Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu has criticised the support shown to a Bida-based Islamic scholar married to 86 women.
Aliyu called for the implementation of the law to stop the practices in the state in order to protect the girl-child.
Aliyu condemned the defense put up for Mohammed Masaba by over 20 human rights groups, saying it was morally wrong and unjustified.
For marrying 86 women, the state government had engaged the cleric in a legal tussle.
“We can deceive ourselves but we cannot deceive God,” he said.
It would be remembered that when the story first came to light about Mohammed Bello Abubakar, also known as Mohammed Bello Masaba,(born 1924) that he had married 86 wives, and fathered 170 children it led to an uproar as Islamic scholars limit the number of wives a Muslim man can have to four wives, mandating they must be all treated equally. However, due to his extensive polygamy, and for being outspoken, he was charged under Sharia law and sent to prison.
But Bello responded that “If God permits me, I will marry more than 86 wives. A normal human being could not marry 86 – but I can only by the grace of God,” a defiant Bello Masaba told The Christian Science Monitor during a recent prison interview. “I married 86 women and there is peace in the house – if there is peace, how can this be wrong?”
Bello had worked as a teacher and Imam during his life. He lived with his family in an entire apartment block. Bello claims that he never pursued his wives, and claims that they sought him out due to his reputation as a healer. Many of his wives were much younger than he was, and a few were younger than some of his elder children. In interviews with Al Jazeera English, his wives claimed that he was a good husband and father. Although the Quran states that a man may marry four wives, Bello claimed that when the Quran set a law, it must also set a punishment for offenders, and no punishment was given for this particular offense. Despite this, Bello was arrested in late 2008 by Islamic authorities and tried before a Sharia court. He said that at his age, he was not too old to give service to his fatherland.