Emir Sanusi while speaking noted that domestic violence and wife battery form 45 percent of cases in nine Shari’a courts of Kano in the past five years
By Kehinde Okeowo
The Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, has said incidences where men hit their wives are now rampant, adding that he has instructed his daughters to retaliate whenever their husbands slap them.
He made this known at the National Dialogue Conference on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) prevention from an Islamic perspective.
Speaking at the event themed: ‘Islamic Teachings and Community Collaboration for Ending Gender-Based Violence.’, the Emir disclosed that domestic violence and wife battery form 45 percent of cases in nine Shari’a courts of Kano in the past five years.
Addressing participants at the event, Emir Sanusi said: “You can take that verse and say that as a husband, I’ve been given this permission to beat my wife light. And nobody will deny that, nobody will say it is haram if you comply with all the rules. But if you live in a society in which those rules are never applied, nobody who is angry remembers to look for a chewing stick or a handkerchief.
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“They just slap these women and punch them and kick them and beat them. I just wrote a doctorate thesis on family law, and I researched nine Shari’a courts in Kano. 41% of the cases over a five-year period had to do with maintenance. 26 per cent had to do with harm. And out of those, 45 per cent were cases of wife beating, or domestic violence. And when we go to the content analysis, not one case of wife beating was light beating.
“It just does not make sense. Now I said it before, and I know I’ve been attacked for it, and I’ll continue saying it. When my daughters are getting married, I say to them, if your husband slaps you, and you come home and tell me my husband slapped me, without slapping him back first, I will slap you myself because I did not send my daughter to marry somebody so he can slap her. If you do not like her, send her back to me. But don’t beat her.”
However, after his comment made the rounds on social media, it elicited mixed reactions from Nigerians.
While some netizens agreed with the Emir, saying husbands have no right to hit their wives, others frowned at his comment, saying it is alien to Nigeria’s culture.
