Education can wait when it comes to marriage for young girls in Adamawa State. A teenage girl in Adamawa State who was urged to continue schooling rather than drop out for marriage, responded: “Me? Remain in school? It’s time to marry. I don’t want to become an old spinster.”

When relations of the SSS 3 pupil got to know about the pressure on her to complete her education first, they told the person mounting the pressure to keep off.

Amina Saidu, facilitator of Safe Space, a vocational facility in Manjekin, Maiha Local Government Area, where out-of-school girls learn skills for personal development ahead of their return to school, was the one mounting the pressure.

Amina, who is in her 20s and unmarried, shared the story to show the problem she is facing campaigning for girls’ enrolment and retention in school.

“The girl told me point blank that I have finished school and even working, yet I am not married. In fact, she asked me if I thought I could now ever marry. She said she did not wish to end up like me,” Amina recalled.

Sadly, after marriage, the girls do not return to school. Amina said the mind set was retarding female education in Adamawa.

“People have little thought of returning to school after marriage because here the culture is to drop off school once you marry. Education is secondary to marriage among my people. Once you get to the age of marriage, you marry, irrespective of whether you are in school or not,” she said.

In most cases in this part of the world where age of marriage falls within a girl’s teenage years, it is even parents who arrange husbands for their daughters without their consent.

At a recent event, the point was stressed that parents were more interested in the monetary value they could get from a girl through her marriage or hawking goods than the potential benefits of investing in her education now.

Thanks to interventions, however, a few exceptions are emerging from what has long been the norm.

One Rashida Amodu has the record of being the only girl in Maiha LGA who got married and remained in secondary school.

Amina said she advised Rashida not to marry but she did. However, she continued her education.

“The good side is that although Rashida got married, she remained in school and is writing her final year examination,” Amina said.

Amina runs vocational skills facility, a safe centre, in Maiha where mostly out-of- school girls receive training on craft skills, entrepreneurship and personal development. The centre was established by an NGO, African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), with support from Malala Fund.

Rashida’s decision to return to school was influenced by the Centre LSD’s Safe Centre which not only taught her how to make cake, soap and the like for self-employment but also impressed on her the need for her to at least complete her secondary education.

Centre LSD had been in Maiha last week in continuation of project tour and town hall meetings held in the focal LGAs of Numan (representative of Adamawa Southern Zone), Song (Central Zone) and Maiha (Northern Zone) where the organisation has concentrated its girls’education campaign in the state in the last two years.

At the town hall meeting attended by Maiha community leaders and education stakeholders, a number of problems affecting female education, apart from early marriage, were identified and solutions proffered.

The problems include poverty, insecurity, distance from home to school, and preference for boy rather than girl-child education. It was also mentioned that many girls want to be taught by female teachers and could leave school where sufficient female teachers do not exist.

One of the stakeholders also articulated the point that in many households in Adamawa, education is still regarded as haram, in line with the viewpoint that terror group Boko Haram has projected so ruthlessly in the many years that it has troubled the Northeast.

At the meeting, officials of Centre LSD stressed the imperative for girls to go to school and complete their education so they can have opportunity to be greater citizens as they grow.

At the town hall meeting, Dr Jude Amodu, who represented Centre LSD executive Director, announced that of 960 out-of-school girls that the organisation had been able to draw back to school in the last two years, 310 were from Maiha, and the drive is to get more girls back in school by the end of the project early next year, hence the need for the meeting.

At the facility visit to the Safe Centres in Maiha, Amodu told the girls to aim to be like the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Aisha Mohammed, and other leading women like Senators Aisha Binani, Binta Garba, and Grace Bent – Adamawa women- whose education has taken them to great heights.

“I am a professor, yet I say ‘Yes Ma to a fellow professor, who is a woman because she is vice chancellor,” Jude told the girls, referring to Prof Kaletapwa Farauta, the Vice Chancellor of Adamawa State University, Mubi.

“If you remain on the path of education, in the next 10 years, I see you becoming pilots, engineers, bankers and top politicians and business women,” Jude told the girls.

Some of the girls said they were glad that the centre helped them to get an education.

Twelve-year old Fatima Hamman, was stuck at home because her father would not send any of his daughters beyond primary school, She said her long-held wish became reality when the Safe Space concept was introduced two years ago.

“I always wanted to go to school but my father would not hear of it. His mind was set on me growing up and getting married. He didn’t believe education for any girl had value for the parents.

“The Malala-funded girls’ education campaign programme was introduced and with the persuasive efforts of the officials, my father agreed that I could go to school. Now, I am in JSS 2.”

On her part, Rosanne Garba said the pro-educarion campaign revived her hope in life after she got pregnant while in SS 2. “After I got pregnant and after giving birth, I remained at home because nobody wanted to hear of me returning to school. But the Safe Space people welcomed me with open arms and gave me a second chance. I have had opportunity to learn soap making and cake baking which I use to support myself. More than that, I have gone back to school and I am in SS 3,” she said.

(The Nation)

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