Ese’s abduction, a criminal act not religious – Soyinka, Falana...

At a press conference on Sunday in Lagos, Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka and human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria berated individuals masking the abduction of 14-year-old Ese Oruru with religion.said the matter was purely criminal and not religious, adding that the perpetrator should be prosecuted so the victim could get justice.
Ese was abducted by Yunusa Dahiru, aka Yellow, a regular customer at her mother’s food shop, last year August, from Bayelsa and taken to Kano, where her parents said she was forced into child marriage having been converted to Islam without her consent.



Soyinka specifically faulted the Director, Muslim Rights Concern and Professor of Islamic Eschatology, Ishaq Akintola who claimed that Islam has no age barrier for marriage.

Wole Soyinka also said Akintola, like others hiding the case under religion, should desist from using literature to justify their claims, noting that the don likened the matter to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
According to him, the society failed Ese and government must protect other underage female from child marriages like the one conducted with a teenager by a former governor now senator.

On his part, Falana said Yunusa did not only violate Ese’s rights to religion as enshrined in Section 38 of the Constitution but also broke the laws contained in the Child Rights Act which Nigeria is a signatory.
The lawyer added that the likes of Yerima and Akintola would not allow their teenage daughters go into child marriage.