Nigerian Girls’ Vision for the Future, by Adeola Adeleke
On December 19, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 to declare October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child, to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. The theme for the 2024 International Day of the Girl is ‘Girls’ vision for the future’. The day focuses attention on the need to address the challenges girls face. and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights. Girls are leaders. Girls are change-makers. Girls are driving good and growth around the world. They are a fundamental source of transformational change for gender equality, and technology is a crucial tool to support their work, activism and leadership.
This year’s theme conveys both the need for urgent action and persistent hope, driven by the power of girls’ voices and vision for the future. The generation of girls in Nigeria today is disproportionately affected by global crises of climate, conflict, poverty and the challenges of gender equality. Too many girls are still denied their rights, due to lack of support, resources and opportunities restricting their choices and limiting their futures.
Girls are twice as likely as boys to miss out on education or training. This is because of the social and economic conditions of the family they found themselves. When there is poverty and limited economic resources, a girl-child bears the brunt of the consequences. This has inadvertently increased the number of child-marriage and it remains widespread, with approximately one in five girls globally married before the age of 18. Child marriage is understood to indicate marriages under the age of 18. And girls who are married off at a young age suffer more serious consequences.
In Nigeria, about four out of ten girls are married before the age of eighteen. Nigeria is ranked third place in the prevalence of child bride’s child marriage is a serious issue that is affecting the vision of girl child. Child marriage ends a girl’s childhood dreams of becoming a doctor, teacher, hairdresser or any other profession she could have ventured for her future. It cut down the vision of achieving and soaring high. It curtails her education, minimizes her economic opportunities and increases the risk of domestic violence. The Sustainable Development Goal 5.3 targets the elimination of child marriage by 2030. However, with 44% of girls married before the age of 18, the SDG is far from being achieved and society continues to fail girls and their vision.
In Nigeria today, a girl child must choose a purpose for her living and stir her efforts towards achieving this vision. When a girl child spells out her vision, she aligns with her life purpose: a vision of progress, competition, achievement and being part of her country’s development. A vision of possibilities and hope and a vision of can-do and can-achieve.
Education is a vision that every girl child should have a focus on. Having a good education is empowerment. Statistics shows that more than 50% of girls are not attending school at the basic education level. One million girls drop out between the first and last year of primary school, and 0.6 million between Primary 6 and Junior Secondary School. 7.6 million girls are out of School in Nigeria: 3.9 million at the primary and 3.7 million at the junior secondary level1.
Realising the future embedded in a girl child, world leaders signed a global pact that included commitments to dismantle gender inequality and address the violations it fuels, which act as brakes on girls’ aspirations. They recognized that the peace and prosperity of our shared future depend on the ability of adolescent girls to exercise their human rights and reach their full potential. Issues like harmful practices, child marriage and female genital mutilation, deprive girl child of their vision for the future and their fundamental rights and choices.
Today, as the world celebrates another International Day of the Girl-child, let us stand with them, and not in their way. Let us stand with every girl’s vision of what her life will bring. Both the family, society and government should work to eliminate all the barriers that keep girls from reaching their full potential. A visionary girl is a futuristic adult. Together we can help them develop into potent agents of transformation and change, both at the micro and macro levels