The girl-child is now an endangered species in Nigeria given the rising rate of teenage pregnancies leading to disruption of girl-child education and early marriages, ENE OSHABA reports.
Amidst myriads of laws against child marriage domiciled in the Child Rights Act (CRA) which pegged marriage at 18, Rape, teenage and unwanted pregnancies as well as early marriages have become so strongly knitted and have remained difficult nuts to crack.
As a result of this, more children are becoming mothers and nursing children while they themselves need care and nurturing.
Experts have said that child-mothers are on the increase due to the rise in rape cases which leads to unwanted pregnancies among teenage girls mostly within the age bracket of 15-19. Sadly this has remained prevalent in Nigeria following the poor implementation of the CRA both at the federal and state governments.
Many girls have been pushed into early marriages by parents for either fear of stigmatisation or inability to cater to the needs of the young mothers.
There are other issues including poverty, lack of accessibility to education, religious believes, which have been fingered as root causes of the rising cases.
“It is disturbing that almost two decades after the Child Rights Act was passed, Nigerian girls are still being forced into child marriages,” said Mausi Segun, Africa Director at Human Rights Watch.
“Nigerian states should urgently act to adopt, implement, and align existing laws with the provisions of the Child Rights Act, which criminalizes marriage before the age of 18 and protects girls’ rights,” she stressed.
In bid to curb the trend and protect girl-child the Ministry of Women Affairs in collaboration with National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking In Persons (NAPTIP) had opened a sex offenders register to name and shame rapists and other child abuse offenders with the aim of securing justice for victims, how much results this has yielded remains the questions.
The trend
The increase in teenage pregnancy is not limited to a particular region in the country rather have spread across the nation as one could hardly find a community without teenage girls with children born out of wedlock, who are out of school and also with no means of income.
Blueprint Weekend chat with some respondent further showed that the menace has become a normal characteristic, especially with girls in the rural areas.
Some of these girl were found to have become pregnant out of wedlock for different reasons ranging from rape, incest, misadventures, and early marriages, forcing them into adulthood trying to fend for themselves and their babies.
The exposure to the internet and sex education at rather early stages especially with teenagers in urban areas has also been identified as another factor fuelling the dangerous situation.
“These days, teenage pregnancy is all over the country. I travelled to the south-east and there was hardly any compound you won’t find a teenage mother. It’s now a case of children nursing children and it’s no longer hidden as the girls are not even ashamed of such or show any remorse any longer,” one of our respondents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
Controversy around rape
While gender advocates are working hard to eradicate rape, what constitutes rape has continued to generate heated arguments, especially amongst male folks. Some school of thought believes that a woman cannot be raped because by mere struggling a man cannot have his way. However, others believe that rape cannot be clearly defined especially among people in relationship including marriage.
Contrarily, the National President of NAWEE who is also the National Coordinator of PAWED, a coalition of over 50 women-based NGOs, Barrister Vera Ndanusa, noted that most victims of rape are children who were taken advantage of by people around them supposed to protect them.
“Children need to be trained on how to defend themselves against rape because most times people that rape young girls are people who are close to them. They don’t have physical strength as the men, even as an adult a man and woman do not have same physical strength.”
For multimedia journalist and the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly Africa Brief, Nosomot Gbadamosi, it was worrisome that generally people think that most rape victims brought the experience on themselves. They are seen to have caused it somehow. “People are always looking for loopholes in the story,” she said.
UNICEF data showed that one in four Nigerian girls is sexually assaulted before the age of 18 this is despite an increase in activism.
Justice is rare in Nigeria with a country of 206 million people having just 32 rape convictions between 2019 and 2020, according to data from Nigeria’s national anti-trafficking agency.
NDHS’ statistics
The Nigerian Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) reported that the adolescent birth rate in 2018 was 106 births per 1,000 women and that Bauchi state had the highest number of adolescent births (198), while Imo state had the least. On a general note, however, adolescent births seem to be higher in the north, specifically in the North-west, where the median age of first marriage and first intercourse is approximately put at 16 years.
And with the recent surge of insurgency in the North-east and banditry/kidnapping largely in the North-west, it is not clear if Bauch state still remains the highest in terms of adolescent births.
In Yelwa Kagadama in Bauchi state girls face challenges with issues of lack of education, teenage pregnancy and early marriage all as a result of the closure of public secondary school because of religious crises.
A teenage girl from the community Halima Abila said “Lack of education is the main problem causing teenage pregnancy which also leads to early marriage.
“We don’t have a secondary school in my community and the parents don’t have money to train children in private school so girls trek to the next community which is far from my own community and because of the stress they feel demotivated and skip classes and eventually drop out of school because of the stress.
“This leads them to living irresponsible and wayward life because they have nothing to do and so they get pregnant and parents force them into marriage and the suffering continues,” she explained.
The Bauchi state government has reviewed the 24 hours curfew imposed on the Yelwa axis of the Bauchi metropolis to 12 hours from 6pm to 6am.
The curfew was imposed following the civil unrest which occurred on Friday, May 27, 2022, that was ignited by miscreants in Kagadama, Tsakani and Lushi in the Bauchi Local Government Area.
The 2018 demographic health survey has the most recent national data on teenage pregnancy and it is carried out every five years.
The survey revealed that 19 per cent of adolescent women had begun having children below age 18. The 2013 and 2008 editions of the survey reported a slight decrease in 2003, but DHS noted that the rate was 28 per cent in 1990.
In 2003, for instance, the rate was higher in rural areas (29%), and 32% in 2018.
Causes of teenage pregnancies
According to a Professor of Nursing at the College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Omolola Irinoye, several factors influence teenage pregnancies in Nigeria.
“Family-related factors have to do with early marriage and parental income. Because of the economic gains of marrying a rich man, some parents force their young girl-child into early marriage. Lack of parental care and supervision also falls into this category,” she said.
Irinoye said further that societal factors like community violence, rape, alcohol and substance abuse and low contraceptive use also contribute largely to adolescent births in many parts of the country as against what is obtainable in western countries.
Similarly, Ndanusa said poverty plays a huge role in the spate of rape and early marriage across the country, stressing the need to tackle the issue of poverty and close economic gender gap so that women will be empowered to take care of their children and the nation in general considering their role in training the child.
“A woman who cannot feed her home will allow underage daughter to hawk in the street where the girls get exposed to much older men while they hustle to help feed the family they are raped and because she doesn’t know how to go about it she gets pregnant and the vicious poverty system continues.
“You know the school system for now don’t allow a pregnant girl to continue her education she will have to drop out of school to take care of the baby at least for two years and before you know it she falls into another problem sexual abuse and she takes in again either out of duress or force because she doesn’t have choice, she is just a teenager who has never been thought how to defend herself,” she noted.
“This issue touches a sore point in me because I feel bad when I see bright future cut short when I see promising young girls cut short their bright future by getting pregnant.
“I won’t say this is only because of the poor educational system I rather allude it to the mindset of different cultures, religion, poverty are the factors responsible for teenage pregnancy,” she maintained.
Health/social implications
According to Health Think, an advocacy group, early pregnancies among adolescents have major health consequences for adolescent mothers and their babies.
“Pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading cause of death among girls aged 15-19 years. Without adequate support from their parents, adolescents are at risk of not getting antenatal care which is critical in the first months of pregnancy, as it looks for medical problems in both mother and baby, monitors the baby’s growth and helps to quickly identify any complications that may arise.
“While there is no risk-free pregnancy, good antenatal care and support can help minimise those risks. Factors like age and overall health status can increase the chances of experiencing complications during pregnancy.
“Adolescents are at a higher risk for pregnancy-related high blood pressure (preeclampsia) and its complications than average age mothers. This condition can also harm the kidneys or even be fatal for the mother or baby.
“Mothers aged between 10 to19 years face higher risks of eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and systemic infections than women aged between 20 and 24 years. Pregnant teens have a higher risk of getting pregnancy-induced hypertension than pregnant women in their 20s or 30s,” it stated.
It added, “Pregnant adolescents also have a higher chance of becoming anaemic, a condition that results in the reduction of red blood cells. This can make mothers feel weak and tired and can affect the baby’s development.
“Adolescents are at a higher risk of having premature babies that weigh less than babies normally should weigh.
“In addition, the earlier a baby is born, the more risk there is of respiratory, digestive, vision, cognitive, and other problems. Low birth-weight babies are also 5-30 times more likely to die than babies of normal weight.
“If a mother is under 18, her baby’s chance of dying in the first year of life is 60 per cent higher than that of a baby born to a mother older than 19.
“For adolescents who have sex during pregnancy, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) such as Chlamydia and HIV are a major concern. Part of this heavy toll has more to do with poor socio-economic status and lack of ante-natal and obstetric care than physical maturity alone.”
On a general note, it noted that millions of unsafe abortions among girls aged 15 -19 years occur each year, contributing to maternal mortality, morbidity and lasting health problems.
Way forward
The national president NAWEE called on to be more committed to not only raising their females children on moral standards but most especially the boys to enable them grow into responsible adults who respects women and not those who see them as objects to be taken advantage of or trampled on.
“Parents have a lot of work to do, mothers need to train their sons that women need to be respected and fathers must show good examples by treating their wives like queens before the children.
“Women need to be treated as queens and princesses, and when the son sees the father respecting the wife his mother, and the mother train the child to respect women I don’t think the child will grow up tomorrow to be a rapist. Rapists are beats and do not deserve to live amongst humans.
“If we also tackle the issue of poverty and close all economic gender gaps women can take care of their children and nation in general because it is the woman that trains the child.
“Teachers on the other hand need to be in the forefront as well and social media parents should be deliberate in monitoring the children. Children have access to the Internet and so they go to sites they shouldn’t go to and that’s where they learn evil things. You know youths will always want to experience things so monitoring should be very key.
“I also call on religious leaders in all the faith including the traditional leaders to preach against this because rape is terrible and if we lose our youths to this menace it is a big problem to the society,” Ndanusa stressed.
“The Lagos state government has a school that teaches girls self defence and this is what I would like the federal government to inculcate if thus issue of rape must be tackled,” she added.
Meanwhile, Abila called on the Bauchi state government to reopen the public secondary schools in the community to ease the stress of getting education for especially the girls who are always at the receiving end. She recalled that the schools were shot down due to some religious crises.
“We appeal to the Bauchi state government to reopen Babatanko Secondary School because it will reduce stress for girls and enable them go to school.
“My call to parents also is that when a girl is pregnant is the end of the road yes she has fallen bur that doesn’t mean they can’t rise again. Parents should rather motivate their kids who got pregnant and not to force them into early unwanted marriages,” she said.
