In the past 18 months, 1,350 Kano couples have been married in mass weddings. An additional 1,111 are slated for a wedding sometime this year. The waiting list is about 5,000 people long, as many here struggle to afford the leap into married life.
For the grooms, the state pays the dowry they are bound by tradition to present, usually about $60.
Brides get a bag of rice, two crates of eggs, some cooking oil, a mattress, about $125 to start a business, and sometimes a sewing machine. Islamic officials also coach them in Nigerian marriage basics: How to make perfume from local plants and to cook bite-size butter cakes.
For the couple, a tailor sews flowing white Islamic wedding robes. After the wedding they have a chicken and yogurt lunch with the governor.
The strains of poverty and terrorism have left many Nigerians anxious over marriage as an institution. Government statistics on divorce don’t exist, but Mr. Pierce estimates the rate in the north to be about 50%, based on two decades of research. It is high, in part, because Islamist law lets men eliminate the financial burden of a wife by simply stating, “I divorce you.”