According to National Population Commission (NPC) report, Nigeria has a population of one hundred and forty million people (NPC 2006), which makes her the most populated nation in Africa. One third of the population is comprises of young people between the ages of 10 to 24 years. The period of adolescence is between the ages of 10 – 19 years (whereas youth: 15 – 24 years, young people: 10 – 24 years and children: 0 – 18 years) (UNFPA 2003:4).
The Nigerian National Youth Policy (2001:2) defines youth as comprising all young people between the ages 18 and 35 years who are citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Education is vital to poverty reduction and national building in Nigeria. However, educational opportunities for young people are unequally distributed, particularly for girls. Girls are discriminated against school enrolment for social and economic reasons. The literacy rate is 73 percent for men and 48 percent for women. The gender gap in literacy, however, decreases from older to younger women.
Young people aged 15 – 19 have literacy rates of 79 percent for boys and 61 percent for women compared with older adults aged 45 – 49 with literacy rates at 60 percent for men and 22 percent for women. Rural women are even more disadvantaged than their urban counterparts. Some socio-cultural groups favour more boys over girls in elementary and secondary school enrolment, especially in the north while economic hardship in the south propels girls to go into trading to assist themselves and their families instead of going to school.
Young people between the ages of 10 and 24 years face serious reproductive health risks. These risks mostly arise from cultural and parental pressure and the differentiation of the roles and prospects of boys and girls. Again, lack of sexual health services and information places young people at high risk for pregnancy, abortion, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STDS). This is of great concern in the northern part of Nigeria were girls tend to marry in mid-adolescence.
Adolescent girls of today face so many challenges, many the result of cultural and parental pressures and the gross imbalance in the role and prospects of adolescent girls and boys. Early marriage for girls, which is often justified as a cultural imperative, is a major setback for young girls in Nigeria. Families go about searching for husbands for their daughters for fear they might conceive out of wedlock and bring shame to the family, which is often against the wish of the girl. Additionally, they forfeit their schooling and become pregnant once they are married.
A survey conducted among women between the ages of 20 to 24 years in northern Nigeria indicated that 45 percent of them were married by age 15 and 73 percent were married at the age of 18 years unlike in the southwest where there is delay in marriage (median age in marriage among 25 to 29 years olds was 20.5) and first childbirth after age 20. This often results in maternal mortality.
Nigeria’s maternal mortality ratio of 704/100,000 is one of the highest in the world. For each maternal death that occurs, 15 to 20 other women suffer either short-or long-term maternal morbidities (i.e. fistula). It is estimated that over 600,000 Nigerian women seek abortion each year. A study indicated that one third of women obtaining abortion were adolescents and that up to 80 percent of Nigerian patients with abortion related complications were adolescents. 3.6 million People are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria by the end of 2005 and an estimated 60 percent of all new HIV infections occur in youth ages 15 to 25 years.
Approximately 1,600,000 women between the ages of 15 and 49 years were living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2005.
Girl-child trafficking continues to pose a major hindrance to their freedom and development. Most of the girls trafficked are forced into prostitution, (forced) labour and in some cases as human sacrifice. Some families support this trend because they see it as a means to break the yoke of economic hardship. The lure of better economic opportunities overseas, to escape the scourge of deprivation back home is also a formidable pull factor in this scenario.
We urged government to use the same drive used in signing the anti-gay law to tackle other issues affecting the country.
