The girl child in Africa
By Mesogboriwon Adeleye Oriola


The girl child is by far the most endangered specie of the two genders in spite her higher population. The girl child is very prone to rape,not getting formal education and harmful gender based practices especially in a continent like Africa.

Day in day out we see in the newspapers how a 60 year old man would rape a 2 year old girl or even less and even with the sanctions given the occurrences just seem to skyrocket, rapists now become more careful while performing the nefarious act, this goes a long way in depicting that the sanctions are too minimal for the offence hence their continual practicing of it,the government should know the gravity of rape,most times these girls that are raped are psychologically affected for life, rape is not just a physical wound as that's what comes to our mind first on hearing rape news,its way deeper than that, it also eats the victims mentally and psychologically. Its a good thing we have rape counseling organizations now that are after the rehabilitation of rape victimchange their normal psychological self,but its a pity that the public awareness on these organizations are so low that most rape victims and parents don't know about the existence of these organizations or it's sine qua non help to victims. And like physical wounds ,we can only hope on time to do the healing on rape victims while the scars forever remain.

In Africa, a 'male child' is traditionally seen as everything to a man, many men marry more than two wives just to give birth to male a child and thereby causing their first wife(first love) pains for an act that Is solely their "supposed fault"(men determines the sex of a child), and this is so so appalling for I have seen many marriages crumble. most men want a boy that would carry their name so that according to them, "his lineage would continue", I wouldn't want to attack their opinion though but it's the same blood that you have that would run through the veins of your children be it male or female, and same would run through the veins of your grandchildren regardless of the change in surname which is the major concern. Some men even go as far as not sending their female children to school believing its waste of money because a man would still marry her off but that is pure "false thinking" instead why not think of the good things she can to for her immediate society and the world at large. We've seen many women world changers, literature in Africa would have still been in the abyss if Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie hasn't followed in the footsteps of Chinu Achebe,Elechi Amadi and the likes. Take a country like Rwanda for example, Rwanda is currently the best country in Africa and one of the "fastest developing" in the world and Rwanda has 64% of her legislative seats as women which is the highest in Africa, Rwanda also have a "female-only" university in which 85% of her graduates become productive to the country within 6 months of graduation. I have witnessed a man call all his four daughters 'useless' when he was about taking another woman just to have a male child,well all of them are doing fine in life now. In spite of all this knowledge why does Professor chukwuebuka , a well knowledgeable person still have extramarital affairs for male child after having five females?, it appears that tradition has eaten deep into his psychology that his clear thinking has been affected, there is a level of belief in tradition that no level of formal education can alter, don't get me wrong I am not saying African traditions are bad but change is a constant thing in every society and some things just have to be dropped and honestly 'not-educating or respecting a girl child' is one.

Over the years African elders have made it seem as if the white man has no culture and everything they believe should be prohibited Here in Africa but why accept their technologies and all then refuse some other important aspect that affects human lives. Today in Cameroon their is still a practice called breast ironing which is an act in which a girl child's breast is pressed with a hot iron for weeks or even months just to make it flat and reduce rape because according to them it increases their chances of being attracted to rapist but isn't the act itself as dastard as rape?. While in many communities in Nigeria women still have their hairs shaved when their husbands dies and also drink the water used to wash thier husband's dead bodies just to prove their innocence, this of course applies to girl children that were married off at very early innocent ages without seeing the four walls of a school. They keep her inside her house for months mourning then they'd tell her to be strong but how can she be strong when she's still distabilzed from her husband's death,then they'd give her his washed body's water to prove the innocence of killing her husband and keep her inside like a recluse for weeks all in the name of tradition and if she doesn't have a male child all her husband's properties will be taken away from her. The most painful of all these is the fact that the so called educated ones in the society still believe in all these. If the educated ones,those that should correct these practices are fully involved in it then what more of the uneducated ones?

“Justice will not be served until those who
are unaffected are as outraged as those
who are.” - Benjamin Franklin

This is a call to everyone that much still has to be done to achieve SDG5(gender equality), I am not a feminist , i'm just being logical. Its time for us the learned and willing ones now to rise and tell everyone trying to stifle the rights of a girl child that the girl child is same as the boy child because if there was no Dora Akunyili many of us here in nigeria might have been dead by now for taking fake drugs.