Teen Marriage in Nigeria

Teen Marriage in Nigeria

Oluwatosin.doc/   Odunlami

BCOM/275

October 23, 2013

Clark    Craig

         Teen marriage had been in existence for so many years especially in the northern parts of Nigeria, where the majority of the Muslims reside. The northern states of this great nation Nigeria have refused to put into act and accept the “Child’s Right Act” that bans and prohibit child marriage. These same groups of people want to enforce and spread their corrupt beliefs and practices about child marriage to the entire country. This kind of destructive belief should not be encouraged or allowed, not only in Nigeria but in any other country. Some says it’s a better way to get the teenage girls off the street from wandering and dying in abject poverty, which I believe is the opposite. There are so many ways they can get these young teens out of poverty by providing them to good and sound education rather than marrying them off at very tender age. If these young teenage girls are given adequate education and good healthcare to better their lives who knows what they will become in future. Going to school will definitely increase their moral values and expectations and they can equally invest in their families and the community they live in, they would also have the confidence of raising a healthy and educated families of their own.

        On the other hand, Nigeria constitution has been totally corrupted by the Northern parts of Nigeria because they care less and give no respect or regard to the Child’s Rights Act. There is a constitution that had been voted on and abolished, which states that” any woman is deemed of age when married, because it allowed them to abandon their citizenship at a younger age”.  But due to the fact that one senator object to that fact saying removing it will be “un-Islamic” the Child Right Act was overruled for all female children as long as they are married, they no more classified as children. However, many teenage girls lives have been chattered due to this outrage act and the Nigerian government have not done anything or make any move to rectify or correct their mistakes. Because the ‘Hausas” as they are called in northern parts of Nigeria gets away with this act, the Nigeria government are now trying to bring the same act to all the parts of Nigeria but the people especially in the Western and Eastern part of Nigeria are ready to lay down their lives before such act can come to existence. When a thirteen year old girl is married of to a man twice her age and becomes pregnant her chances of living or carrying the child to term is very slim, this act has destroyed so many teenage girls dreams of becoming healthy, secure or to even live a long and fulfilled life. The fact that gets married at a tender age is not even the issue but the agony and pain they get from the men whom they were married to is very cruel, they abused and rape consistently by the husband in the process of this they become pregnant, but because they not physically and emotionally ready to have kids they suffer and deal with series of diseases,   some even die in the process of childbirth. Nigeria has more fistula cases than any other in world as a result from early marriage among young teens.

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