Police arrest members of wife-swapping sect
Nigerian police clashed violently with members of an Islamic sect that allegedly practices wife-swapping, leaving five people dead and 20 men in custody, officials said tonight.
Police had been trying to prevent a march by the group, called the Yan Gwagwarmaya, in the north western Kebbi state when “members of the sect became hostile to our men”, police spokesman Ibrahim Sa’ad said.
“They were armed with cutlasses, daggers and guns,” Sa’ad said.
Five sect members died in the clashes, and six police were injured, he said.
Police arrested the leader of the cult, Mohammadu Sanusi, and 19 other male members. Sanusi’s deputy was one of those killed.
The sect has angered fellow Muslims by its practice of sharing wives for sex and by alleged blasphemy in naming one of their shrines Kaaba – after Islam’s holiest shrine in the Saudi Arabian town of Mecca.
The sect, which has several hundred members, first came to prominence last year when it began holding meetings in public squares criticising the government for failing to properly implement sharia, or Islamic law.
The group’s following is limited to Kebbi state – among several northern Nigerian states practising sharia.
A spokesman for Kebbi state said the sect was “engaging in the free exchange of wives, abusing traditional rulers and inciting the public against constituted authority”.
“We are practising sharia,” Kebbi spokesman Abdullahi Zuru said. “We will not allow people to desecrate Islam.”
