Underage marriage: Gynaecologists worry over “obnoxious” amendment

  {video here}Failed attempts last week to strike out a clause which includes “any married woman” in a constitutional definition of a Nigerian adult capable of renouncing citizenship is leaves girls and children vulnerable, says Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Nigeria, SOGON.“You have to be a woman before you are married, said Dr Fred […]

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Failed attempts last week to strike out a clause which includes “any married woman” in a constitutional definition of a Nigerian adult capable of renouncing citizenship is leaves girls and children vulnerable, says Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Nigeria, SOGON.
“You have to be a woman before you are married, said Dr Fred Achem,
president of SOGON, insisting that including underage children as
adults by virtue of marriage was “putting the cart before the horse”
and neglected the quality of life of the Nigerian girl child.
“My worry is that within the senate, we cannot find two-third majority
to throw this kind of obnoxious amendment out, and the people that
suffer are the children and girls,” said Achem.
“If individuals want to marry their daughters out at whatever age,
there is no quarrel but the law has to protect such children.”
The clause stayed—after voting to strike it out fell through—on
grounds that Islam permits women younger than 18 to marry and such
women be recognised as adult.
“We are not looking at issues that affect the quality of life of the
Nigerian girl child. She becomes a mother in due course, and if she is
not developed today into a proper woman with knowledge of her health
and wellbeing and choices of career and structure of family, that
child is going to be condemned to penury and poverty. She is not going
to be able to negotiate her rights even in marriage, nor be able to
choose where to have her baby, and that is why some of these women are
having vesico-vaginal fistula that we are dealing with today.”
Achem’s comments came as USAID ended a seven-project that provided
repair surgery for almost 10,000 women with fistula—a condition in
which an abnormal hole develops between the rectum and vagina or the
bladder and vagina.
The condition has been attributed to injury or obstruction during
birth, and younger women in pregnancy are thought to have higher
chances of being affected.