Kano court orders TikTok influencers to marry over immoral videos

A magistrate court in Kano State has issued a highly controversial ruling, ordering two popular TikTok creators, Idris Mai Wushirya and Basira Yar Guda, to marry each other within 60 days. The decision came after authorities charged both creators for publishing videos they deemed “indecent” and a violation of the moral and religious codes of the predominantly Muslim state.
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Kano’s legal system for over the years has granted vast authority to bodies like the Kano State Films and Video Censorship Board and the religious police, known as the Hisbah Board, solely for the regulation of the moral and religious events in the State.
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The Kano State Films and Video Censorship Board brought the charges to the law court, stressing that the couple’s romantic videos on TikTok constituted “obscene content” and violated state laws which prohibits the distribution of sexually suggestive material.
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The court then made a decree which is highly unusual, turning a judicial punishment for alleged moral misconduct into a forced institutionalisation of relationship, as intervention necessary to protect “the moral and religious values” of the state.
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The order for the two social media creators to marry within 60 days, with a penalty of contempt of court for non-compliance, has become a flashpoint for freedom of expression versus religious law in particularly northern Nigeria.