TIME TO EMPOWER OUR GIRLS
The girl-child needs more attention
The 2025 theme for International Day of the Girl- Child being celebrated tomorrow across the world is “The girl I am, the change I lead: Girls on the frontlines of crisis”. It aptly captures the situation in Nigeria where the girl-child faces all kinds of existential threats. From April 2014 when no fewer than 276 female students at Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State, were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents, there have been several other attacks, mostly targeted at young schoolgirls. At the last count, about 2000 schools have been closed, especially in the North where many parents no longer send their daughters to school for fear that they might not return.
As Nigeria therefore joins the rest of the world to mark the day, it is also important for critical stakeholders to reflect on the challenges that the girl-child in Nigeria faces amid growing poverty and insecurity. From Borno to Ogun, Lagos to Yobe, it would seem that these criminals now target the most vulnerable of our society. While kidnapping for ransom is becoming something of a career for many bandits, this dangerous dimension is impacting negatively on the education of our children as the nation’s primary and secondary schools are increasingly under siege. Despite the 2019 ‘Safe School Declaration’ by the federal government, not much has changed. Across the country, criminal gangs now find it easy to carry away innocent students after which they demand outrageous amounts of money before releasing them to their parents.
There are chilling statistics that kidnapping for ransom has become one of the biggest criminal enterprises in the country today. We believe the relevant authorities, by now, should have devised strategies for dealing with the menace. If parents can now no longer send their children to school for fear of kidnappers, then the future of our country will be in jeopardy. According to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), when children are denied opportunity for education “not only are their lives shattered, but the future of the nation is also stolen.”
Aimed at highlighting and addressing “the needs and challenges girls face, while promoting girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights”, October 11 every year has since 2012 been used to draw attention to the plight of girls, even when authorities in the country are not doing much to redress the situation. With about 70 per cent of families living below poverty line, it is no surprise that the girl-child is often the first casualty in many rural communities in Nigeria today. She is usually the one sent into the streets to hawk, or to go and work as house help for more fortunate families. Some have also been pushed into prostitution in the process. It is instructive that the theme for the International Day of the Girl-Child speaks to the pain being felt by those on the frontlines of crisis.
However, the biggest obstacles they face are in the education sector. For instance, the unsuitability of sanitary facilities, such as water, toilets, also contribute to keep girls away from school in several communities within the country and understandably so too. A girl-child, dealing with the challenges of attaining puberty, needs a safe place to maintain proper hygiene. Rather than have their monthly periods without such safe places, many girls would rather stay away from school, because to stay in school could mean bearing the embarrassment and taunts that come with having their clothes stained.
We urge authorities in Nigeria, at all levels, to address all the impediments that are placed against the girl-child in the country.
