In what could pass as an ‘April Fool’s Day’ prank, activists posted a memo on Facebook allegedly from the Eritrean government asking men to marry at least two wives due to an acute shortage of men occasioned by causalities during the civil war with Ethiopia.
A copy of a scanned decision of the Grand Mufti surfaced on the social media site on Thursday last week and showed the State of Eritrea calling for all men in the country to marry at least two wives and the government assuring that it will pay for the marriage ceremonies and houses.
The activists translate it thus, “Based on the law of God in polygamy, and given the circumstances in which the country is experiencing in terms of men shortage, the Eritrean department of Religious Affairs has decided on the following.”
First that every man shall marry at least two women and the man who refuses to do so shall be subjected to life imprisonment with hard labour.
“The woman who tries to prevent her husband from marrying another wife shall be punished to life imprisonment,” allege the activists in their translation.
The Standard could not immediately authenticate the document nor the translation and it was not clear why the statement was not in the other two national languages, Tigrinya and Tigre.
The May 1998 to June 2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian war saw 150,000 soldiers killed from either sides but having a bigger impact on male population in the tiny Eritrea nation who were then just 4million people in total.
The memo is yet to be confirmed as authentic communication from the Eritrean government with certain faults such as failure of translation in official national languages, Tigrinya and Tigre.
Instances of polygamy in many African countries have dropped significantly mainly due to increased urbanization, spread of Christianity and higher literacy levels. There are however still higher cases of multiple wives in Muslim communities across the continent.
editor@ugchristiannews.com
NT Photo/Eritrean girls
