integrity of womanhood and the welfare of womanhood.

"We are one of them. We wear the shoes; we know where it pinches. Anything we can do to protect the women, the mothers of tomorrow, we will do it and we will continue to do it.

They should not lose faith; they should just bear with us." Esuene's assurance, intended to douse the tension generated by the controversy, came after a similar pledge by the Senate President, David Mark, when he met with representatives of the Gender and Constitution Reform Network, GECORN, last week at the National Assembly.

Esuene, who is representing Akwa Ibom South in the Upper Chamber, said in an interview with our correspondent that the issue was grossly misunderstood by Nigerians. The lawmaker said the Senate did not vote on the issue of early marriage but renunciation of citizenship.

She said: "That issue is most unfortunate; it is a very sad issue. It is a simple issue that has been misunderstood and blown completely out of proportion.

"The Senate has been taken to the cleaners over a week now in the social media, on the internet, individuals have been thoroughly abused and I feel that the facts have not been properly understood." According to her, the offending Section 29(4)(b) of the constitution, which the Senate tried to expunge, merely deals with renunciation of Nigerian citizenship.

The said Section 29(4)(b) reads that: "Any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age to be able to renounce her citizenship." "At the committee level, we, the women, thought that this is discriminatory of our gender and said, that should be expunged; it is either you leave it as any married person, it should not be specific to woman," Esuene said.

She added: "So, the committee in its wisdom, decided to expunge it and just leave it as Section 29 4(a).

National Mirror