Sabon Rami is a small community in Mashegu Local Government Area, Niger State. As it is usual with closely-knit communities, it has its own sets of laws and practices. However, a new law formulated by a group of people in the town is causing a lot of furore. The law, which is being enforced by a group called the HISBA group, mandates every intending couple, especially Muslim couples, to undergo HIV test and present the result to them for vetting and clearance before they can get married.
Failure to conduct the test results in the group’s annulment of the marriage rites while any couple who undergoes the test and tests positive to HIV is not allowed to get married. The group is in the habit of disrupting would-be couples’ marriages on the morning of the event. The new law, which began about a month ago, is not sitting well with most members of the community.
The law is contrary to the HIV and AIDS (Anti-Discrimination) Act 2014 of non-disclosure of HIV status. Part 2 section 8(1) of the Act states that “Prior to accessing any public or privately delivered services, employment or any other opportunity, no individual, institutions or bodies shall require a person to disclose his or her HIV status or the status of any other person by asking questions, orally or in writing, directly or indirectly.”
The new law in Sabon Rami has already claimed a victim in Mallam Yehuza and his fiancée, Hadiza, who were recently brutalised in the process of enforcing the new law. Mallam Yehuza had fixed the date for their wedding and guests were already seated when members of HISBA stormed the venue and stopped proceedings, ordering the couple to go for HIV test.
The man agreed and took his would-be wife to the primary health centre in the town where they were both tested. They were then handed their test results individually and assuring them that they could get married.
On getting home, they presented the results to the Imam who was to conduct the wedding. He looked through them and said the wedding should continue. The wedding was conducted and Yehuza took his wife home.
A week later, members of the HISBA came and demanded for the tests’ results, but Yehuza had travelled. Upon his arrival, the group returned and demanded that he should present the results to them. He declined their request. He was later invited to the house of the Chairman of HISBA, which he uses as his office, as the group has no legitimate office to carry out their activities.
On getting there, the HISBA Chairman told Yehuza that he should divorce his wife because he was told that he (Yehuza) was HIV-positive. Yehuza responded that he did not test positive to HIV because he was cleared by both the hospital and the Imam to marry his wife.
Believing it was the end of the matter, he left for home only to be served a letter from Sabon Rami Sharia Court, inviting him to appear before the judge. At the court, the judge ordered the couple to go to Kontagora General Hospital to conduct another test.
The HISBA members told Yehuza and his wife that if they wanted the case against them dropped, they should divorce. The wife, however, insisted that she would remain married to him, even if he was HIV-positive.
The next day, a prison warder attached to the judge, identified as Ibrahim, and the Hisba Chairman stormed his house, ordering him and his wife to go with them to Kontagora General Hospital for another test. Yehuza’s wife was reluctant in following them, and this made the prison warden to assault her physically before dragging her into a waiting vehicle. It took the intervention of some policemen to persuade Hadiza to go to Kontagora with them.
On getting to Kontagora General Hospital, Ibrahim assaulted her again, slapping and hitting her violently because she was reluctant to alight from the vehicle. However, they were unable to conduct the test the same day because it was late. After they left the hospital, Ibrahim pretended that he had something to drop at the Kontagora Prisons. On getting there, he took Hadiza into one of the cells and locked her up.
Narrating her ordeal in an interview with our correspondent, Hadiza said she was stripped naked by a female warder who also flogged her with horsewhip. She was also told that once she left the prison, she should divorce her husband and return to her father’s house. She said she was also threatened that she would face more punishments if she did not comply with the directive. She spent the night in the prison.
Hadiza said the next day, they were taken to the hospital with only her undies on as her clothes were torn while she was being beaten by the prison wardens. However, at the hospital, the medical personnel refused to carry out the test, saying that there is a law against forced testing for HIV, and even if the couple were tested, they would not be divulged to any third party.
The doctor in charge of ARV, Dr. Fati, told the HISBA that they had no right to know the HIV status of the couple, citing the HIV and AIDS Anti-Discrimination Act. She later tested the couple, counselled them and told them the result. They were, however, not given the result of the test.
But despite undergoing the test, Hadiza was returned to the prison where she spent another three days. It took the intervention of Dr Fati for Hadiza to be released.
After her release, the couple went back to Sabon Rami where the judge directed Hadiza to go back to her father’s house, while Yehuza was also ordered to divorce her, but both parties remained adamant and have continued to live together. But the HISBA members have spread the word around the community that Yehuza is HIV-positive, thus opening him up for stigmatisation.
The leader of Sabon Rami community, Chief Alhaji Abdullahi Hana, told our correspondent that when a group of people came to him and said they wanted to form HISBA, he reported the matter to “the authorities above” who told him that he should not interfere in their activities. “From then on, I have decided to hands off, since they told me it is not my concern,” he said.
He said he had decided since then to send anybody who brings reports about the activities of the group to him to the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), because he does not want to be seen as flaunting the orders of his superiors.
He denied knowledge of the law, saying that he was not aware of the existence of such law in the community.
Efforts made to speak with the Chairman of HISBA were not successful. But a member of the group, Sanusi Ahmed, who spoke with our correspondent, said that they decided to promulgate the law about a month ago because one of their members went to a town in Nasko, Magama Local Government Area of the state and was refused marriage unless he underwent an HIV test.
Explaining the procedures of the law, he said: “When a person is about to get married, we tell them to go and do the test and bring the results to us. The hospital will write out the result and give it to the couple, which would be given to us for vetting. It is after vetting the results that we give approval for the marriage or disapprove of it.”
Asked how many people had been found positive in the community, he said it was only one.
“It was after they had been married that a member of the staff of the hospital came to meet us and asked why we would allow an HIV-infected person to get married. That was when we took up the case.
“We had to take them to the Sharia Court to force them to divorce but they have refused. We are still on it.”
He said the law was promulgated to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS in the community; a reason Mr. Samalia Garba, Executive Director of the Amana Rural Peoples Health Advocacy Foundation, said was not tenable.
According to Garba, forcing people to undergo HIV test would make them to go underground, which would defeat the objective of the Federal Government of preventing the spread of the virus.
He said: “The activities of this group called HISBA are going to increase the spread of HIV, because once you start stigmatising people living with HIV, they will go underground and nobody will come out for testing.
“One of the important things NACA is doing is ensuring that HIV does not become a danger to somebody, and since there is no danger of stigmatisation, people can come out and seek treatment which would further prevent the spread of the virus.”
Garba said the activities of HISBA in Sabon Rami were against the HIV and AIDS Anti-Discrimination Act, adding that there is no law backing the setting up of HISBA in Niger State. He also cautioned that the activities of this group be put to check so they would not go overboard.
He said: “This law of HISBA is against the law of Nigeria. I have never heard of HISBA in Niger State, because there is no law that backs their formation. It is true that the state has many vigilance groups but HISBA is not among them.
“HISBA in Sabon Rami is just a group of people who came together and gave themselves a name and do things according to their whims and caprices. They have no laid down rules, neither do they have any constitution.
“I know that HISBA is being practised in Kano, but that one is backed by the law of the state, and it is set up to enforce things rightly for the community to benefit. But the one here has an ulterior motive.”
