Development Communications Network, a media support organization with resources to help journalists in reporting science, public health and social sector issues, has on Thursday called for support and empowerment, to give the girl child financial independence to reach her full potential.
Wife of the Cross River, State Governor, Mrs. Linda Ayade has stressed on the need to empower and safeguard the well-being of women, adolescent girls and young people in society.
Mrs. Ayade said such needs could be reached through advocacy tools, behavioral change communication, health talks, training in small and medium scale enterprises among other measures.
The governor’s wife made these remarks in Calabar at the occasion of the commemoration of the 2017 World Population Day.
He said that each year of education of the adolescent girl delivers an additional 11.7 percent increase in wages in later life for girls compared with 9.6 percent for men. Yet, 16 million girls between ages 6 and 11 will not start school twice the number of boys, he stated.
Osotimehin added, ”An educated mother is more likely to access sexual and reproductive health services including family planning as means of prevention of the detrimental consequences of early pregnancies such as fistula.
A girl who goes to school and stays in school till about 18, according to Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), “is a better mother than a girl who has a child at 10.”
Osotimehin, a former Health Minister in Nigeria, spoke last week when he took his public enlightenment campaign against child marriage to Kano “so that the age for marriage is shifted at least to 18.”
I am very excited, albeit cautiously, because the Federal Government has vowed to tame that monster called child marriage. But I am cautious because the forces government will confront, even if the willpower is there, to win this battle are monstrous. Some of these forces are within government circles. But win we must because there is nothing good about child marriage. In fact, child marriage is paedophilia dressed in legitimate robes.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has launched a nationwide campaign to end to end child marriage, making Nigeria the 16th country to join an African Union campaign to end the practice by 2030.
Nearly one out of every two girls in Nigeria is married off under age of 18, making Nigeria the country with the world’s highest number of child brides.
Nigeria committed to ending all forms of harmful practices, including child marriage, against women and girls at an African Union summit in 2014, in line with Sustainable Development Goals.
The Federal Government in Abuja on Monday announced plans to launch a campaign to end child marriage and other related harmful traditional practices in the country.
The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Sen. Aisha Alhassan said this during a media briefing.
Alhassan said the move was borne out of the resolution by African leaders to end child marriage during the 25th African Union Ordinary Session of Heads of State in June 2015.
