Girl-Child Marriage in the Nigerian Society, Causes, Impacts and Mitigating Strategies

JOSEPHINE AZUKA ONYIDO^1, and ANNA PREYE BRAMBAIFA²

¹Department of Educational Foundations, Faculty of Education, University of Portharcourt

²Department of Curriculum Studies and Educational Technology, University of Port Harcourt

Cite this paper:
JOSEPHINE AZUKA ONYIDO and ANNA PREYE BRAMBAIFA. Girl-Child Marriage in the Nigerian Society, Causes, Impacts and Mitigating Strategies. World Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities. 2018; 4(2):104-110. doi: 10.12691/wjssh-4-2-6

Abstract

Today’s society is plagued with a number of challenging issues, one of such issues is early child marriage. Child marriage represents a fundamental breach of human rights. However, a number of societies accept and practice this. This study is therefore informed by this practice seeks to analyse the cause, impact on the Nigerian society as well as determine if available solutions are acceptable employing opinion survey through a structured questionnaire that was rated on a 4 point likert scale and guided by three research questions and four null hypotheses. The findings from the study indicate that continuous practice of early girl-child marriage is caused by a number of factors which include poverty, ignorance from parents, traditional practice, peer pressure, family alliances to mention a few. While social insecurity, strain on the health sector, high level of illiteracy, increased mortality rates as well as high level of divorce rates have been established as some of the impacts of early girl child marriages on the society. The study established that some of the mitigation strategies include empowering the girl child, adopting policies that correct gender equality as well as generating awareness campaigns on impacts of early girl-child marriage. Education empowers and improves the lifestyle and decision making of participants and was therefore recommended by the research to be afforded to both genders.

Keywords:
girl child marriage education

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