Gone are the days when girls were expected to endure sexual, physical and related abuses that could jeopardise their education, careers, or lives. Young girls are now being taught how to face these challenges and overcome them with the help of their parents, caregivers, governments, and other members of society. KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE reports.
Women brought up in the 90s and earlier are familiar with the ‘once a man-touches you, you will get pregnant story’ mothers tell their daughters when they started their menstrual flow for the first time.
However, some women are challenging these stories and how other issues affecting the girl-child are addressed. They are creating more awareness about sexual abuse and child rights, while seeking greater support from parents, schools, governments and society to safeguard the future of young girls.
The women gathered, under the umbrella of the New Era Girls Secondary School Old Girls Association (NEGSSOGA), on Tuesday at a symposium organised in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of their alma mater, New Era Girls Secondary School, Surulere, the first indigenous school to be established for girls in Nigeria.
Former Nigeria’s Ambassador to The Netherlands, Dr Olatokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu; an author and counsellor, Mrs Emike Oyemade; a lawyer, Mrs Shakirat Karimu-Kotun; and Dr Tutu Sere-Arije, discussed the topic: “Empowering the Girl Child: before, now and after crisis”. They shared stories of their own childhood, dealing with various issues facing the girl-child.
Dr Awolowo-Dosunmu said successful women, teachers, as well as pupils at the event, which held at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Yaba, were fortunate to get an education in a society mostly patriarchal in orientation.
However, she said there was still a lot to be done to address the high rate of out-of-school children, 60 per cent of whom are mostly girls; child marriages and violence against women, which she said statistics showed young people agreed with.
“Many of us here today must be thankful to our fathers for seeing value in us, recognising our talents such that they thought it was important to send us to school. However, till this day, we live in a patriarchal society. For example, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, 13.2 million. 60 per cent of these are girls. It is because they are married off so early and not allowed to complete their education.
“Quite a number of 15 to 24 year-old-women believe wife beating is justified. This is the fault of mothers; the kind of upbringing they give to their girls. Girls are taught to endure anything, keep quiet, resepect their husbands. We counsel them to put up with anything, but we have to modify that because majority of wives that are beaten end up dead,” she said.
Underscoring the importance of gender equality, Dr Awolowo-Dosunmu said: “Without gender equality, everything else falls apart. You need to educate girls in order to empower them, expand their minds. It is only then there can be peace and progress in the society.”
She counselled the pupils to focus on their studies and reject ideas that are not good enough early in life. “It is from this age that you determine what and who you want to be. When you do, it encourages you to pay attention to your studies and be focused and work hard. Do not allow anyone to convince you that you are inferior to anybody,” she said.
Mrs Emike Oyemade shared her story of sexual abuse and how a lack of information about menstruation and poor handling by her mother made her to suffer sexual abuse in silence.
She counselled mothers to bond with their children and provide them with ample information they would need to survive should they be in any crisis like pregnancy, sexual abuse, and child marriage.
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“I started menstruating in secondary school without any information about it. My dress was stained and my seatmate asked if I had something to stop the blood, but I did not have. Boys in my class laughed at me. I was crushed for the rest of the term. I was so crushed that till date I remember the intricate details of that incident. I even documented it in one of my books on sexual abuse. My mother found out I had started menstruating when she noticed I was bleeding while I slept. She woke me and asked why I did not tell her I had started seeing blood – that don’t I know that I can get pregnant if a man touches me; she beat me. When I was sexually abused, I did not tell her for fear that I would be beaten again since she beat me for seeing blood for no fault of mine,” said the author of 15 books.
Mrs Oyemade said providing information to young ones would empower them and strengthen them in times of crisis. “Crisis situations that the girl child in Nigeria generally has to deal with include child marriage, sexual abuse (rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of sexual slavery and exploitation), gender based violence and discrimination.
Mrs Oyemade identified seven ways to empower girls before they face crisis situations. They include providing them with total education; showing support; curbing traditional practices that oppress the girl-child; standing up against domestic violence; creating platforms for them to speak and be heard; using the media positively to advocate for the girl-child.
“When we empower the girl-child, we are making her stronger. One of the ways to empower girls before crisis is to provide total education to the girl-child. A girl is not a sex toy or baby making machine,” she said.
Popular TV show host and daughter of the late music icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Yeni Kuti, urged young girls to seek other means to be heard when their parents do not believe them.
“Don’t allow yourself to be abused. If you tell your mother and she does not believe you, talk to someone else – there are always people in the environment you can talk to,” she said.
Dr Tutu Sere-Arije, on her part said it was important to empower girls even when they are experiencing crisis.
She said even if they get pregnant, young girls should get the needed support from their families and community to continue their education after the baby.
Dr Sere Arije said: “We can provide the ticket to education; provide enabling environment for counseling, medical care, training, small business loans, and other programmes that will help to end cycles of gender-based violence; provide mentorship; micro-loans for interested hardworking female entrepreneurs; and speak out – use your voice to end preventable deaths of mothers and children.”
NEGSSOGA President, Prof Iyabo Abiodun-Runsewe, said the awareness programme for young girls was necessary because of moral decadence among young girls.
She said: “I left school about 50 years ago and then coming back, we found significant moral decadence, lack of focus, lack of direction, lack of self-esteem among the girls, which we knew was not peculiar to New Era girls; it is like a generational issue. And that was what informed the choice of the theme of how to empower them, how to get them ready before they have any crisis, which could be in form of pregnancy, sexual abuse, dropping out of school, child labour, early marriage and so many others that a child could eventually have.
Prof Abiodun-Runsewe urged the government to evolve policies to support girls when they face crisis.
“The government should be supportive. Girls should be allowed to go back to school even when they get pregnant so we should have schools like that for such girls. And then if it happens that a girl has Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) disease, I know there are hospitals that treat such things – but if they have anything of that sort, we should comfort them and not even insult them about being wayward and all that as the pregnancy and disease could have resulted from so many things.
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