It is cheering news that the Federal Government of Nigeria has taken the bull by the horn in seeing to it that the orgy of girl child’s marriage come to an end. This is against the background of years of Government’s oversight of demographic and health hazards of girl child and forced marriage and the attendant gender based violence and human right violations.
The incident of child or forced marriage had been rampant to the extent of being at best an in-thing in Nigeria or at worst a licentious subculture, breaching every imaginable and existing extant law. The growth of this societal virus in exponential vivacity is stridently damning, given available statistical surveys.
Research shows that northern girls account for the highest rates of early marriage in the world with an estimated 65 percent of children married off below the age of 18, even as six million girls were married by the age of 15 in 2019. People of conscience cry out against this phenomenon because it constitutes a serial orgy of different kinds of violence against women and humanity in general.
Recently, at the pan African campaign to end forced, underage and child marriage in Abuja, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women noted that gender-based violence has become a preoccupying human right violation. Regrettably, victims of gender-based violence do not effectively contribute to the growth of the economy due to the trauma and pains they go through and may not recover.
This existential morass had co-existed with modern civilization for so long. The reports from the National Demographic and Health Survey in Nigeria also reveal that 28 percent of all women die under gender related violence. To collaborate this point, Human Rights Watch noted that with six hundred and thirty maternal deaths per one hundred thousand live births, Nigeria has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates.
There is rather a negative correlation among child marriage, poverty and illiteracy because the states with the lowest level of literacy have the highest rate of child brides. This positive counterpoise should stimulate the stakeholders in the society to step up advocacy and campaign against child marriage through, among other options, compulsory education of girls. To reinforce this positive policy and attitude, governments will be obligated to enroll girls who dropped out of school due to early marriage.
It must be noted that there are always high maternal mortality and morbidity, illiteracy, lack of skills, unemployment, low income and widespread misery among the victims of girl-child marriage. Therefore, to break this social scourge is a necessary step towards promoting a holistic and integrated economic and social development in Nigeria.
The act of a marriage to a girl-child under 18 is widely underscored as an irresponsible subculture retarding the progress of human species and the society. The culture, religion and societies that sustain this obnoxious, morally and economically redundant practice are seen to be averse to contemporary civilization.
The impact of violence on the girl-child in a forced marriage is evident on society, on the economy and on the future and well-being of significant population of the victims. She is a subject of abuse, of cartels and beast of burden who is at the receiving end of all the moral and economic depravity.
A new order, free of child marriage, will be a function of new critical moral mindset strengthened by law, stiff penalty and strict enforcement across cultures and religions. Perhaps, this is the time for all stakeholders and law enforcement agents to be on alert on girl-child abuse, girl-child marriage and girl-child education. This is societal necessity that calls for domestication of Child Rights Act in the families, schools, churches, mosques and in markets.
Above all, child education is the way to alleviating poverty that very often triggers this desire to abandon school for premature marriage and risky procreations. Governments at all levels could enforce the Child Rights Act better by making education compulsory for all children below the age of 18 as part of the Sustainable Developmental Goals.
WRITTEN BY MADUABUCHI DUKOR
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