Married ?

[jandajoy]

Nigerian advises against 86 wives
By Andrew Walker
BBC News, Bida, Nigeria




Nigerian Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, has advised other men not to follow his example and marry 86 women.
The former teacher and Muslim preacher, who lives in Niger State with his wives and at least 170 children, says he is able to cope only with the help of God.
"A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them," he told the BBC.
He says his wives have sought him out because of his reputation as a healer.
"I don't go looking for them, they come to me. I will consider the fact that God has asked me to do it and I will just marry them."
But such claims have alienated the Islamic authorities in Nigeria, who have branded his family a cult.

When you marry a man with 86 wives you know he knows how to look after them
Wife Ganiat Bello Abubakar

Most Muslim scholars agree that a man is allowed to have four wives, as long as he can treat them equally.
But Mr Bello Abubakar says there is no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.
"To my understanding the Koran does not place a limit and it is up to what your own power, your own endowment and ability allows," he says.
"God did not say what the punishment should be for a man who has more than four wives, but he was specific about the punishment for fornication and adultery."
'Order from God'
As Mr Bello Abubakar emerged from his compound to speak to the BBC, his wives and children broke out into a praise song.


Most of his wives are less than a quarter of his age - and many are younger than some of his own children.
The wives the BBC spoke to say they met Mr Bello Abubakar when they went to him to seek help for various illnesses, which they say he cured.
"As soon as I met him the headache was gone," says Sharifat Bello Abubakar, who was 25 at the time and Mr Bello Abubakar 74.
"God told me it was time to be his wife. Praise be to God I am his wife now."
Ganiat Mohammed Bello has been married to the man everyone calls "Baba" for 20 years.
When she was in secondary school her mother took her for a consultation with Mr Bello Abubakar and he proposed afterwards.
"I said I couldn't marry an older man, but he said it was directly an order from God," she says.
She married another man but they divorced and she returned to Mr Bello Abubakar.
"I am now the happiest woman on earth. When you marry a man with 86 wives you know he knows how to look after them," she said.
No work
Mr Bello Abubakar and his wives do not work and he has no visible means of supporting such a large family.


He refuses to say how he makes enough money to pay for the huge cost of feeding and clothing so many people.
Every mealtime they cook three 12kg bags of rice which all adds up to $915 (£457) every day.
"It's all from God," he says.
Other residents of Bida, the village where he lives in the northern Nigerian state, say they do not know how he supports the family.
According to one of his wives, Mr Bello Abubakar sometimes asks his children to go and beg for 200 naira ($1.69, £0.87), which if they all did so would bring in about $290 (£149).
Most of his wives live in a squalid, unfinished house in Bida; others live in his house in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.
He refuses to allow any of his family or other devotees to take medicine and says he does not believe that malaria exists.

They were sick and we told God and God said their time has come
Wife Hafsat Bello Abubakar

"As you sit here if you have any illness I can see it and just remove it," he says.
But not everyone can be cured and one of his wives, Hafsat Bello Mohammed, says two of her children have died.
"They were sick and we told God and God said their time has come."
She says that most of the wives see Mr Bello Abubakar as next in line from the Prophet Muhammad.
Indeed, he claims the Prophet Muhammad speaks to him personally and gives detailed descriptions of his experiences.
It is a serious claim for a Muslim to make. "This is heresy, he is a heretic," says Ustaz Abubakar Siddique, an imam of Abuja's Central Mosque.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian advises against 86 wives

Published: 2008/08/08 0747 GMT

[meow]

Damn, you beat me to it ! I jest saw this story a few minutes ago and I thought : 'This needs the attention of Teak Door'.

Great minds think alike.

[jandajoy]

I thought it was pretty wacky.

What a daft old bugger.

[good2bhappy]

I can see a few Thai men admiring this guy.
his philosophy of having as many wives as you can take care of would be given the seal of aproval by some

[BalconiesR4drinkinon]

[buriramboy]

Can't be much fun for the women as if he treats them all equally, each one is only going to get poked about 4 times a year.

[bkkandrew]

"As soon as I met him the headache was gone," says Sharifat Bello Abubakar, who was 25 at the time and Mr Bello Abubakar 74.

I'll say!

[tsicar]

Can't be much fun for the women as if he treats them all equally, each one is only going to get poked about 4 times a year.

perhaps,
but HE is gonna get laid one hell of a lot more times than that!
by my calculations, though, if he knobs only one of them per night, and only one every morning, let's see now.. anybody got a calculator?
think i am gonna convert to islam soon!

[oldgit]

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

With this wife you can eat her when you are fed up being married to her.

[Marmite the Dog]

he is able to cope only with the help of God.

Retard.

[Rattanaburi]

The guy is just an asshole and now he has added another 170 assholes to Nigeria. Go Nigeria the capitol of crime and ignorance! I'm sure Allah is proud of him.

[jandajoy]

Nigerian man to divorce 82 wives
A Nigerian religious leader with 86 wives has accepted an Islamic decree ordering him to divorce all but four of them, local authorities say.
A spokesman for the emir of Bida told the BBC that Mohammadu Bello Abubakar, 84, agreed on Saturday to comply with the decree.
Last week one of Nigeria's top Islamic bodies, the Jamatu Nasril Islam, sentenced him to death.
The sentence was lifted but he was threatened with eviction from his home.
Earlier, Mr Abubakar had challenged Islamic scholars, saying there was no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.
"I have not contravened any established law that would warrant my being banished from the land... There is no law that says one must not marry more than four wives," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.

"All my wives are with children and some of these are people I have married and stayed with for over 30 years. How can they expect me to leave them within two days?" he reportedly told local newspapers.
The former teacher and Islamic preacher lives in Niger State with his wives and at least 170 children.
Niger is one of the Muslim majority states to have reintroduced Sharia punishments since 2000.
Several people have been sentenced to death for adultery by Sharia courts but none of these sentences have been carried out.


Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian man to divorce 82 wives