One hundred couples tied the knot at a mass wedding at the main mosque in Nigeria's second-largest city on Tuesday, part of anIslamic police programme aimed at promoting stable families.
Hundreds of residents in the city of Kano, the largest in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, thronged outside the central mosque for the wedding of divorcees and widows attended by the city's traditional chief and government officials.
The brides were the first set of 1,000 divorcees and widows the sharia police, known as the Hisbah, screened for marriage to available suitors.
Grooms were dressed in flowing robes as a Hisbah official read off the names of the couples at the cavernous mosque.
According to local custom, brides usually do not attend the ceremony, but some were there on Tuesday, dressed in veils and wax-cloth dresses.
The wedding was a product of a Hisbah programme seeking to match divorced and widowed women looking to re-marry with available men.
It aims to address what officials say is a high divorce rate as well as to provide a stable home environment for children.
Part of the goal is to reduce unrest in Kano, which has been hit by deadly violence blamed on Islamist group Boko Haram. Analysts say frustrated youths have helped fill the ranks of the Islamists.
Women who volunteered for the programme included those left in difficult circumstances after the death of their husbands or a divorce in a region where arranged marriages are common.
The Hisbah paid the 10,000 naira ($63) dowry for grooms and provided the brides with furniture and kitchen wares, as well as 15,000 naira ($95) to enable them to start small businesses such as tailoring or food preparation, Daurawa said.
Sources:
Nigeria '70Gulf Times
ganabc
BBC News
Yahoo! News South Africa
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