…How Obaseki recovered school girl sent to Katsina for marriage

By Chris Onuoha

Memunatu Musa, a 14-year-old pupil of Enikaro Primary School, Benin-City is incontrovertibly one of the school’s brightest and promising children who, despite her family ordeals, was determined to transform her life through education. But this dream and aspiration was nearly cut short by her early marriage to one alhaji in Katsina State, said to be in his late 50s.

Girls in some parts of Nigeria are often married off because of pressures from parents and relatives, poverty, limited access to quality education and families’ prioritization of boys’ rather than girl-child’s education.

Also read: Husband seeks dissolution of 11-year-old marriage

In her case, Memunatu is from one of the lowly families who struggle really hard to make ends meet. This impelled her vision to complete her school, get a job and help the family in the training of her younger siblings.

With her endearing smile and a sharp mind, which masked her daily experiences, she would tell her friends, “Once I get out of here, I will immediately enrol in secondary school and subsequently tertiary institution. I hope not to get any delays as I pray for the scholarship to facilitate my schooling so that by the time I am 25-years-old I would have become a certified medical doctor, helping my family and the society.”

Unknown to Memunatu, her vision would be short-lived, save for the timely intervention of Governor Godwin Obaseki, who, through the impact achieved in the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (EdoBEST) programme, has continued to change the perception of the people about politics and governance. The programme is set to be extended to the junior secondary school level in the state.

Apart from its positive transformation in the state’s education sector, the reform programme has been able to achieve other feats including stopping the marriage of Memunatu who was given out as a child-bride to a groom in faraway Katsina.

The EdoBEST initiative, targeted at improving teacher quality and performance, increase numeracy and literacy levels among pupils and improve school administration and management, has transformed education in the state from analogue to digital, with teachers using custom-built, cloud-run tablets.

Memunatu is a beneficiary of the community and private partnership pillar of the EdoBEST programme executed by Social Mobilisation Officers across the state.

The Social Mobilisation Officers have retrained teachers who have become field officers and sent into various communities in the state to interact with parents, check pupils who are out of school, know reasons why they are out of school and bring them back. Armed with electronic gadgets, the field officers perform several intervention programs including sensitization and others related to poverty, sexual abuse, and erosion.

An SBMC officer attached to Memunatu’s school in his normal routine observed through the gadgets supplied through the EdoBEST initiative that the young pupil had been out of school for nearly a week.

Bothered by the unusual trend, he sent an SOS message to the headteacher who approved that they connect the family of the pupil.

The team had arrived at the girl’s home in the early hours of Thursday, 24, October 2019, to be told by her parents that the girl had been married off to a man in Katsina. The team quickly reached out to the Executive Chairman, Edo State Universal Basic Education Board, (SUBEB), Dr Joan Osa Oviawe, who immediately communicated the news to the governor.

Obaseki swung into action, calling his Katsina State counterpart, Governor Aminu Masari, to ensure the safe return of the primary school pupil.

Already, the marriage has been annulled and the girl has reunited with her family and classmates in her community in Edo so that she could continue in her vision to transform her life and that of her family through education. All thanks to the innovations inherent in the Obaseki education reform.

Like, Memunatu, one of the major challenges faced by the girl-child in Nigeria is early marriage. Nigeria has one of the highest child marriage prevalence rates in the world.

In Nigeria, 39 per cent of girls are married off before age 18 and 16 per cent are married before they turn 15 years old. According to the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2013, the number of Nigerian girls that are married before their 18th birthday is as high as 58.2 per cent. The prevalence of child marriage varies widely across the country, but figures are as high as 76 per cent in the North-west region, compared with 10 per cent in the South-east.

A 2017 World Bank study estimates that child marriage costs Nigeria $7.6 billion in lost earnings and productivity every year.

The Nigeria Child Rights Act of 2003 set the national legal minimum age of marriage at 18 years but it is yet to be effectively implemented.

Specifically, Edo State has a Child Rights Law and the Violence Against Persons (VAP) Law, which ensures that children and other vulnerable persons in society are protected.

Obaseki who assured that his administration would not allow children to be denied the opportunity to go to school in the state through child marriages promised that Memunatu would be brought back to Edo State to complete her education.

“We will continue to work with the federal government in ensuring that child marriage is stamped out from the country so that children will have the opportunity to attain their full potential,” he said.

The governor also disclosed that his administration has set up a mechanism to punish parents and teachers who abuse children in the state.

Explaining further the duties of the SBMC in the success of the EdoBEST programme, Oviawe noted, “The community mobilization officers bring reports and feedback of activities of host communities, the schools, and other relevant government bodies and stakeholders in the basic education sub-sector. This ensures adequate participation of communities in the effective administration of public primary schools in consonance with Edo BEST programme. They also promote such issues as the access rights of children to basic education as enshrined in the constitution.”

According to her, “the key to the sustainability and success of Edo BEST is community engagement and ownership. As a result, the capacity of School-Based Management Committees (SBMCs) has been strengthened and enhanced for effective community participation and support to basic school improvement in quality teaching and learning.”

Apart from its many other gains, the Edo-BEST is aimed at developing a highly-skilled teaching workforce by training, supporting and motivating Edo State teachers to succeed in the classroom of tomorrow and enhance the state basic education curriculum thereby empowering children to compete effectively in the world of work.

Evidently, the programme is already transforming the basic education delivery systems in the state, by leveraging technology in education provision and utilising accurate and timely data to drive policy and planning decisions. So far, buildings have improved, teachers have been retrained, resources have improved and corporal punishment is banned.

Vanguard