Three Nigerian teenagers Kudirat Abiola, 15, Temitayo Asuni, 15 and Susan Ubogu, 16, are fighting to change the law and end child marriage in Nigeria.
Lax laws in the region have been blamed for the rise in child marriages in West Africa.
According to a 2018 report by UNICEF, Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic have the highest incidences of child marriage in Africa. The report also notes that Nigeria has the third-highest number of child brides in the world. More often than not, young girls in Nigeria are married to men who are older than their fathers.
The problem is more common in Nigeria’s poorer ethnic groups where more than 55% of the women are married off before their 18th birthday
With such shocking statistics, the three teenagers are taking it upon themselves to fight for their peers.
One of the girls Ms Abiola, says that it is a very emotional issue for them. “How do you give a young girl such a responsibility and have her education, friends, and family taken away from her?” she asks. Her role model is her grandmother Kudirat and her aunt Hafsat Abiola; While her grandmother was assassinated in 1996 fighting for democracy, her aunt is still a civil rights activist in Nigeria.
“Those are my role models,” the teenager says. “They have broken the stereotype that girls cannot achieve what boys can.”
The other girl Ms Ubogu owns a software company and two of her games are already available on the Google Play Store. Though she has a strong affinity for maths, she learned to program with the help of the internet at a mere age of 10.
When a local NGO organized a workshop to educate students about the UN Sustainable Development goals, the two adolescents met Asuni. Asuni used to read about child marriages and feel helpless. She was constantly looking for a way to improve the situation. “As we got talking, we realized we needed to start with a change in our constitution,” says Asuni.
The three youngsters started a campaign named ‘Never Your Fault’ that points the blame at Section 29 of the Nigerian constitution.
Though the 2003 Child Rights Act in Nigeria claims that children under the age of 18 cannot get married, a sub-section says “Any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age.” The girls are fighting against the second part of the section.
Young girls prey to scavengers because of the second clause. Back in 2010 and 2018, wedding photos of Nigerian couples went viral on the internet because the brides were teenagers and the grooms were in their 70s and 60s.
The girls have started an online petition asking the lawmakers to raise the age of consent from 11 to 18. They are also conducting workshops on gender equality and similar issues with Nigerian celebrities to raise awareness among the commoners.
Supporting their cause, Hussaini Abdu, the country director of Plan International in Nigeria, a global child rights group says, ‘It is challenging to end child marriage in the absence of laws that forbid the practice. Girls are already marginalized in Nigeria, and forcing them to marry at a young age further silences their voices’.
He further adds that the Nigerian Government should come forward to protect girls.
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