Bauchi And The Burden Of Forced Marriage -By Kene Obiezu

Nigeria’s rising divorce cases shines the harshest light on the dysfunction plaguing many homes and marriages, baring many an inconvenient truth about one of the world’s oldest institutions and the way and manner modernity is threatening to erode its ancient utility.

What will become of a society without marriage, without family, without children? The answer is depressingly simple: such a society which is shorn of marriage, divorced of family and destitute of children, will be one without a future.

At a recent media dialogue organized by Plan International, a non-governmental organization, to discuss and strengthen the implementation of the Violence Against Persons Act, participants revealed that Bauchi State is one of the states in Nigeria with a prevalence of forced marriage, with over 60% of girls married before they are eighteen years old. Participants added that the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS, 2018) indicates that 43 percent of girls are married before the age of 18, with 17 percent married before 15. They linked the contributing factors to poverty, cultural norms, lack of education, and weak law enforcement.

What makes a society, any society, see brides in girls still under 15, many of whom are still learning the ropes of life at their mother’s feet? Whatever that is, it is evil and dangerous, endangering not just innocent lives but the future of the society.

Pedophiles now hide under the toga of marriage to sate their sickening fantasies, and the society allows it? A society that allows for a loose definition of marriage is one that must be prepared to condone anything in the name of marriage, just as Nigeria is doing at the moment.

While other forward-thinking and forward-looking societies are engaging their girls in long-term planning, making space for them to thrive, and creating safe spaces for them to realize their undoubted potentials, it is a pity that some states in Nigeria like Bauchi are preoccupied with given their girls away in marriage as early as they can. It begs the question of what the state government is doing?

Of course, for those who wield the practice of forced marriage like a weapon, there are the twin safety nets of religion and superstition. When put on the spot, their arguments in defense of child marriages are often laden with religious innuendos. In effect, they sacrifice the tangible to the intangible and invisible and pepper their justification with religious connotations.

But it is not sustainable. Not in the least. Countries around the world are showing what girls can do when they are given wings to fly. Even in a country overrun by terror like Afghanistan, the few girls who have been able to put their head outside the suffocating cloud of oppression and discrimination have shown that they are unstoppable.

Women continue to live extremely difficult experiences in Nigeria. From birth, it is almost as if women are hunted with diverse experiences, marking one stage of life to the other.
Yet, Nigeria remains the way it is—destabilized by dysfunction and crippled by corruption.

Women have a role to play in the emancipation and development of Nigeria as things stand. Until they are protected and given their rightful place, Nigeria will remain hobbled and humiliated.

Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com