The Federal Government has developed a technical working group comprises of all the stakeholders aimed to develop policies and legislation that will end girl child marriage in the country, Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan has said. Senator Alhassan disclosed this in Abuja, just as the Chairman of the National Population Commission, NPC, Chief Eze Duruiheoma, charged state governments yet to domesticate the Child Rights Act to urgently do so for the welfare of the Nigerian children.
The duo, who spoke at a media briefing to commemorate the 2016 world population day, themed; “Investing in teenage girls” organised by the National Population Commission, NPC, agreed that early child marriage is an act of violent against girl child. In his address, the Chairman of NPC, Eze Duruiheoma regretted that the conditions in which majority of the teenage girls live and the challenges they have to surmount on a daily basis cut a pathetic picture.
He said, “Without education, in poor health, and with little or no control over her body, the future of the teenage girl in Nigeria imperilled, and her potential may never be realized.
The challenges and obstacles faced by a teenage girl multiply if she lives in a village and is from a poor household. Quoting some statistics from the 2006 Population and Housing Census, Duruiheoma said the data indicated Nigeria’s teenage population aged 13-19 was 20, 458,601 or 14.6% of the total population out of which the teenage girls constituted 10,001,965 or 7.2% of the total population. The NPC boss added that, “By 2016, the population of the teenage girl increased to 13,787,755.”
According to him, “Access of the teenage girls to reproductive health services and information is severely limited thereby aggravating cases of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortion, sexually transmitted disease, STD, including HIV. The use of any planning method is 6.1% among women aged 15-16despite the fact that 61.1% of women in the age group are sexually active.” He said, “With the increasing spate of insecurity and organised crimes in Nigeria, the teenage girls, more than their counterparts, have been victims of various types of physical violent and abuse including rape, kidnapping, child trafficking and torture.”