Age of consent vs age of marriage: theoretical or practical laws?

Except for those that are sterile or sexually celibate, sex is an important act in the life of most higher animals, including humans. Its importance simply cannot be overemphasized even for those that claim not to like it. Behind almost every soft-spoken, eternally rude, physically holy, immaculately decent, individually brilliant and officially disciplined individuals that we see all around lies a sexual animal. Wars have been started, lives have been lost, towns have been destroyed and economies have been paralysed as result of sex-related issues either in this contemporary world or in the history of man. Today just happened not to be a day to dig out some of those stories.

Today, I have decided to take a deep look at what we all know as the age of consent, both from scientific and layman's point of view. By definition, the age of consent is generally referred to as the age at which a human (not animal) is deemed old enough to decide whether he/she wants to have sex or not. Individuals below this age are popularly referred to as minors and any sexual activity with them is considered a statutory rape by law. All over the world, the consent age varies with as low as 11 years in Nigeria and as high as 21 years in Bahrain and South Korea. Within the United State, consent age varies from states to states ranging from 16 years to 18 years.

A few years ago, a story emerged about the marriage of a famous Nigerian lawmaker to a 15-year-old girl. The event threw Nigerian youths and their likes into a frenzy and the social media almost exploded with rantings of anger and counter-anger from both the antagonists and the protagonists of the action of the lawmaker. Well, I happened to be one of the social media neutrals then due to the fact that the majority of those arguing were just doing so only from the moral point of view which I largely considered hypocritical.

First, as a layman, I simply do not believe that it makes any sense to designate age of consent and age of marriage differently. The Nigerian constitution pegged the age of consent at 11 while the age of marriage is 18 unlike in some other countries in which both are the same. If someone is old enough to have sex, he/she should be old enough for marriage, all other things being equal. In addition, my experience and observation have shown that the consent and the marriage age as stipulated by law is just a mere paperwork. Sex in our society is as dictated by hormones and has almost nothing to do with the law. Underaged, high school children have been caught in a hot sex session with each other, less than 18-year-old girls have been recorded to have either committed several abortions or successfully given birth and a lot of parents allow their children to have boyfriend/girlfriend at a tender age. I wonder what the fuss was all about on a 15-year-old getting married if not for hypocrisy.

Gone are those days when the transition from juvenile to puberty takes as long as between 10 to 14 years in the female and 12 to 16 years in the male. Nowadays, it takes as short as 7 to 8 years in the females and 9 to 10 years in males. This early onset of body development has been linked to a medical condition known as precocious puberty. Precocious puberty in females is quite common and has not been found to have any underlying pathological condition in most cases (about 90%), unlike in males where it is quite rare and often found to be associated with brain tumours, trauma etc.

At age 15, some females have fully attained the status of an adult with full bone mass and female fertility. As a lecturer in a Nigerian University, a random informal interview of some female students between the age of 14 to 18 revealed that on the average, about 90% of them started having consensual sex as early as 11 years old. Some of them have had more sex before clocking age 17 than their parents would ever have in their entire lifetime.

The genuine opponents (not the social media hypocrites) of early marriage have always thread the line of their arguments around mental development or medical implications and not the physical nor biological development of the subjects. Hence, in their argument, a supposed girl/boy can be as fully developed as a man/woman can be, as sexually active as a porn star but not psychologically developed enough to be in a marriage simply because marriage is much more than just sex. They sometimes go further to highlight the medical and psychological conditions that can result from early sexual activities such as sexually transmitted diseases, complications from abortion, depression, over-bloated egos etc. Little wonder that a 16-year-old girl could confidently walk into a lecturer's office and offer her biological cookies in exchange for grades. Lecturers have seen a lot tbh....

If such medical and psychological conditions are to be the case with early marriage/sex, in reality, we should be fighting for the age of consent to be raised rather than fight a lawmaker that married a 15-year-old that could have been having sex since the age of 11. However, such is not the case in our society. People and society, in general, will hardly frown at a 12 years old having sex but would bring out a moral barometer to assess any man that comes out and proposes to marry such girl. A lot of underaged girls suffering from precocious puberty are having sex with adults day-in and day-out with neighbours playing the unlooking games and very few cases making the headlines only when a famous person is involved.

In conclusion, I personally believe the variation in the morphological, physiological and psychological development of individual human does not agree with pegging a particular age for consensual sex and marriage all in the name of promulgating a law. What works for individual A might totally not work for individual B because they differ structurally as well as genetically. The age of consent is supposed to equate to the age of marriage and both should be treated on a case by case basis and not just by some theoretical laws.