IN what seems like a reenactment of the Gothic era of serfs and feudal lords, underage girl-children in Yobe State are reportedly being given out as brides by their parents to creditors to settle debts. The existence of this ludicrous exchange came to light last week at a media roundtable organised by the child advocacy outfit, Save the Children International (SCI), to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl-Child in Abuja. At the gathering, members of the Children’s Parliament raised the alarm over the betrothal of underage girls to old men for economic reasons. A girl champion from Yobe State, Khadija Badamasi, put the criminal and morally reprehensible act this way: “Yobe State, where I hail from, due to poverty, has the largest number of child brides in North-East Nigeria. In my community, most people are farmers, and due to poverty, parents borrow money to cultivate their farms. Hence, they end up having to give their girl-children in place of the debts.”
It is pathetic and most unfortunate that in this day and age, some parents are enslaving their children and wards for pecuniary reasons. Such an illegal and despicable survival measure reflects badly on parents as critical stakeholders charged with the natural and crucial responsibility to guide and help chart their children and wards’ course in life so that they can grow to become responsible adults. Nigeria, and the North in particular, must take this alarm seriously. Official steps must be taken to ensure that customs and cultural practices that rob children of their childhood and stampede them into adulthood are jettisoned forthwith. The case in point is the height of child abuse which should not be tolerated in a decent society that values the future of young people, especially girl- children. Just how do you willfully exchange your own children for money? That is child labour and slavery in a digital age, and it smacks of wickedness and selfishness. It is a no-brainer that children married off in that manner will not be treated with respect; indeed, respect is an anathema in such vile cases.
However, while no circumstance should justify parents trading off their girl-children for economic reasons, it should be mentioned that if parents who are farmers had good inputs, they would not have had the need to hawk/auction off their children. We enjoin governments, especially at the subnational levels, to endeavour to create support systems for economic actors in their localities to obviate circumstances that could make them to resort to taking precipitate actions in order to survive.
Indeed, the country really has a duty to ensure that its citizens do not fall into unimaginable poverty that would turn them and their wards into serfs and slaves. On this score, the oft-repeated assertion of working to move millions of Nigerians out of poverty by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has to become more than a catchphrase and be operationalised to achieve its aim. It is saddening that the reported incident happened in Yobe State, which is one of the very few states in the North that have adopted the Child Rights Act. Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act in 2003, giving legal consent to both the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. However, it has been difficult to persuade some states, especially in the far North, to adopt the Act. Yobe State reportedly did in 2021.
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We, therefore, urge the government of Yobe State to start invoking the extant laws to stymie all awful and retrogressive customs. Such customs are inimical to the wellbeing of the girl-child and put her future in jeopardy. More importantly, the state should prioritise the sensitisation of its people to stop the unwholesome practice of parents giving out their girl- children as brides to creditors as settlement for debts. This is barbaric and most uncivilised. Hapless children who are not party to any debt arrangement should not be made pawns in such arrangements. And the future of children should not be dependent on the extreme vagaries of the existence of their parents in the light of the recognised rights of children to life and dignity under local and international laws. The account of the Yobe State representative at the media roundtable leaves a sour taste in the mouth. We believe that this is a quintessential instance where law, morality and modernity should be officially triggered and combined to effect sociocultural reengineering.
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