THE recently crowned Most Beautiful Girl in Oyo State, Phoebe Akintunde, has launched a girl child campaign to empower 500 girls few weeks after her emergence.
Queen Akintunde decided to take up a challenge to reduce discrimination among girls in Oyo State by taking the campaign to secondary schools, market squares, orphanage homes among others.
Akintunde, who would be representing the Pace Setter state at the national level of the beauty pageant explained that it is important to equip the girl child with the mental and moral knowledge to be able to compete in a male-dominated world, as this would help improve their self-esteem and confidence.
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“Survey in Oyo State shows that the girl child is discriminated from the earliest stages of life, through childhood and adulthood. Some areas in Ogbomosho, Okeho, Oyo Town and Saki have the highest percentage of boys outnumbering girls by five in every 60.
“The reasons for the discrepancy include: Harmful attitudes and practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), male preference, which results in female infanticide and prenatal sex selection, early marriage, violence against women, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, discrimination against girls in food allocation and other practices related to health and well-being.”
Also, the CEO of the Nubian Diamonds Events, organisers of the beauty pageant, Mr Adesina Oyelami, explained that the campaign is to help make the voice against girl child discrimination even louder and to canvass for equal opportunities to girl child where necessary in homes and public places.
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