Child Scarification And Female Genital Mutilation: A Harmful Tradition That Needs To Be Curbed in Our Society -By Rahmat Abdulrahman

It’s very crucial to define the keywords in this topic for a better comprehension of the essence of writing this article. Female genital mutilation (FGM) involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

The practice has no health benefits for girls and women. FGM can cause serious bleeding and problems of urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.

Child Scarification in ancient Europe was used to mark and identify slaves in Africa, and it is widely performed as a cultural activity in Nigeria. It was initially for identification and medication. Scarification involves a long and painful process where the skin is cut or punctured with a sharp object or hot in strike instrument leaving scars on the affected area.

Therefore, these two harmful acts have caused a lot of negative effects on the body of children nowadays. The barbaric tradition that has been in existence in the olden days to avoid their children from getting lost; has become a thing the parents of nowadays regarded as custom.

A good culture teaches people good things and helps them to find solutions to their problem, not involving in child scarification and female genital mutilation. It’s high time to sensitize people on the negative effect of this in order to curb this menace in our society.

For example, I have one brother who is a veteran football, but he was denied access to go with his colleague to play football outside the country; he was denied the great opportunity in his life because of body mutilation. Despite the fact that he is well talented in football; this brother has started using Sandpaper to clean his tribal marks, just to make sure that he cleaned the tribal marks in his face that actually caused his misfortune.

In Yoruba land for instance, during the 15th century, they believe that child scarification and body mutilation is as a result of the incessant war in the olden days. During that time child scarification stands as a means of identification and a means to identify one another.

This barbarous custom is a thing of past and is supposed to remain in the past, not that we would be applying it in this present generation. We are in a new era, we are supposed to have dumped those barbaric traditions because we are in the period of civilization.

This issue of child scarification and female mutilation has caused a lot of problems to our state, the reason being that the advance countries like USA, Canada, and New York regarding all this act as an illegal act that is backed up with severe punishment on the culprits; and is a breach of fundamental human right.

Furthermore, developed countries also regarded this act that is common in Africa as an act of damaging human skin. Apart from that, these cruel act has denied some people to pursue their career; an example that I have cited above is a good illustration for that.

Finally, to solve the problem of child scarification and female genital mutilation, the parents should be sensitized on the negative effect of this custom to the life of their children. The government should also take drastic action to punish any person who engages in the cruel act and the culprits should face the wrath of the law. This would surely go a long way to curb this barbaric act in our society.

Rahmat Abdulrahman is a 100-Level student of History at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.