Religious police arrested 25 youths suspected of planning a same-sex marriage in northern Nigeria, a predominantly Muslim and socially conservative region, the country's authorities announced Sunday.

Sharia police, known as Hisbah, acting on a tip-off from residents, raided an event center in Kano, the region's largest city, where the alleged wedding was to take place, the sources said.

Eighteen men and seven women, all in their twenties – including the couple believed to be getting married – were taken into custody, said Mujaheed Abubakar, deputy chief of the religious police.

He told reporters that a man "was planning to marry another young man at the site of this illegal gathering" and that an investigation with a view to prosecuting would be carried out.

Sharia law, a code of law based on the teachings of the Quran, operates alongside the state and federal judicial systems in 12 northern states of Nigeria.

According to local interpretations of Sharia law, homosexuality is punishable by death, although this sentence has never been carried out.

In 2014, Nigeria passed new federal legislation banning same-sex marriages and promoting civil unions.

Anyone breaking this law faces up to 14 years in prison.

The Hisbah has arrested dozens of people over the years in connection with alleged same-sex marriages, including in 2022, 2018, 2015, and 2007, but no one has yet been convicted.

In Africa, a majority of countries have laws that prohibit and punish homosexuality: this is the case in around thirty out of 54 states.

Same-sex relations are illegal in a third of the world's countries and, in some of them, can be punishable by imprisonment or even the death penalty.