Ugly Sides of Forced, Early Marriage

Lagos — Nkiru Dubem was in Junior Secondary School 2 at Girls' Secondary School, Aguobu Owa, Ezeagu Local Government Area, Enugu State, when she was put in a family way by one Emeka, who was at the time a student of the Federal College of Education, Eha Amufu in Enugu.


When the school was about to close for the second term in 1999, some of her friends noticed that she had stopped attending class, a habit known to be strange.

One day, they decided to pay her a visit and on getting to her house, they met her vomiting at the back of the building.

When the school learnt that she had been impregnated, she was expelled forthwith in order to serve as deterrent to other students.

Another student, Angela Okoro, a JSS 1 student suffered a similar fate with Nkiru. Her own case was even worse as she was forced to marry a man twice older than her age and against her wish.

Emily on her part, a female daughter of a retired civil servant in a family of four had lost her mother long before she got married to a man almost the age of her father.

In 2000, when she was barely 17, her father made her to understand that she was the only female child of the family and also that he knew that one day somebody would come to marry her.

Emily told her father that even though she was 17, she had not really known what marriage really was because her mother who supposed to tutor her on the issue died two years after she was born and that the only knowledge she had about marriage was through stories her peers told her while in school.

These students are one out of many people in the category of early and forced marriages.

Forced and early marriages are interwoven because both entrap young girls in relationships that deprive them of their basic human rights.

Though, different reasons abound for entrants into early marriages as in the long run, the persons involved see themselves as being forced into it, because, sometimes, it is not consented and they end up being victims of early and forced marriages.

In other words, a forced marriage is the union of a man with woman but with at least one of them not given their full and free consent to the marriage.

In Nigeria for example, it is not uncommon where parents genuinely felt that they were acting in their children and family's best interests.

To families living in poverty or economic instability, a daughter may be seen as an "economic burden", who must be married as soon as possible to take financial strain off the family.

To another, it could be used as settling a debt, or to strengthen family or caste status through social alliances.

Evidences have shown that fears about sexual activity before marriage, or of rumors about such activity ruining a daughter's opportunity to marry willingly, also fuel early and forced marriages.

In many cultures, a family's honor depends on a girl's virginity. So, a girl sometimes may get married soon after her first menstruation so as to "protect" her virginity.

Recently, inside Iyana-Ipaja-bound Bus rapid Transport (BRT) bus, a young lady entered the bus with two children- one tied at her back, the other she held with her hand.

When she was entering the bus, she carelessly dragged the boy child whom she held in her hand into the bus when some passengers shouted at her to take it easy with the small boy, but instead she dragged him the more while they both climbed the bus.

Throughout this period, the woman in question never uttered a word either in protest or apology.

It was at this point that some women in the bus started abusing her for not being very careful the way she handled the child.

A particular woman said she must have been abused during her childhood days, which was why she never cared about her action; others predicted that she must have been forced into early marriage.

Almost everybody in that bus had one thing or the other to say about what she did but after she alighted from the bus.

A particular woman in her mid 30s remarked saying "any woman, who doesn't know the pains we women go through while giving birth, will not be careful in handling children, because if they do, they will not but pamper them knowing full well that it is neither easy to conceive nor to deliver".

According to her, a lot of women die in labour, others die immediately after delivery. So I don't know why some women are heartless, they find it difficult to show love to their own 'children.

"But could early marriage be the reason for this young woman's action, a man has asked a co-passenger neighbor?

"Certainly not. It could be that she was abused from childhood or must have been annoyed by her husband at home or anything could have fueled her action. Also, it may not even be any of these we are thinking," another passenger had reasoned.

Mama Kemi is a native of Ifo in Ogun State, who lives at Alade Street, Shasha Akowonjo, Lagos State. She had Kemi when she was 14 years old.

'Iya Orobo' as she is popularly known, recounted how her parents persuaded her to marry a man thrice her age when she was still in secondary school many years ago.

"I am the only child of my parents. My father died during the civil war and that was soon after my birth," she said. "So my mum was the person who took care of me till I was 14.

"The month I clocked 14, I was to enter JSS1. My mum told me that she could no longer fund my education due to the fact that her petty trading job was no longer profitable.

the proceed wasn't enough to feed on let alone paying my school fees, There was this man that usually came to our house and sometimes to the shop to buy fresh tomatoes and 'vegetables. In fact he was a regular customer, my mum said he liked the man because according to her, she saw all the qualities of a good husband in him, but this man was too old for her to marry, not only that, I used to call him "egbon Kabiru."

'Iya Orobo' also said her first sex with Kabiru was very painful even as she said when she was about seven months old she gave birth to Kemi prematurely.”It is not good for parents to force their daughters to marry when they are not up to the age, because some of these under aged girls are not matured mentally, psychologically, physically, spiritually and otherwise which were the things I suffered", she advised.

The phenomenon as well as early motherhood research predicted, are becoming increasingly less common among the wealthiest sectors of society in all regions of the world, they persist in Africa and South Asia, as well as certain areas of the Former Soviet Union. In 2003, the International Centre for Research on Women estimated that more than 51 million girls under 18 years were married and they expected the figure to rise to over 100 million within the next ten years. Similarly, in 2006, experts estimated that thirty-eight percent of young women aged 20 to 24 in the fifty least developed countries were married before the age of 18.

UNICEF estimates that in Africa, 42 per cent of women aged 15 to 24 were married before age 18. In Niger, 27.3 per cent of women aged 15 to 19 were married before the age of 15 and 76.6 per cent of women age 20 to 24 were married before the age 18.

The consequences of forced early marriage are that one is likely to become violent because the relationship is based on the power of one spouse over the other. Rape occurs frequently in forced and early marriages, especially for young brides.

Young married women are more at risk to (STDs) sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. In general, younger women enter into marriages with partners who are significantly older and more sexually experienced.

UNICEF also anticipated that complications during child birth are much more common among young mothers.

They can result in severe disabilities, such as obstetric fistula -a tearing of the vagina which can leave women isolated from the society. Maternal mortality rates (MMR) are significantly higher among younger women. For example in Ethiopia the MMR is over 1200 per 100,000 live births among girls aged 15 to 19 and only slightly over 400 per 100,000 live in women ages 20 to 34. I n Yemen, where 52.1 per cent of women are victims of early marriage, the maternal mortality rate among girls 15to 19 is 19 per cent, research concluded.

Geraldine Okolie


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