Borno, one of Nigeria's Sharia statesA Christian father in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, has lost custody of his three daughters to relatives of his deceased Muslim ex-wife.

Allabe Kaku Chibok’s Muslim wife divorced him in 1996 after he became a Christian.  He maintained custody of their three daughters, even when she re-married four years later.  After she died, however, his ex-wife’s family, with the aid of retired female police officer Hajiya Maryam Aliyu, abducted the girls and prevented him from seeing them, maintaining that his conversion to Christianity rendered him an unfit parent.

Ms Aliyu and the ex-wife’s family launched an action in a Sharia court to obtain legal custody of the daughters.

Aliyu admitted to the court that she abducted the girls in accordance with their mother’s death-bed wishes. In the hospital, Botul Grema had asked Aliyu that the Christian girls be taken away from their father so they would be raised as Muslims.

Aliyu also told the court that the Muslim community authorized her to take the girls into her custody, saying Islamic leaders “authorized me to come with the children to my house, and that they would come and receive them from me,” Aliyu testified.

Islamic lawyers called for Aliyu and the Muslim relatives of Chibok’s ex-wife to obtain custody of the three girls, as under Islamic law the girls were now Muslims and could not be allowed to live with their Christian father.

The court found in favour of the Muslim relatives, ruling that a non-Muslim father cannot have custody of children if the mother—or any of the deceased’s mother’s relatives—is Muslim.

Ironically, the home page of Borno state has as its banner: “Welcome to Borno, Nigeria—The Home of Peace!”

"The Home of Peace" – This acronym well fits Borno State as the State is known for its peaceful and hospitable nature despite its diverse differences in terms of history, religion, culture and languages amongst others. A brief on the State is all that is required to make a visitor to Borno State feel at home.

Yeah, right!  Peace to Muslims and dhimmis is more like it.

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