Tuesday 27 August 2013

Maturity is subject to interpretation, not age-- Yerima



There is something definitely wrong with this Senator. Monday night on Channels TV, he openly argued that, the maturity of a child is determined by her parents.

So poor parents can give away their girl child at any age as long as it fits into their wallets plans and claims she is matured. Right!

And this is someone we deemed fit enough to represent Nigerians in the Senate? WoW!

So basically, he is saying the United Nations stipulated Age limit is wrong and his is right?

This is how WIKIPEDIA defined Age of Majority, Age of Consent and Marriageable Age.


Age of Majority
The age of majority is the threshold of adulthood as it is conceptualized (and recognized or declared) in law. It is the chronological moment when minors cease to legally be considered children and assume control over their persons, actions, and decisions, thereby terminating the legal control and legal responsibilities of their parents or guardian over and for them. Most countries set majority at 18. 

Age of majority should not be confused with the age of sexual consent, marriageable age,drinking age, driving age, voting age, etc., which all may sometimes be independent of, and set at a different age from, the age of majority.
Age of Consent.
The age of consent, a term which rarely actually appears in legal statues is the minimum age of a person with whom another person is permitted to engage in certain sexual activities though it sometimes defined as the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. The distinguishing aspect of the age of consent laws is that the person below the minimum age is regarded as the victim and their sex partner as the offender.
Age of consent laws vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and while most jurisdictions set the age of consent in the range 14 to 18, ages of consent as low as 12 and as high as 21 exist.
Marriageable Age
Marriageable age (or marriage age) is the age at which a person is allowed by law to marry, either as a right or subject to parental or other forms of consent. Age and other prerequisites to marriage vary between jurisdictions, but generally is set at eighteen. Most jurisdictions allow marriage at a slightly younger age with parental or judicial approval, and some also allow younger people to marry if one is pregnant. In many developing countries, the official age prescriptions stand as mere guidelines.
Fifty-five countries are signatories to the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages, which require them to specify a minimum marriage age by statute law‚ thus overriding customary, religious, and tribal laws. When the marriageable age under a law of a religious community is lower than that under the law of the land the state law prevails. However, some religious communities do not accept the supremacy of state law in this respect, which leads to child marriage or forced marriage. 
So what Yerima did with his child bride from Egypt was actually forced marriage. In Egypt he would have been arrested but sadly in Nigeria, he is been celebrated.

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