Some officials of the Kano State Hisbah Board were among the persons who took wives during the first batch of the much publicized government planned mass wedding scheme for widows and divorcees in Kano yesterday.A total of 100 out of an estimated 1,000 women due for the mass wedding were married off by the Kano State government through the Hisbah board as part of its plans to bring down the astronomical number of widows and divorcees in the state.Daily Trust met about five grooms who are personnel of the Hisbah board who said they met their wives through the mass marriage scheme.One of them, Aminu Muhammed, told our reporter that the wife he married was also a Hisbah official. 'We resolved to marry among ourselves as members of the board because we realized that the mass marriage scheme is a noble programme. It has succeeded in shaming critics who thought that the programme could not be actualized', he said.The other Hisbah officials said they met their spouses when they came to obtain the marriage forms from the board's headquarters.A blind woman, Fadila Umar, who was also among the women that were married off, said she met her blind husband, Adamu Fadila, through the planned marriage. 'Today is the happiest day for all of us. We pray to the Almighty Allah to bless our union', she said.Investigations by Daily Trust revealed, however, that some of the couples who met through the government wedding scheme chose to get married privately instead of taking part in the group marriage because their parents were skeptical of the exercise.Lawisa Balarabe, a bride from Madobi Local Government Area of the state, told our reporter that she got married to her spouse at her parent's house just a day before the mass wedding.'Even though I met my husband through the government's marriage initiative, our parents decided to organize our marriage privately because they were skeptical of the procedures involved in the mass wedding,' she said.The Director General of the Hisbah board, Malam Abba Sa'idu Sufi, who spoke to Daily Trust, described the mass marriage as a 'highly successful exercise which has enjoyed the support of the government, members of the press and the media'.He said the government gave the board about N15 million to fund the activities of the mass wedding while famous business magnate and cleric Sheikh Isyaku Rabiu donated N1 million to the grooms to pay the dowries of their spouses which was pegged at N10,000 each.According to him, 'Out of the N15 million naira that was given by the government, the sum of N20,000 would be given to each of the 100 women for empowerment. The money would also be used to train women on skills acquisition in order to make them more self-reliant'.He said the first batch of the mass marriage has given the board an opportunity to assess the exercise and make some amendments so that subsequent batches of the programme could be more successfully implemented.Sufi also rested speculations that some of the grooms who did not attend the event at the mosque could have absconded at the last minute, saying that there was no such occurrence.'Most of the grooms that were unable to present themselves at the mosque were mostly delayed by traffic hold-ups while they were on their way to the event because they were coming from villages. But they had their marriages at the Hisbah headquarters moments after they arrived', he said.The mass wedding which began about 10:30am at the City Mosque near the Emir's palace within the Kano metropolis, recorded mammoth turnout of guests and spectators. Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero and the Secretary to the Kano State Government (SSG) attended the occasion.
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