The Zamfara State Zakkat and Endowment Board has concluded all necessary arrangements for the wedding of two hundred orphans in the state.

This was contained in a statement issued by the board’s spokesman, Comrade Jamilu Sani Tsafe, and made available to newsmen in Gusau, the state capital.

According to the statement, the Executive Secretary of the board, Malam Habibu Balarabe, said the ceremony will be held on Monday, November 23, 2025, at the board’s premises in Gusau.

“The board has already screened and selected all the beneficiaries that will receive the gesture,” he added.

Malam Balarabe further stated that, apart from the marital ceremony, the Zakkat board will also support 200 small women business owners with a grant to boost their businesses.

He explained that already, one hundred women have undergone three weeks of training on poultry farming and they will receive starter packs to support their businesses.

The executive secretary added that, based on its programmes, the board made necessary arrangements to settle debt cases in Shari’ah Courts and correctional centres across the state.

Balarabe also announced that the board has trained other orphans on computer literacy, and they would be given starter packs during the ceremony.

In other news, AFP reported that several dozen young Nigerian women sporting colourful dresses paraded to the rhythm of drums in a mass wedding recently, an annual rite held in Nigeria.

This tradition of the mass Awon marriage, organised in the small town of Shao in Kwara State in October, is linked to local mythology.

The story goes that a young hunter from Shao once met a strange woman with a single breast near the river named Awon.

After spending several days with a man from the village, she asked the villagers to set a day each year to commemorate her visit by marrying all girls of a suitable age, to ensure the prosperity of the community.

Once dressed in their wedding finery in the palace of the local ruler, the young women parade through the streets of Shao before the mass wedding is blessed by the priest of Awon.

“All the women in my lineage also did it so I have also determined that I will also get married in the Awon rites… Awon is a deity of fertility. She always blesses everybody with babies as much as you want, like me, I want many children,” Adebiyi Abosede, a 25-year-old nurse, told AFP.

“From my teenage years, I have decided to carry on the tradition of Shao because they told us that anyone who got married with the Awon rites can never be barren, and we have also seen it from the past,” said Adewale Afusat, a 31-year-old hairdresser.

“And we want to honour it so that it doesn’t go into extinction.” (THE GUARDIAN)