I never stop to cogitate on my child-hood years, my child-hood dreams, hopes and aspirations. As a young girl, I had very tall dreams of having a fulfilled life, like getting quality education, becoming a professional, having a rewarding job and then marrying the man of my dreams, building a healthy family with someone whom I love and who loves me in return. Someone who would treat me with respect and honour...
Then out of the blues, these dreams are shattered, completely disorienting you, utterly altering the course of your well-laid out life because you have to grapple with the fact that you are to wed a man. This man whom you hardly know is being foisted on you.... As your husband.
This should be the end of the road for you.....Hope, now hope-lessness.
This is the sad route many a girl-child is forced to thread, a systematic enslavement as a voice-less appendage to the man they are married off to.
Child marriage is a formal marriage or informal union entered into by an individual befor reaching a certain age, usually 18
In Nigeria, 43% of girls are married off before their 18th birthday. 17% are married before age 15.
This practice is pre-dominant in Africa.
THIS IS CHILD ABUSE, NOT MARRIAGE
They become so vulnerable to domestic violence, abuse and abandonment. A child barely out of the cradle.... Forced to become a wife and a mother.
What of the implications of getting married and having children before they are physically, mentally and psychologically ready? What of complications of child birth?
What can this injustice be attributed to? Poverty, insecurity, traditions? I don't buy into any of these. What good has this practice ever achieved apart from taking the lives of these young ones, taking their lives away from them and leaving them so empty. What reasons could be more important than their feelings, their emotions, their happiness and their general well-being which in most cases is trampled underneath. Why is no-one considering the pain these ones would have to go through in this whole un-holy practice?
How can we allow this to continue?
How can we allow shattered dreams of this magnitude?
This is a clarion call to all and sundry to rise up against yet another practice targeting the right of the child, let our voices ring out through nooks and crannies, let us stampede this useless culture or tradition out of our lives and give our girls, back their lives.
SAY NO TO CHILD MARRIAGE
Thank you for stopping by my neighbourhood.