A silent but fatal revolt is brewing in the Nigerian child bride ecosystem. The victims of this noxious practice are taking up arms – literally. This should be an omen to the protagonists that the time has come to stop this barbarous act before it blows up in their faces.
According to fresh media reports, Zaharau, 14, allegedly poisoned her bridegroom, Khamis Haruna, 29, and his friends on their wedding day. The incident occurred early this year at Jahun LGA, Jigawa State. The poison was reportedly given to Zaharau by her ex-lover. The bridegroom and other victims but one survived the poisoning. Murder was Zaharau’s definition of revolt against forced marriage.
A few years ago, Maimuna Abdulmumini, at the age of 13, set her 35-year-old husband ablaze. After over five years, at the age of 18, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Wasila Tasi’u, 14, allegedly killed her husband, Umar Sani, 35, and three others at her wedding party in Kano State in 2014. Tasi’u is also facing the death penalty.
In 1984, Hauwa Abubakar, a nine-year-old girl, was forced to marry a herder, Shehu Kiruwa, and was forced to move to her husband’s house two and a half years later when she began her first menstruation, according to Islamic laws.
Hauwa ran away from her marriage twice but was returned to her husband, who her father was owing money. When she attempted to abscond the third time, her husband chopped off her leg with an axe and was amputating her fingers when neighbours rescued her. Hauwa died from poison-coated axe wounds at a Sokoto hospital a month later.
The tragic scenarios above are not only wicked, selfish, and savage, but they also sabotage the fundamental choice and freedom of the victims. The actions of the girls despite the death sentence are messages that the victims of child marriage might not relent in asserting their choices and freedom and that the threat of paying the ultimate price is not going to be a deterrent. Those who think they can stop them underestimate the power of the mind.
Marriage before the age of 18 was outlawed in Nigeria in 2003 via the Child Rights Act. Unfortunately, it persists despite the law. An international medium said 10 years after the prohibition of child marriage in Nigeria, 39 per cent of girls were married before age 15, and two remain on death row for killing their much older husbands.
At least four in 10 girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18, while almost a fifth are married before they reach 15, according to a 2016 note by UNICEF.
Corroborating this position, a 2024 report by the National Dialogue on Ending Child Marriage hosted by the Nigerian Government and supported by UNFPA and UNICEF says four out of 10 girls in Nigeria are married before the age of 18, totalling 24 million. The country ranks third globally in it.
As an antidote, the National Dialogue formed a cohesive front and an action plan to end child marriage in Nigeria by 2030 – five years away. The Nigerian government must sustainably collaborate with critical stakeholders to achieve this target.
Although forced or child marriage occurs across the country, it is more prevalent in the northern part because of poverty, religion, culture, and the socioeconomic status of the people. The European Union Agency for Asylum says, “Northern Nigeria has among the highest rates of child marriage in the world, particularly in the North-East and the North-West, with 48 per cent of girls marrying by the age of 15 and 78 per cent marrying by the age of 18.”
Take Kebbi State, girls’ average marriage age is 11 years. A former Governor of Zamfara State, Sani Yerima, married a 13-year-old Egyptian girl in 2010.
Reports say refusal to enter this kind of marriage attracts persecution, including physical violence and rape; neglect; and ostracism by society and/or family.
Child marriage endangers the health of the victims beyond repair in most cases. It results in a vesicovaginal fistula and renders most of the victims permanently unproductive and incapacitated thereafter. Lancet, a foremost medical journal says VVF is “a serious medical disorder characterised by an abnormal opening between the vagina and the bladder or rectum, which results in continuous leakage of urine or stool.” Experts say it is common among girls with immature reproductive function. Victims suffer rejection and stigma even by their husbands, due to unrelenting awful odour.
The Resident Representative of the UNFPA, Gifty Addico, says, “Child marriage violates the fundamental rights and freedoms of young girls.” Humankind has its growth trajectory – childhood, youth, and adulthood – complete with its inherent characteristics for its optimum benefits. To distort any level for selfish reasons is counterproductive.
Globally, UNICEF estimates the prevalence of VVF at 3.2 per 1,000 births and says approximately 13,000 new cases occur annually. The world body says “it may take 83 years to clear the backlog of cases at the current rate of repair” given “the slow rate of fistula repairs caused by inadequate fistula surgeons and the high rate of new cases.”
The National Institutes for Health notes that about 2 million women were estimated to be living with unrepaired VVF and about half of the total from developing countries were from Nigeria. This is shocking.
Child marriage makes a victim of the girl-child, robs her of her destiny, ruptures her health, and in a lot of cases leads to her early death. It denies the family, society and posterity of her potential and contributions to humanity. All this undermines the elements of security and welfare that the government has the constitutional duty to avert. The government must put an end to child marriage now!
The health and socio-economic consequences of child marriage are monumental and grave. Research by the World Bank and International Centre for Research on Women captured by Girls Not Brides says adolescent girls are more likely to die or have complications in childbirth, particularly when they have children before 15.
The multilateral bodies say the annual economic cost of child marriage because of lost earnings and productivity could be up to $7.6 billion in Nigeria. The report says governments from the 18 countries studied, including Nigeria, could save up to $17 billion per year by 2030 just from the savings related to providing public education. Therefore, the government must rally civil society and the elite to champion the campaign against child marriage for the collective good.
The report says by putting an end to their education, child marriage reduces girls’ earnings in adulthood by 9.0 per cent. The report indicates that 84.4 per cent of children born to mothers younger than 18 are due to child marriage.
According to World Bank estimates, countries lose on average about 1.0 per cent of their earnings base due to child marriage. The global body estimates that if child marriage was ended before 2016 and 2020, over 2 million children could survive beyond the age of five, 3.6 million could avoid stunting, and 140,000 lives could be saved on average every year. Nigeria must doubly brace up to benefit from these findings.
In a world that has broken borders, the consequences of child marriage transcend the girl-child. It rubs off on the family, society, the government, and the world. The FG must therefore rally all the states to implement the 18-year marriageable age for girls while considering shifting it higher to make couples enjoy marriage and duly contribute to humanity and the economy.
The elite must collaborate with civil society organisations and community heads to stop child marriage and deliver a worthy life to the girl-child and women and, by extension, humanity.
The Punch
78% girls in Northern Nigeria marry off before age 18 －Report
