An Islamic cleric, Dr Ridwanullahi Olagunju, has called on parents to actively involve in choosing spouses for their wards in order to prevent rising cases of divorce in the country.
Olagunju gave the advice on Saturday at a weekly Ramadan Lecture, organised by the Women’s Forum of the Al-Habibiyah Islamic Society in Abuja.
The theme of the event was “The Role of Parents in Choosing/Suggesting Partners for their Children.”
The cleric said that Islam supported parental involvement in spouse selection, noting that regardless of children’s maturity or age, they were often less experienced than their parents in making such decisions.
“And that is why Islam has enjoined that parents should not sit down and look, while their children pick wives, pick husbands.
“They should be actively involved. They should try to search for them. They should try to evaluate the qualities in the proposed man.
“In all these, they should try to prioritise certain things such as piety, being religious, being loyal, being dedicated, being committed, so that at the end of the day, there would be no cases of divorce.
“God does not want divorce. And when you look at it around, divorce is getting high in Nigeria,” he said.
He said that based on study, the divorce rate as of 2023 was 2.8 per cent of the total number of marriages conducted in a year, noting that the figure was not encouraging.
“And the same thing is the tale when you travel abroad, especially when you get to Turkey, when you get to Iran, when you get to Malaysia, when you get to a place in the United States of America.
“You discover that a year they conduct many marriages, but before the close of the year, the same number of the marriages conducted or something close to it gets crashed. So that is not too good.
“So, when parents come in and take active roles, chances are that our children will be better counselled, and the end result will be better than what we are having. May God help us,” Olagunju said.
Also speaking, Hajiya Khadijah Gambo, who was also a guest lecturer, said marriage should be done for the sake of Allah.
Gambo said, “Essentially, what I think is that a lot of marriages are not done for the sake of Allah. It’s more for other considerations. And so, the end result will always be regret.
“But if we do it for the sake of Allah, we may make a mistake. But if the intention is good, Allah will guide us towards finding a solution to our problems.
“And again, very important for us to understand that coexisting with a man or a woman who is never you, who got a different orientation, coming from a different home, is not going to be easy at all.
“So, patience, tolerance, appreciation, and forgiveness must be there. The maturity to also understand that no two people can be the same, I think is very important.
“But by and large, even the Quran tells us to dwell more in looking at the goods that the other has done than the bad that the person has done.”
Also, Hajia Habiba Ahmed, Director of Endowment and Empowerment of Al-Habibiyah Islamic Society said the programme targeted parents on their roles towards guiding their wards to choose righteous spouses.
Ahmed said, “We have a lot of programmes in Al-Habibiyah and the Women’s Forum is one of such forums.
“So, every Ramadan, we take just a day in a week to have a discussion, women to women. And that is why we target women for women because most of our lecturers are women.
“At times, when we have sensitive issues to discuss, we do call in men to put in their own weight,” she said.
(NAN)
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