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1 1 ([1975])

handle is hein.llcr/locaftd0001 and id is 1 raw text is: IBO CHILD XARRIAGE AM ILLEGITAC IN NIGRIA It has always been questionable whether an Ibo customary marriage contract entered into by thepparents of small children creates a valid marriage if the marriage was never consmated. Kasunmn and Salacuse imply that the traditional rule was that the contract to marry was not fulfilled until consummation of the marriage: Traditionally, as a general rule, a boy and girl were capable of marrying when they reached puberty. Among some groups e.g. the Ibo, marriages were, and in rare instances still are, contracted before the parties had reached this age. But in such cases, distinction must be made between the age of contracting the marriage and the age of consummation of the marriage. Normally, where a young girl was married before puberty, she would reside with her husband's parents until she had attained the proper stage of physical development to live with him._/ Another writer, Obi, stresses the conditional nature of a child marriage under traditional customary law: But though valid at its inception, this contract (or perhaps more accurately, this status) can be repudiated by the infant on attaining marriageable age-usually at puberty--or at any time thereafter.2/ Obi does not specifically answer the question as to whether a failure to consummate such a marriage within a reasonable time after puberty constituted a repudiation of the marriage. The petitioner, however, in paragraph 5 of his affidavit, states that he was unwilling 1/ A. Kasumu and J. Salacuse, Nigerian Family Law 76. 2/ S. Obi, Modern Family Law in Southern Nigeria 108.

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