By Auwal Ahmad:
Gombe State government in collaboration with an NGO, Save the Children International has inaugurated a technical working group towards ending child marriage in the State.
The Technical Working Group is mandated to review and adopt the National strategic plans on ending child marriage.
Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Welfare, Hajiya Zainab Julde stated this on Thursday while inaugurating the group in Gombe, North East of the country.
She said child marriage is one of the developmental challenges affecting children in Nigeria and that prevention of child marriage remains a significant social, economic and health problems.
“Nigeria still faces the daunting task of harnessing its vast natural and human resources to effectively reduce the harmful practice and there is increased need, especially now than ever before to evolve strategies, build structures and institutionalise social, legal and educational system reforms to facilitate a sustainable national response to end child marriage and all the associated ills.
“In 2015, an estimated 6 million girls were married by age 15 and 36 million girls were married by age 18 nationwide. Child marriage is more prevalent in northwest and northeast regions where 48 percent of girls were married by age 15 and 78 percent were married by age 18 years.
“National strategy document on ending child marriage in Nigeria will therefore suggests what can and should be done to end child marriage harnessing relevant policies and legislation, changing harmful cultural norms, supporting community programs, maximising foreign assistance, increasing access to girls education, providing young women with economic opportunities” she said.
Also speaking, representative of Save the Children Nigeria, Prince Akpan Effiong said in order to reduce child marriage, Save the Children has come with programme, Reaching Empowering Adolescents to make informed Choices for their Health and Better Life for Girl project in Gombe state.
He said the project lasts three years and is being implemented in Gombe, Katsina and Zamfara states.
According to him, 100 communities were selected from two local government areas of Dukku and Balanga.
“The project targets adolescents age 10 to 19 in rural and hard to reach communities where discriminatory social and gender norms significantly affect the ability of adolescent girls and boy to make decision and access services to protect and improve their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
“Adolescence is a period of transition between childhood and adulthood, a period in which although no longer considered a child, the young person is not considered an adult either, transition to adulthood often involves periods of stress, innovation, experimentation and disorganization. There may be myriad of problems at different stage of their social economic, physiological and psychological development and the period may be difficult for their health due to absence of proper guidance and counseling and 1.2 billion people aged 10 to 19 are adolescents 1 in 6 persons” he concludes.
