 A four-year-old girl was arranged to marry a 50-year-old man who claimed to be 54. The controversial ceremony in Akedei community, Sakmama local government area, Bayosa State. Now, these marked complaints from child-right advocacy groups calling for persecution of those involved. Community leaders in Akedei say the news of the child marriage was a misconception. They explained that when a child is always sick, there is a practice to stop the child from dying prematurely. And so children are called Isumu when it came to mama, meaning messenger. The tradition requires someone to buy or marry the sick child, either male or female. But the child is not oblique to leave those who bought or married them. The culture is that if somebody, a child is sick and cannot be very difficult to kill, the clearance of that very particular child will now take the child around the community, chasing for who to buy or to marry in order to protect the interests of the life of that very person, the child, I mean. They only perform the right, not as they will officially marry and stay as was going on. Even the man, that very man, children cannot marry this girl. So there will be no time that this girl will go to the house of that very man. So what people are saying, like this, the man don't marry her, go to the house. All those stories, up to now the girl is independent right now, as we are talking about. The father and her supposed husband explained how the child insisted for the ceremony to hold saying a life depended on it. It is said that a child that is sick from birth by tradition is that the child is placed in a curtain to be sold to anyone from the public, to enable the child stay alive, to become an adult in the nearest future as tradition demands. The child being sick from childhood needed to be sold, so a man from Usobo community came, saw her and decided to purchase her with 20 nera. On her getting well, decided that she doesn't want to marry that man that bought her, but decided she wanted to marry another man named Abos in the community, whom she said she's been married to already. We want the public to understand that we only did what was demanded by tradition, to enable her to have a longer lifespan rather than giving her out for marriage officially. Even me and Mari are never to be my wife, so I am very ashamed to do that. From there, get one day, this girl tells me if I don't pay her bad price, she will die. So that die, and that die come, I got fear. And if I don't do this thing before this girl dies, it's from my head. So from there now, okay, if not, so no problem, I will pay you. So from there we carry this thing, go with me. Every society has its custom in tradition, but the bios of child rights protection law 2016 criminalizes child marriages and child betrayals, prescribing various imprisonment terms and heavy fines. Del Coro Green plus TV news bios. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.