The Katsina State Government has finalized plans to sponsor a mass wedding for 1,000 couples on April 25, 2026, allocating ₦100 million for the exercise despite grappling with a severe nutrition crisis and having over 300,000 out-of-school children.
The Katsina State Government, through its Hisbah Board, has announced plans to conduct a mass wedding for 1,000 couples on April 25, 2026, as part of its social intervention strategy for the current fiscal year. According to the board’s director, as quoted by Channels Television, the program is specifically designed to assist less privileged residents who are unable to meet the financial requirements of marriage. Budgetary findings by FIJ reveal that the state has allocated ₦100 million for this project in the 2026 budget under capital projects for the Hisbah Board. This follows a previous ₦200 million allocation in 2025, which was later adjusted to ₦100 million, and a recorded expenditure of ₦39 million on the same budget line between January and October 2024.
The timing and scale of the expenditure have drawn scrutiny due to the acute social crises currently plaguing the state. According to 2025 data from UNICEF, Katsina is home to more than 300,000 out-of-school children, a crisis fueled by poverty, insecurity, and insufficient funding for social safety nets. Furthermore, the state is battling a catastrophic nutrition emergency; Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that at least 652 children died from malnutrition in Katsina during the first half of 2025 alone. The humanitarian organization also noted a staggering 208% increase in severe acute malnutrition cases compared to the previous year, highlighting a lack of dedicated, publicly identified budget lines for nutrition that rival the mass wedding allocations.
While Governor Dikko Umar Radda has pledged to spend approximately ₦119.7 billion on education in 2026 and has already recruited 7,000 teachers, analysts point to a World Bank National Development Update suggesting that infrastructure spending continues to overshadow direct social interventions. The full cost of the April wedding exercise—which includes logistics, medical screenings, and household support for the couples—remains undisclosed. Proponents of the scheme argue it reduces the financial burden on poor families, but critics suggest that redirecting such funds could provide vital support for the 1.2 million children estimated to be suffering from acute malnutrition across the state.