By Sunmola Olowookere

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A disturbing trend has emerged which shows that child marriage may not be limited to the Northern part of Nigeria. This indication implies that while the girls in the Western part of Nigeria may not be forced into marriage, many girls run off or are sent off unceremoniously to live with their lovers as soon as they get pregnant.

The menace of Child marriage is as old as time and many countries of the world were only able to shed the menace as their societies evolved and developed. In the old African setting, research revealed that child marriage was often deployed by families and communities to be the best way of protecting the girl child from rape, sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies outside marriage, family shame, disaster, homelessness, and hunger or starvation.

Among other reasons, parents attribute the early marriage of their daughters to the above reasons. In some localities, poverty, weak legislative frameworks and enforcement, harmful traditional practices, gender discrimination, and lack of alternative opportunities for girls (especially education) are all major drivers of child marriage.

Critics and researchers find in addition to the above-mentioned reasons that lack of political will, coupled with multiplicities of laws, accounts for non-apprehension and prosecution of offenders, thereby allowing them to hide under religion and continue to perpetrate crime against the girl child.

Child marriage is one of the infringements that the girl child’s rights have been subjected to whereby a girl that is not up to 21 years old is married off.

As many countries are coming out of the clutches of child marriage, Nigeria is still very much entangled in its web despite existing laws and regulations against child marriage.

Under the Nigeria Marriage Act 1990, the minimum legal age of marriage is 21 years for girls and boys, although they are allowed to marry before this with written consent from a parent or guardian. Under the Child Rights Act 2003, the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 years. Despite these laws, incidences of child marriage still persist in our society with many of them unreported.

 Over the years, Nigerians have become familiar with the practice of unhappy northern minors being forced to marry men old enough to be their fathers, and when discussions about Child Marriage ensue, they are mostly about these unfortunate children who are stifled by religion and culture.

However, many people in the southwest fail to realize that the numerous young girls who have been put in the family way and sent packing to their baby’s father’s house by disappointed and unsupportive parents also fall into the category of “child brides” as they are forced to start a family by circumstances and not by choice.

According to statistics by a coalition known as Girls not Brides (GNB), 30.3 percent of girls in Nigeria marry before their 18th birthday, while 12.3 percent marry before they are 15.

GNB forces revealed that a whopping 73.8 percent of girls (aged 20-24) were first married before 18 years Child marriage occurs in all regions in Nigeria and that some states still have weak implementation of the Child Rights Law (CRL).

In a bid to stem the ugly trend, the National Coalition of Civil Society to End Child Marriage in Nigeria organized a workshop titled “Tackling the Scourge of Child Marriage: The Role of Media in Advocacy and Change”.

 The event took place on 17th and 18th September 2024 at the BON Hotel, Ijapo, Akure, Ondo state.

Giving an overview of child marriage in Nigeria, the National Coordinator of the Coalition, Mrs. Olabisi Omolona stated that Child marriage remains a significant challenge in many parts of the world, including our communities, which makes the role of media professionals in shaping public opinion, raising awareness, and influencing policy critical.

Omolona identified poverty as one of the driving forces behind child marriage

The workshop brought together media practitioners and key stakeholders on how to explore the root causes of child marriage and develop strategies for impactful media engagement in combating this issue.

She said that the objectives of the workshop was to familiarize media practitioners with the activities of the coalition and that of its members, promote partnership with the media on girls-related issues such as child marriage, social justice, and gender equality and improve the collaboration of media practitioners with the coalition and its members.

She informed the participants that the desired outcome of the coalition was to ensure improved access of adolescents and youths to public services, laws and institutions, for communities promote and practice positive social norms for gender equality and to end child marriage among others.

 As part of its advocacy efforts, the coalition has paid advocacy and courtesy visits to governmental, non governmental, and religious organizations at the federal and state levels, and actively participated in the review of the National Strategy to End Child Marriage in Nigeria.

Delivering a lecture on the challenges in tackling child marriage and reporting in Nigeria, Mrs Folasade Bamigboye, the Executive Director of Kids and Teens Resource Center, highlighted some of the problems encountered by stakeholders in different spaces while fighting the menace.

She urged the media and other relevant stakeholders to be resilient in their efforts to ensure that the issues regarding child marriage undergo the desired change.

She called for increased awareness on the part of the media and policy changes on the part of the government to ensure that every child is given the required education and not be given out to marriage at the early stage of their lives.

While delivering a lecture on building trust: objectivity and bias awareness in reporting, the chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists(NUJ), Prince Leke Adegbite, pointed out to the participants that building trust in reporting child protection issues by journalists is crucial for ensuring accuracy, sensitivity, and impact that will contribute to changing the narrative.

He advised that some of the key strategies journalists use that promote building trust in child protection reportage include training and education where they would receive specialized training on child protection laws, ethical consideration, and best practices for reporting sensitive issues.

Adegbite believes that this will ensure that journalists are well-informed on the matter and also have the knowledge and skills on how to report cases of child marriage on their various platforms.

Also speaking at the event, the Chairperson of the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Mrs. Tola Gbadamosi, reaffirmed the association’s commitment to stamping out the menace in Ondo State through adequate information and creation of awareness on the evils of child marriage.

She also called for synergy between the media practitioners and relevant stakeholders in order to bring about a desired change in the current narratives.