 A four-year-old girl was arranged to marry a 50-year-old man who claimed to be 54 in a controversial ceremony in Akhadei community, Sakbama local government area of Bios' estate. And this sparked complaints from child rights advocacy groups calling for prosecution of those involved. Details on this report. Community leaders in Akhadei say the news of the child marriage was a misconception. They explained that when a child is over-seek, there is a practice to stop the child from dying prematurely. And so children are called Isumu when they came here. 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 parents of that very particular child will now take the child around the community, searching for who to buy or to marry in order to protect the interests or the life of that very person, the child I mean. They only perform the right, not as they will officially marry the child. Even the man, that very man, children cannot marry this girl. So there would be no time that this girl would 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, so 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 seeing a life dependent on it. It is said that a child that is sick from birth by tradition is that the child is placed in a cotton to be sold to anyone from the public, to enable the child to 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 Osobo 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 Abbas 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 Mary I never pay my wife so I am very ashamed to do that so from there get one day this girl tells me if I don't pay her bad price she will die so that died and that died 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. Every society has its custom and tradition but the bios of child rights protection law 2016 criminalizes child marriages and child betrayals prescribing various imprisonment terms and heavy fines. 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