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Mr. Alhassan Issahaku Amadu, Northern Regional Director of the National Population Council (NPC), has advised prospective marriage couples to go through courtship and dating to ensure sustenance of their marriages. He said most marriages failed because couples did not study each other before wedding. Mr. Amadu made the call at a day's seminar on marriage counseling on the theme: "Effective population management through marriage counseling", in Tamale at the weekend. The programme that was organized by the NPC and sponsored by the United Nation's Population Fund, aimed at advocating the need to integrate marriage counseling into sector agencies' programmes. It also aimed at working out modalities to involve Chief Imams and other religious leaders in marriage counseling to ensure that marriages particularly in Muslim settlements were sustained. Mr. Amadu said marriage marked important stage in life and called for adequate dating and counseling to prevent broken marriages and single parenting. He said religion, ethnicity, politics and other issues were affecting marriages in the Northern Region than other areas in the country due to the high illiteracy rate and Islamic norms. Mr Amadu said the NPC would continue to offer counseling to prospective marriage couples in the region but said that it could not solve problems relation to broken homes. Mr. Stephen Sumani Nayina, Northern Regional Minister, in a speech read on his behalf, said population management was a constitutional mandate and stressed the importance of population control through marriage counseling. He said the Regional Coordinating Council would work out strategies to resource the districts to revamp District Population Advisory Committees for effective marriage counseling. He called on prospective marriage couples to study family systems and the character of their partners before getting into marriage to avoid broken homes and single parenting. Participants expressed concern about the youth entering into amorous relationship resulting in pregnancy before marriage, which often ended in broken marriages single parenthood.