The Girl Child Advocacy (GCA)
First and foremost the girl child in Africa lacks information about what happens to her in puberty. At home it is a taboo to talk about sex and in schools they pretend it does not exist.
Examples are everywhere! Even though some mothers were school headmistresses, they would only probably keep putting a small packet in the daughters’ school boxes every time the daughter was going back to school. The poor innocent girls would not know the purpose of the packet and only just kept on wondering silently. Most of the time, talking about safe sex seems as if they are being given a license but it is also an important point.
A mother could only say to her daughter, “you will need this.” The young girl would know about the item the hard way as she would stand up one day in the classroom to answer a question only to notice her uniform stuck to the seat and there would be a hush silence until the teacher would leave. When the girl sees the blood she would probably start wailing. The big girls would start asking her what she did to herself. She could wail the more. Then will the seniors take pity on the girl, wash her, bring a blue packet and fix her. By the time the seniors finished with the girl, she would know exactly what the blue packet her mother gave her contained.
* GCA * GCA * GCA * GCA * GCA * GCA * GCA *
Dr. Francisca Obiora-Ike
(Coordinator)
Meet Girl Child Advocacy and Social Services
Meet
Dr. Francisca
Obiora-Ike
You probably remember the saying, “don’t near a man or you will get pregnant.” So, when girls went for debates in a male school girls clustered in a corner because any girl who went near a boy not only became pregnant but her pregnancy was contagious. Through television and pornography, the girl child gradually got exposed to early sex but most times without knowing the consequences. Most of the time those who sexually assault the girl child could be in the same house with her. An uncle, a brother , a friend of the family, a neighbor or even a father. Most of the time under threat of death.
For years the girl child will go through sexual abuse without anyone to talk to. Even mothers are compromised for fear of stigmatization. The girl child suffers from crude abortions as the perpetrators will not like to go to proper hospitals for fear of exposure. Sometimes traditional abortions are carried which ends in death or permanent scars or even suicide. The girl child suffers while the predators go unpunished. Parents will not even like the stories to be told. In Co- education schools, rape by cultists co – students are an everyday affair though there cases of consensus sex in secondary or even primary schools.
What do we do? Right from home the mother at least should be able to gain the confidence of a girl child. Tell her when being touched in certain places are inappropriate. Assure her she will be there for her in any circumstance, Tell her how the female anatomy works and what happens at any point in time. Make her not to feel guilty when she encounters any of the above circumstances.
School curriculum should be able to start sex education early as the girl child is even attaining puberty at early as 9 or 10 years now.
The security services should be able to not shame the girl child when cases of sexual abuse is reported to them. Most of the time these cases are settled in the police station when the parents don’t have the capacity or the will to pursue such matters to their logical conclusion.
Drug abuse is also in the increase. Most of these girls are introduced into drugs that make them lose control of their faculties or even induce amnesia. At the end most of them don’t know what happened to them.
It is just mind boggling what the African girl child goes through.
One of the ways we can minimize incidents of pregnancies and abortion is to create the opportunity of forming a synergy with NGOS who work in these areas to articulate interventions
a) With parents
b) With Schools
c) With security agents
It might not immediately radically bring changes but I do believe this is a good starting point.
Team Members
Anastasia Ashi, Ph.D. (Deputy Coordinator)
Dr. Anastasia Ashi, Dean of Health Sciences at Emmanuel University, is the Chairperson of the African Scholars Health Organization, and responsible for deploying Country Representatives. She is the Assistant Director (Inspectorate) at the National Youth Service Corps Headquarters in Abuja. She conducted her doctoral research in areas associated with the girl child. The GCA recognizes that each country’s needs are unique and often subject to the country’s cultural antecedents. However, the ‘One Africa’ concept determines that every girl across is the same. Dr. Anastasia Ashi and her other GCA team members are able to tailor programs to the specific needs of the girl child, no matter the country in which she is across the different African countries or entities within it.
Barrister Ogechi Agbai (Legal Adviser)
Legal Practitioner and Managing Solicitor of Infinite Law Attorneys, a law firm with its head office in Port Harcourt with core areas of expertise in debt recovery, litigation (civil/criminal), corporate, family law, divorce, immigration, property law, labour & employment, advocacy amongst others.
She is a member of various organisations such as:
– IIAS – Legal Adviser
– Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)PH Branch – Member
– NBA PH Human Rights Committee – Member
– NBA Women’s Forum (NBAWF) – Member
– International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) – Member, amongst others
Barrister Ogechi Agbai is extremely passionate about the rights of women and children especially that of the girl child advocacy.
Barrister Chinenye Atuma (Counsel)
Barrister Chinenye Atuma is a litigation lawyer whose duty post involves extensive interaction with law enforcement. She is one of the legal counsels at the International Institute for African Scholars. She is also a part-time faculty at a local university in Nigeria.
