In a village in northern Nigeria, teen wives gather on mats spread out in the dirt just outside the chief imam’s home. They talk about their initial reactions to getting married.

“I had no interest in it at the time. I was just doing my own thing. Marriage was not on my mind until when God wished it was time,” says 16-year-old Fadilah Bello. She’s the boldest of them, talking freely and coaxing on the others.

“Well, of course you would be nervous or scared. You cry on your way to your new home because you are leaving your parents and you don’t know where you will be taken to,” said Sahura Misbahu. She got married three years ago. She thinks she’s 15; she doesn’t know her husband’s age.

“Had it been I had a choice, they should have given me a year to graduate from school but since this was what the parents wanted, I had no other choice,” says the 15-year-old chief imam’s daughter, Aisha Ahmed.

Nigeria has the largest number of child brides in Africa, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund. The practice is most prevalent in the predominantly Muslim north where conservative Islamic groups staunchly resist efforts to criminalize child marriage. Most girls accept whether they want to or not, but times are changing.

“We are seeing more and more girls running away from child marriages,” says Hajia Rabi Salisu, the founder of Arrida Relief Foundation and owner of a children’s home in Kaduna.

She and other activists want states in the north to criminalize marriage before the age of 18. A prominent activist, Salisu says her advocacy has put her at loggerheads with Muslim groups and she regularly receives death threats.

“I sleep in a different home almost every night because my life is at stake simply for trying to protect the lives of children,” she told VOA.

Fellow runaways

Rahmatu Ibrahim and Naja’atu Abdullahi, both 14, didn’t know each other few months ago. But their similar circumstances brought them to Salisu’s children’s home.

“I was being forced into an arranged marriage,” said Rahmatu.  “That was why I ran away. I don’t love him and I don’t know him. I had never seen him before. A date was set and a day [before] the wedding, I ran away.”

Naja’atu, whose parents watched her leave, wants to focus on her education.

VOA met Sumayya Musa in another village in Kaduna State. A sprightly 18-year-old student, she has defied the expectations placed on her by the community.

“My father wanted me to get married when I was 13, but my mother said no, because she was in support of my decision to further my education,” she says. “People here in this village laugh at me because I am not yet married. They gossip and sometimes I used to cry. But the moment I remember the advantage of my studies, I stop crying.”

Nigerian lawmakers have been debating marriage customs for decades.  The federal 2003 Child Rights Act mandates that both parties be at least 18 to marry, but it’s left for states to ratify the act and most of the states in northern Nigeria have not.

Muslim rights groups have been meeting with northern state lawmakers to express their concerns.  Some activists propose a minimum age requirement of 15, but the idea offends Awwal Tesleem Shittu, a member of the Muslim Lawyers Association of Nigeria.

He says that according to Islam, a girl’s readiness for marriage cannot be determined by her age.

“A girl of 13 years old, if she is not physically okay, maybe she doesn’t have a sound mind, she could not comprehend, she could not differentiate between right and wrong, she is not fit for marriage. She is not ripe for marriage,” he says.  “A girl of nine years, if she is sound, she is physically okay, she can go in, because in Islam there is no barrier to that.”

The Quran specifies that girls can marry once they reach maturity, which some conservative scholars define as puberty, while other Muslim communities and scholars accept 18 as the age of maturity. 

Senator’s bride triggered movement

The #ChildNotBride hashtag began trending in Nigeria in 2013 after a senator and former governor, Ahmad Sani Yerima, was accused of marrying a 13-year-old. Yerima denied the accusation but declined to reveal the age of the girl in question. Yerima also supported a legal amendment to consider any married girl, regardless of age, an adult before the law.

The 2014 case of a 14-year-old girl in Kano who admitted to killing her 35-year-old husband with rat poison again brought child marriage under scrutiny. Police said the girl’s father forced her to wed. The murder charges were eventually dropped.

Rights activists say it is poverty, not religion, that drives parents to marry off their young daughters.

“They just want to take these girls off their hands as fast as possible,” said activist Mustapha Wakil, who notes that economically disadvantaged parents have been accepting unusually low dowries – as little as 3,000 naira, the equivalent of $8. Parents used to demand at least 40,000 naira, or $112.

Wakil is campaigning for his state of Yobe in northern Nigeria to pass the federal Child Rights Act because he says the current state statutes on marriage are confusing, in particular clauses differentiating betrothal and consummation.

In a village outside the Kaduna state capital, 14-year-old Basira Bello, is preparing for her wedding. She’s a shy one, but she managed to say that she’s excited because all of her friends are already married.

Soon, she’ll marry Salihu Amiru, about 20 years her senior.

“I do not want men to be looking at her and if I allow her to continue with school, men will be looking at her as she walks to school or even the men in the class. I can’t allow that,” he said.

He wants to have children as quickly as possible; he’s hoping to have many daughters.

As for the runaways, Rahmatu and Naja’atu, they just want to hold on to their childhoods a little while longer. They are attending school and hope their families will one day forgive them for running away.

This report was supported by Code for Africa, a data journalism initiative.
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Egyptians go to the polls next week in what is essentially a one-candidate election considered by critics to be a return of sorts to authoritarian rule, after a 2011 revolution that sparked loftier expectations for the region. But the bigger picture is that in the Middle East as a whole, democracy has largely failed to take hold.

From Morocco in the west to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates in the east, monarchies have proven more stable than places that experimented with government of the people.

Non-monarchies like Syria and Yemen, which before their wars did have functioning central governments, never made much of a pretense of democracy — not even in the half-hearted sense of communist East Germany calling itself a “Democratic Republic.”

And today many argue that with so little democratic tradition and so much illiteracy — in the case of Egypt, at least a quarter of the population — some places are just not ready. That may sound like an excuse but it does borrow something from the Greek philosopher Plato, who contended that the masses needed help from experts to run complex affairs.

Countries that tried fairly free balloting — like Iraq and Libya after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi — tended to find the effort mired in tribal and sectarian voting. That largely predetermines the result and diminishes democracy into something of a census.

Such cases tend to be further undermined by a tyranny of the majority: it is rare to find respect for the rights of minorities, ideological or ethnic. That makes them desperate, disdainful of democracy, and likely to be tyrannical should political tides reverse. That’s how the minority Sunnis of Iraq became vulnerable to the vicious appeal of the Islamic State group.

While the democratic record is dismal, the Middle East is hardly alone in what seems to be a global trend away from liberal democracy at a turbulent time.

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is following a model perfected by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, an equally illiberal leader who was re-elected this week after maneuvering his own chief opponent out of the running. El-Sissi has jailed opponents by the thousands — mostly Islamists — and, like Putin, placed security and the economy ahead of all else, delivering in those areas as best he can.

But el-Sissi insists that the real power rests with the people and boasts of an independent judiciary and parliament, claims disputed by rights groups. Under el-Sissi’s rule women’s representation in the acquiescent parliament and the Cabinet are at highs, Egypt has enacted important economic reforms, and he has also emerged as a strong global voice against Islamic militancy, advocating a moderate religious discourse.

Ironically, it is Egypt’s continuing claims to be democratic that earn it the criticism that openly despotic countries in the Arab world seem more nimbly able to avoid.

Here’s a look at some of those cases:

The Gulf

Freedom of assembly is prohibited throughout the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, where kings, sheikhs, emirs and sultans inherit their posts. Criticism of the ruling system is a punishable crime and unfettered access to state institutions is rare. Local media is largely state-run or state-linked. In all six countries, which are U.S. allies and major U.S. weapons purchasers, government ministers are appointed by the ruler. In Saudi Arabia, where the only elections held have been for local council seats, dozens of activists, writers, intellectuals and moderate clerics are imprisoned for offenses such as “disobeying the ruler.” Human rights experts have described the UAE’s judiciary as under the “de facto control” of the country’s executive branch — a common refrain throughout the Gulf. Bahrain, a small island-nation ruled by a Sunni monarchy, has crushed protests led by the country’s majority Shiite population and cracked down on the media.

Lebanon

With a parliamentary system and regular presidential elections, Lebanon has trappings of a democracy, but politics are dominated by former warlords and family dynasties that have long used the country’s sectarian-based power-sharing system to perpetuate corruption and nepotism, and the Hezbollah militia is very powerful. All senior government positions are allocated according to sect, including the head of state, who should be a Christian, the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the parliament speaker, a Shiite. The formula is based on outdated demographic data and does not account for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are denied citizenship and a vote. There hasn’t been a parliament election since 2009, and lawmakers have unconstitutionally extended their terms. Lebanon has also been letting press freedoms slide, summoning talk show hosts to court and sentencing an analyst to jail for critical comments about the army.

Jordan

Power rests with King Abdullah II who has the final say on policy issues, appointing and frequently reshuffling the Cabinet as a means of deflecting public frustration. Gerrymandering and the absence of political parties have rendered elections for the toothless parliament largely meaningless. The only significant organized opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been sidelined in recent years. Pressure after the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 to introduce democratic reforms has ebbed after the revolts turned violent in several countries, causing many to agree to fewer freedoms rather than risk a descent into chaos. Jordanian journalists are careful not to cross the royal family or security forces.

Iraq

Dysfunctional, dangerous and corrupt though it has been, Iraq is arguably more democratic than the regional norm. It has regular, competitive elections, but has been plagued by entrenched corruption and persistent instability that undermine its institutions. Iraq’s constitution — drafted in 2005 with deep American involvement after the U.S.-led invasion toppled long-time leader Saddam Hussein in 2003 — defines the country’s government as democratic. But governments are deeply divided along sectarian lines, resulting in gridlock. Millions of Iraqis were allowed to gather for anti-corruption protests in 2015, but three years earlier, protests held in the country’s Sunni heartland were brutally suppressed — and two years later, most of that area was taken over by Islamic State militants who ruled until their ouster last year. Iraq’s constitution ensures freedom of the press, but Iraq remains one of the world’s deadliest countries for journalists and many journalists self-censor, according to a study by Freedom House.

North Africa

The Arab Spring started in Tunisia with the ouster on Jan. 14, 2011, of the nation’s long-time autocratic president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia. Tunisia now grapples with Islamist extremists — who have killed dozens of foreign tourists in two major attacks — as well as an economy on the rails. But it is at least a budding democracy, the only one in the Maghreb region, where joblessness, especially among youth, poses a major threat of unrest. Algeria, which has had the same president since 1999, managed to keep Arab Spring unrest at bay, in part because the population lived through a decade of deadly violence in the 1990s battling Islamist extremists. And the kingdom of Morocco, known for its stability, goes through the motions of a democracy, but the real ruler is the monarch, Mohammed VI, and the invisible royal coterie known as the Makhzen.

The wider region

The non-Arab nations of the region offer their own examples of flawed democracies. Turkey has free elections but an increasingly illiberal system whose politicized security apparatus and judiciary has put many thousands of opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in jail. Iran has a supposedly free presidential vote — for the tiny number of candidates who are approved by unelected clerics whose heavy-handed rule is in fact supreme. Israel has an impressively functioning democracy, though not for the millions of Palestinians it has occupied for over 50 years — and the nationalist government of Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to crack down on human rights groups and has lately also been targeting the media, as well as law enforcement, as tools of enemy “elites.”

 
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Long before its controversial roles in the 2016 Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election, Cambridge Analytica influenced elections in Africa.

The data mining company, under fire for its alleged use of 50 million Facebook accounts to shape campaign messages for then-candidate Donald Trump, also played a role in elections in Kenya and Nigeria, according to new reports.

The company’s first involvement in Africa dates to the general election in South Africa in 1994. That election marked the end of the apartheid era and the assent of Nelson Mandela to the presidency.

Widespread violence and deep-seated societal fractures had put the elections in jeopardy, Martin Plaut, a journalist and senior research fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies, told VOA.

“The 1994 election in South Africa was on an absolute knife’s edge. There was no reason to believe that it would go ahead without severe loss of life,” Plaut said.

The Inkatha Freedom Party, which represented the Zulu population — South Africa’s largest ethnic group — had not reconciled with the African National Congress (ANC). Amid divisions that were stoked, in part, by the old apartheid regime, hundreds died ahead of the election, Plaut said.

A political party — unnamed, but most likely the ANC — hired Cambridge Analytica to mitigate election violence, according to the company’s website. Their exact role in the election hasn’t been independently verified, but the violence subsided during and after the historic vote for Mandela and the ANC.

Involvement in Kenya, Nigeria

More recently, Cambridge Analytica worked with Kenya’s ruling Jubilee Party ​— not to build consensus, but rather to exploit divisions to re-elect President Uhuru Kenyatta.

The firm designed a campaign strategy based on interviews with nearly 50,000 potential voters gathered over three months. Their work with the Jubilee Party had been widely suspected but unconfirmed.

But in an undercover video broadcast this week on Britain’s Channel 4 News, Cambridge Analytica executive Mark Turnbull boasted that the company and its parent, SCL Group, ran the Kenyatta campaign.

“We have rebranded the entire party twice, written the manifesto, done huge amounts of research, analysis, messaging. Then we’d write all the speeches and stage the whole thing. So, just about every element of his campaign,” Turnbull said.

Those elements included social media videos that played to the fears of the electorate, warning that a victory by opposition leader Raila Odinga would lead to disease, famine and terrorism.

Cambridge Analytica denied any involvement with the videos or negative campaigning in Kenya.

VOA reached out to both Cambridge Analytica in Washington and the SCL Group, but they did not respond to requests.

Similar allegations of malfeasance have emerged in Nigeria. The Guardian reported Wednesday that Israeli hackers provided Cambridge Analytica with President Muhammadu Buhari’s personal emails.

Buhari was running against incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, and a Nigerian billionaire paid Cambridge Analytica $2.8 million to dig up damaging information about Buhari as part of an attack campaign, The Guardian reported. The emails included information about Buhari’s health and medical records, a source told The Guardian.

Since assuming office, Buhari has taken extended medical leaves in London, because of an undisclosed illness.

Precise analysis

Data analysis companies such as Cambridge Analytica provide information to governments and political parties, Plaut said, to influence “people in the middle” — those with moderate views who can be persuaded to join a side through appeals to emotion.

These companies analyze precisely whom to target and craft messages that play on hopes and fears, not facts, according to Plaut.

Social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014, provide an in-depth view into people’s likes and dislikes — from which psychological profiles can be built and exploited to change behavior through tailored messaging.

Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Without Borders, a group that advocates for online freedom and privacy, told VOA’s French to Africa service that her organization has been warning about the dangers of letting companies like Facebook collect the personal data of billions of people around the world.

“Since 2010, we’ve been saying that countries with low-to-nil data protection are testing ground for worst practices by companies and governments,” Owono tweeted.

​The ANC, South Africa’s ruling political party since the end of apartheid, has used similar techniques through its own data mining, according to Plaut. Through billboards along the highways of Johannesburg and fake social media posts, they have invested millions of dollars in messages that advance their agenda, regardless of truth.

‘Open to manipulation’

African voters, Plaut said, “are as open to manipulation as any voter in the world.” They’re a sophisticated electorate, Plaut said, that knows politicians craft and distort messages to suit their needs. But knowledge doesn’t inoculate people against the effects of disinformation.

“Everybody is open to manipulation,” Plaut said.

In Kenya, political advertisements played to fears surrounding terrorist group Al-Shabab and disease outbreaks. Persuasive messages about safety and health influenced an unknown number of voters, but enough to make an impact, Plaut acknowledged.

African ties

The role of data mining in Africa hasn’t been confined to elections.

The SCL Group has extensive ties across Africa, with past projects spanning from Libya to Rwanda, and from South Sudan and Somalia all the way to Ghana, according to their website.

SCL says its mission is to be “the premier provider of data analytics and strategy for behavior change.” The kinds of behaviors they seek to influence shift, depending on their clients and partners — of whom there are many.

In Rwanda, SCL partnered with World Vision, a global Christian aid organization, to conduct research on community attitudes about nutrition and sanitation. In South Sudan, SCL worked with the United Nations Development Group to conduct a survey on the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Program.

SCL partnered with the Ghanaian Ministry of Health, along with a major British construction company, to research the country’s attitudes toward the health care system.

In Somalia, SCL researched the tenability of the nationwide Somtelcom telephone network. The group also interviewed nearly 3,000 Libyans to develop policy recommendations to help the government address instability countrywide.

VOA reached out to John Apea, who is listed on SCL’s website as its special adviser for SCL Ghana. Apea said he no longer works with SCL and would not provide additional information about the office’s operations in the country.

Safeguarding democracy

The growth of digital media across Africa will present new opportunities to engage in sophisticated campaigns to influence not just voters but also policymakers and governments.

The solution, according to Plaut, is international oversight.

“The African Union should be much more robust in insisting on its observers going to see elections and spending a good deal of time there, not just five minutes before the vote takes place,” Plaut said.

In-depth reports filed months in advance of elections will give the public the tools they need to combat propaganda with a transparent account of their governments’ efforts to ensure a free and fair process.

Plaut anticipates closer scrutiny of the democratic process will lead to pushback and complaints of interference. Nonetheless, the efforts are worth it, he said.

“The African Union, as the guardian of democracy in the continent, has a duty to go out there and really push for democracy throughout the continent,” Plaut said.
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Silicon Valley is less than 3% black, with an even smaller numbers of Africans. The race gap is actually much larger than the gender gap, and it’s growing. Join us for a live screening of “Beyond the Unicorn,” a VOA documentary about the issue, followed by a Q&A session from Silicon Valley, the capitol of the U.S. technology sector.
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Thousands of children in the troubled Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been used as combatants over the last two years amid conflict between local militia and government forces, according to the U.N. children’s fund. Even when the children leave the militia, the path forward is a rocky one. Anita Powell reports from Kananga, DRC.
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