By Ray Ekpu
Recently, the world marked the International Day of the Girl-Child. Who is the girl-child and why is she singled out for attention throughout the world? That is what we plan to deal with here today. A girl-child is a biological female child who is any age from zero to 18 years. She is not only different from a boy-child but her needs are also different; her level of vulnerability is higher and many families and communities tend to treat her differently from, and in a manner that is inferior to, the way they treat the boychild.
Nigeria is regarded as a country of the young. About 46 per cent of Nigeria’s population are under age 15 and about 51 per cent of that population are said to be girls. Nigeria accounts for more than one in five out-of-school children anywhere in the world and more than 50 per cent of that number are girls. Even though primary school education is largely free and compulsory in Nigeria’s public schools about 33 per cent of eligible children are out of primary school.
Here, again, girls constitute a higher number of absentees than
boys. And because education is the highway to good jobs, good income and a
higher standard of living many uneducated young girls live the life of the
underclass. They are subjected to child labour, sexual and physical violence,
female genital mutilation, forced incestuous sexual relationships, period
poverty, learning poverty, gender bias, multi-dimensional poverty, adolescent
pregnancy and stigmatisation, poor health and low immunity.
These constitute the lot of the girl-child in Nigeria. Even though
the Child Rights Act was enacted in 2003 and 34 states have domesticated it,
there are still abundant issues of child abuse, child labour, child trafficking
and child marriage etc. that demand the attention of all forward looking and
civilised human beings in Nigeria in the implementation of the provisions of
the Act. The remaining two states, Kano and Zamfara, that have reportedly not
yet domesticated the Act should be encouraged to do so, as doing so will help
to break down the wall of prejudice against the girl-child as she emerges from
the tunnel of infancy.
In Nigeria, girls suffer more than boys in terms of missing out on
education. In the North East of Nigeria, only 41 per cent of eligible girls
receive primary education while the figure in the North West is 47 per cent. In
the North East and North West 29 per cent and 35 per cent of Muslim children
respectively receive Quaranic education which does not include basic education
skills such as literacy and numeracy.
That
is the weird message of the Boko Haram disciples who say that they do not want
western education to be taught in places where they are in control. And because
of the lack of the liberating influence of education in some parts of the
North, Boko Haram is able to recruit young, uneducated people, including girls
as bombers. The issue here is not religion. It is the lack of education. There
is a sizeable chunk of Muslims in the South West but because of the widespread
education there, it is unlikely that Boko Haram can recruit young people to
work for them as bombers. Very unlikely. That is why we do not have Boko Haram
making any impact in the South West.
In many parts of Nigeria, especially in poor and illiterate homes,
the education of the girl-child is downgraded in favour of that of the
boy-child. The reasoning in those families is that the girl-child can be
married off and bride price received for the maintenance and support of the
family. The bride price can also be utilised in sending the boy-child in the
family to school because he is considered to be more likely to be more useful
to the family than the girl-child.
In addition, it is felt that the girl-child will drop the family’s
name when married, while the boy-child will wear it like a badge throughout his
life time. In other words, the boy will even though get married to a girl who
will take on the family’s name and give birth too to children who will bear the
family’s name. So, the name of the family will be elongated, not truncated. In
that case members of the family can always speak with chin-jutting pride about
their family. In that case the family will be on the right side of the tracks.
It
doesn’t occur to those who reason this way that in today’s world, many women
choose to bear hyphenated names, combining their own family names with their
husband’s name. In addition, their husbands have also become part of the girl’s
original family in which case they can do for the family what any other member
can do. The family’s dreams can then become more real than specks in the
horizon, thanks to a compassionate son-in-law. Whenever the son-in-law comes
visiting, the children in the family will be anxious to follow him like eager
puppies. That is the fringe benefit that comes from the girl’s education and
marriage.
Young girls are maltreated in several other ways in Nigeria.
Nigeria is said to have about 20 million girls and women who have undergone
female genital mutilation because their parents think that is the way to
prevent the girls from being promiscuous later in life. On the other hand, the
girls whose genitals have been mutilated tend to smell the rancid odour of
frustration because they cannot put the genie back in the bottle. They have
been thrown into the abyss of unexpected grief. Their paroxysm of outrage can
hardly be assuaged.
Perhaps one of the worst things that has befallen young girls in
Nigeria is child marriage. Nigeria is said to be one of the countries with the
highest number of child brides in Africa, 23 million of them were married as
children. Child marriage is the marriage, formal or informal, between a child
and an adult or even between a child and another child. This sort of marriage
is induced by poverty, the need for a bride price, which can be used to support
the family; it can also come from cultural, religious and traditional causes,
fear of the child remaining unmarried into adulthood, illiteracy, kidnapping.
Many countries, particularly developing countries go through this
route. It is estimated that each year some 12 million girls globally get
married under the age of 18. However, the countries with high rates of child
marriage are Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic,
Mozambique and Nepal.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, the factors that
promote and reinforce child marriage are economic survival strategies,
inequality, seeking land or property deals, or settling disputes, protecting
family honour, insecurity during famine or epidemics, family ties in which
marriage is a means of consolidating powerful relations between families. All
of these factors are present in the consummation of child marriage in Nigeria.
There has been a raging uptick in child marriage in Nigeria in
recent years because of the high level of violence that has been witnessed in
the country in the last one decade. Many of these marriages occur when young
school girls are abducted and taken into captivity. Almost all of them are
married by their abductors. We have seen some of the school girls who have been
rescued coming back with children, products of forced marriages while they were
in captivity.
*Ekpu is
an eminent writer and veteran journalist
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