When Will Northern Nigeria Combat Girl Child Illiteracy? -By Promise Eze

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund last year revealed a pitiful situation. They expressed concern over the increasing out – of – school population in Nigeria , stating that only 45 per cent of girls in northern Nigeria are enrolled in schools. According to their findings the north accounted for 69 per cent of the 13.2 million out – of -school children in Nigeria. With over 50 percent of girls denied the privilege of sitting in a four walled classroom, one can boldly deduce that trouble is cooking in the offing for the north and in Nigeria as a whole.

It has been said that if you educate a girl you educate a nation because education allows her to be better prepared and equipped to handle the challenges life will throw at her. She will be able to make more informed choices and she can participate actively in social and political decision making. Now how can Nigeria move forward when a gargantuan and a staggering proportion of her young population is left to suck the mammalian glands of illiteracy? What is the future of this country when a huge amount of her future mothers are being denied the privilege learning vital and basic life skills in an organised academic institution?

There is a yawning chasm between the literacy rate of girls in the north and in the south and this could be detrimental to the growth of the north. With illiterates giving birth to children whom they’ll turn to illustrates, do you think the north can go forward? Girls as young as three years are forced into hawking pure water, groundnuts, biscuits and all sorts of edible wares in garages, streets, at the road side under the hot sun, trekking from dawn to dusk under the harsh treatment of the whether elements. Not that girls don’t attend schools at all in northern Nigeria but compared to the thousands —if not millions—of young girls roaming the streets at at a time when their counterparts are inside a school solving algebra and learning pronouns, one can bodly declare that the region is treating the girl-child education flippantly and jocosely.

I wouldn’t blame the ignorant parents for denying their children education in the first place. Most of the public schools which the government claim are providing free education to these girls are nothing but decrepit structures left to rot in the hands of untrained teachers bereft of common sense. It is not a rare sight to see an English teacher who can barely write a simple sentence in English. Which parent would be willing to send their child to a school that will end up making their children more illiterate and dumb than they would have been if they had not been in school? These parents are not that as foolish as you think. They understand that the education system available to render knowledge to their girls are already decaying. Wouldn’t it be better if they keep their girls at home than send to a school where teachers are paid even though they don’t show up for a term? Wouldn’t it be better if they reserve their children at home than releasing them to overcrowded classrooms and to buildings that have no roofs at all? So we have young girls roaming around the streets in tattered clothes hawking tattered wares simply because of the levity with which education is being treated.

But can we blame the government alone for making education and learning unattractive?  Many parents and guardians see schooling as a waste of precious time. Why send a girl to school when she’ll end up as a man’s wife? Why invest time and money on a girls head when at the end she’ll only serve a sex machine to a randy man?  Education in the north is yet to gain a good ground ever since time primordial. I wouldn’t say that the strong repugnance towards education and the averseness towards bookish knowledge in the region is religiously based considering the fact that the west— the yoruba, which is made up of a large proportion of muslims consider education to be a top priority. No wonder you even find them dominating in tertiary institutions in the north. A kind of irony.  Meanwhile why the north is yet to align itself to the world of bookish knowledge is what I do not really understand but what I do understand that young girls sometimes are coerced by their parents into disowning all that has to do with education. A trend that has left them handicapped for life. This deeply-seated aversion for all that concerns education has affected northern women to the extent that are almost not relevant in society building judging by the roles played out by their counterparts from the South.

We do not see northern politicians coming out to tackle the problem. They have closed their eyes to the situation as if to mean that it doesn’t exist.  But when it comes to political campaigns they are experts in giving fake promises in order to carry everybody along. So it’s a situation of placing the cart before the horse, preferring politicking at the expense of the education of young girls. So sad. As long as the north remain quiet as these young girls roam the streets exposed to rape, dangers, accidents and all sort of social vices, I don’t see the region moving forward at all in the next hundred years. Such cruelty! Allowing the makers of the society to wallow in the quagmire of ignorance and illiteracy. Women of course are the makers of the society considering the important role they play in the family.

When will the north battle girl child illiteracy? Time is running fast!

Promise Eze is a student and can be reached through ezep645@gmail.com