The Federal government of Nigeria and UNESCO, a UN organization are in partnership to put a stop to early marriages or child marriage and other harmful health traditional practices in Nigeria.

To achieve this objectives, United Nations is doing everything possible to link up with traditional rulers and leaders across Nigeria.

The UN Country Representative to Nigeria, Ms. Comfort Lamptey, said this at the Girl Child Concerns One Million Girls’ March for free and compulsory Secondary Education for all girls, held in Abuja.

She said, “The UN is actually doing a lot here in Nigeria; we are just about to partner with the ministry and other partners on a big program; the ‘spotlight initiatives’, which is really looking at how we can support States and different organisations to address the issue of early marriage and harmful traditional practices because we have seen across the world and for a country to realise its full development potential, it has to invest in the girl child.

The Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, who took part in the march, urged Nigerians to support the fight of ensuring free and compulsory education for all girls across the nation.

She said ,”I am sure you are all aware that today is the international day of the girl child worldwide and Nigeria is out here with this girls to make a statement that we want free and compulsory education for the girl child at all level from primary up to the senior secondary school.

These harmful health traditional practices we want to seriously combat and end includes:

1. Scarification is  harmful traditional practices
2.Female genital mutilation/ genital cutting
3.Male child is king, girl-child is relegated to the background
4.Acid bathe
5.Fattening ceremony before marriage
6.Women only are the cause of infertility
7.Mistreatment and maltreatment of Widows
8.Cutting the umbilical cord with unsterilized sharp objects
9.Child marriage/ forced marriage/ arranged marriage
10.’Witch’ hunting/burning
11.Poor attitude to cleaning our environment
12.Breast ironing is harmful traditional practices
13.Removal of the epiglottis
14.Discrimination of the mentally ill is harmful traditional practices


Source: https://ngg.ng/2019/10/13/nigeria-fg-to-partner-un-to-end-early-marriage-harmful-traditional-practices/

Nice move