HOW OUR LAW BANNED TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE IN NIGERIA
The ban to traditional marriage in Nigeria is provided in our laws. This ban is absolute. Violation of this ban is criminal according to the law.
This is contained in the Marriage Act of Nigeria:
Section 46:
Whoever contracts a marriage under the provisions of this Act, or any modification or re-enactment thereof, being at the time married in accordance with customary law to any person other than the person with whom such marriage is contracted, shall be liable to imprisonment for five years.
Section 47:
Whoever, having contracted marriage under this Act, or any modification or re-enactment thereof, or under any enactment repealed by this Act, during the continuance of such marriage contracts a marriage in accordance with customary law, shall be liable to imprisonment for five years.
It is therefore a felony punishable by five years imprisonment for a person to contract traditional marriage with the wife after marriage in the registry. This is as opposed to the other method of first contracting a traditional marriage before proceeding to the registry.
What this means is that if you must contract a traditional and church/registry marriages with the same man or woman, as many people are wont to do, then, you must first do the traditional marriage ceremony first.
Section 35:
Any person who is married under this Act, or whose marriage is declared by this Act to be valid, shall be incapable, during the continuance of such marriage, of contracting a valid marriage under customary law, but, save as aforesaid, nothing in this Act contained shall affect the validity of any marriage contracted under or in accordance with any customary law, or in any manner apply to marriages so contracted.
This section is specific that customary marriage succeeding statutory marriage is invalid, criminal, and in fact, no marriage at all. The earlier statutory marriage is what that exists between the couple to regulate their relationship.
The wisdom in this statutory order of procedure is to preserve the inherent intendment in the contraction of a statutory marriage. Statutory marriage is monogamous while traditional marriage is polygamous. The two can only coexist in the Nigerian laws if the traditional marriage comes first. If not, the subsequent customary marriage is a nullity.
©Mr Awkadigwe F. I.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment