A child bride is facing the death penalty for allegedly murdering her husband and three other people in Nigeria.

Wasilat Tasi'u, 14, married Umar Sani, 35, in April, and allegedly killed him two weeks later.

Women's rights activist Zubeida Nagee of Kano said that Tasi'u was firmly against the arranged marriage.

"She was married to a man that she didn't love," Nagee told the Associated Press. "She protested but her parents forced her to marry him."

Now, Tasi'u's father is asking the High Court in Gezawato spare his daughter's life.

"We are appealing to the judge to consider Wasilat's plea," Isyaku Tasi'u said on Thursday.

Witnesses say that the teen put rat poison in a meal and served it to her husband, causing his death. Three other people who ate the meal also died.

Lamido Soron-Dinki, Kano State Ministry of Justice Senior State Council, filed capital charges against the girl. Nagee and other women's rights advocates sent a letter to the Kano state deputy governor protesting the charge. The activists said that the teen is also a victim in the case, and the product of institutionalised injustices against females.

Some Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East have laws that effectively disenfranchise women.

In June, 18-year-old Saba Maqsood was shot twice and thrown in a canal for marrying the man that she loved instead of the man her family chose for her.

Maqsood told officials: "I was tortured and shot by my father, Maqsood Ahmad, brother, Faisal Maqsood, uncle, Ashfaq Ahmad, and his wife, Sajida Bibi."

Some cultures believe that when a person commits an act that is considered shameful to their family, they should be killed to preserve the family's honour. Pakistani law allows the family to nominate who will carry out the act, and then forgive the perpetrators. Rarely are the killers prosecuted or convicted, and they may even walk free after a conviction.

The attempted murder came less than two weeks after the stoning to death of Pakistani woman, Farzana Parveen, in a May 27 "honour killing."

Parveen, 25, died from severe head trauma after being barraged with bricks thrown by her father, brothers, fiancé, and others in front of the Lahore High Court.

She was engaged to marry her cousin, but decided to marry a man named Mohammad Iqbal, whom she loved, according to Lahore police.