8-year-olds now sexually active —NURHI

Oyo State Team Leader, Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI), Mrs Stella Akinso called for increased sexuality education of youths and adolescents, saying so many youths now start having sex at age eight in Nigeria.

Mrs Akinso who made the call at the opening of a two-day Advocacy Network of Nigeria strategic review and Succession planning workshop in Ibadan, said  increasingly youths and adolescents are becoming sexually active and with enormous consequences.

According to her, young people are increasing faced with sexual violence, intimate sexual relations and family incest, adding that about 65 per cent of all abortion cases in Nigeria now occur in young people.

She said that meeting the sexuality and reproductive health needs of young people was important for Nigeria to achieve the Sustainable Development goals.

Mrs Akinso declared that NURHI was taken up the challenge of empowering young persons to be able to determine whether they want to have sex or abstain from it and if they want to have sex be well informed on how to have a safe sex.

“The intervention just started based on end line research on our NURHI phase 1 project that although, we are dealing with women of reproductive age group, we had excluded young people in this group.”

Mrs Sola Fanimokun, NURHI’s youth programme officer, noting that 55 per cent of Nigeria’s population were less than 20 years, declared that 48 per cent of males and 56 per cent females in this age range are sexually active.

She decried parents not providing sexuality education to their children and as well as dearth in youth friendly health centres, stressing that myths on sexuality still abound among youths.

According to Mrs Fanimokun, lack of reproductive and family planning information is a major problem of youths in Oyo State, adding that more youths are been influenced into sex by their peers, parents, religious leaders and media.

She said parents and religious leaders’ capacity must be trained on how to talk to youths on sexuality and their health, adding “we are not saying that youths should be having sex, but they need to focus on helping them to understand their sexuality and how to cope.”