As part of the activities planned out for YAG for the month of January, a video screening exercise on HIV/AIDS was scheduled to be shot at the universities surrounding the FCT, starting with the University of Abuja. The video screening exercise was aimed at sharing a video and the challenges faced by young people living with the virus, mostly because the stigma leveled against young people and people infected and living with the virus has become a thing of great concern for most organizations working with HIV/AIDS.

Though the event started a bit late due to a clash in the timing with another event, the turn out was so great, as there was about 200 students present. The video that was shown was about a HIV positive youth, named Gloria, who has been discriminated against, both by her parents and the community just because she was diagnosed to be with the virus.

The community acted by refusing her admission into the university just because she was positive, and her parents I think has been in denial of the fact that she is positive, and to them, the best way to react is by total denial to their child not minding the psychological, social and mental effects.

What was so interesting about the whole event was the number of students and the level of young people’s interest in what we had to offer and say, and the roles they in turn could play in reducing the level of stigmatization leveled out to HIV positive persons. Also, defenses were been made against and for discrimination, as a student stood up to defend the issue of Gloria’s refusal into the university, which to him apparently is a good thing for other young people in the universities who engage in sexual escapades, but in defense of the issue another student stood up and defended it saying it should not be done, since we are to be empathic towards people living with the virus.

At the end, condoms were been distributed to the students, and signatures were gotten of young people in favor of the anti-stigmatization bill, which sits in the National Assembly, waiting to be passed into law.

Let’s stop stigmatization, and love persons with HIV, it heals faster.

Coming from a part of the world where the female folks are most times regarded and treated as inferior to male, because as most they say, “we were created from the man and hence subject to the man’s wishes and demands”, even when they go against our own wishes and demands as females and  human being. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that the female folks are in any way superior to their male counterparts, l only mean our rights and demands sometimes if not all the time should be seen as equals.

Aisha a 15 year old young girl, is one in a million cases of forced-early marriages, a case that is predominant in the northern part of Nigeria. Aisha as a child grew up attending a UBE (Universal Basic Education) scheme school; a scheme established to provide free basic education to all citizens but has not met up with this provision hence charges and levies to children in the schools. Aisha tried to put in her best in school, because she had a curious and inquisitive mind, with the hopes of one day becoming a teacher to help groom other children. But this hopes were brought to ruins when on one sunny Friday, she returned home from school to find her father with a stranger, and on coming into the house, she heard her father saying to the man “it ace ken an”, meaning “she is the one.” Not knowing what it meant greeted the stranger and went into the house to see her mother.

Life continued for Aisha, until about twenty days later when she returned home from school only to meet the same man in their house, but this time, her mother was also seated with the group, and Aisha was told that she was been given out in marriage, as the man (apparently had some money to play with), had offered her family some money in exchange for her. So there was Aisha, 15 years going on to become a wife to a man thrice her age, and eventually a possible mother at 16 years or maybe less.

Now, at her she is suppose to be a child with rights but apparently a young girl without any privilege or a voice of her own, even when there is a constitution in place which states that everyone has a right to speak and be heard. Being female limits her choices and incapable of making any developmental decisions. Her culture limits her fundamental right as a human being so how do we begin to bridge the gap between culture and a lady’s fundamental human right..

For how long will all these continues, does it mean we don’t have a saying to the right of a women, our hopes and aspiration, dreams and visions being shattered. Its time we speak and refuse to be intimidated by our culture and tradition.

I know of a girl who got pregnant at 13, gave birth and then got pregnant again 3months after her first delivery right under the care of her parents. Her first boyfriend was 16 years old when she got pregnant and the second boy she got pregnant for after her first child was 18 years old.

The second pregnancy had to be aborted and people might be tempted to ask if this 13yr old girl didn’t have parents or access to be informed  

She certainly couldn’t continue school because in Nigeria where she is from, pregnant teenagers are not allowed to continue schooling with their pregnancy, for fear of corrupting the minds of the other students in the school. But just recently, she enrolled for a vocational training tailoring and her mother can’t afford to pay for a Tape Rule and Scissors.

It’s also important that I mention that right now, they feed the baby with Pap and Soaked Garri (Cassava) and when the baby was much younger, he was sucking breast milk from the grandmother who is in her 50’s. Please follow me carefully, I’m going somewhere.

Why on earth will a 13year old get pregnant and in 3months, she’s pregnant again. There is a major issue! Where is the place of Parent child communication especially as it relates to sex? I look at this girl and it hurt me so bad because what it takes to give her a bright future or even a hope is Information, Access to Information. She is only 1 out of millions.

OH GREAT NIGERIA! What does your future hold? If  young people who are supposed to be the leaders of tomorrow and the future of today are falling prey as a result of Lack of Information.

Imagine a world where we can freely talk about sex with our parents without fear of what their response will be, imagine a world where Information is freely disseminated, and imagine a world where young people have the right information to make their own decisions. The possibilities are endless.

Lack of Information is breaking our future! We must take ACTION. This is a call to ACTION for everyone, not only to the government because Change begins ONLY when you DEMAND FOR IT, as charity begins at home

Be the change you u seek. We are World Changers.

A report from the Daily Trust newspaper on the 8^th of October, 2009, has it that 23million youths in Nigeria are “unskilled, unemployed, under-employed and even unemployable.”

This report also captured that a representative of the house confirmed that the country has had no plan for youth development, apart from the National Youth Service Scheme, which engages only literate graduates of the universities. This National scheme of the government is one that is supposed to offer every graduate of the universities under the age of thirty, an opportunity to go on a national service in a state that is different from one that the graduand is already used 2. So after completing a four or five year course, it is expected that you do one year National service. But it is also expected that, while you are serving the nation, you also get some form of work experience which exposes you to the outside world, and with that, some are often retained in that places of primary assignment, providing them with employment.

What drew me to this publication is the number of youths (23 million) that are facing this calamity in the Nigerian scene. You might remember that young people account for 33.6% of the total Nigerian population which is like 47 million of the 140 million people in Nigeria. For a nation as big as Nigeria, not having any plan for the future of the young people who can’t afford an education, definitely puts a question in my heart, and I ask, what is the way forward, because it is not news that young people contribute immensely to the growth and development of any nation, one that is ready to advance in terms of its growth and development, but having almost half of its young population either unemployed or unemployable says so little about us as Nigerians.

You may be tempted to ask, why these youths are unemployable? The answer is very simple; the education standard is very low. In every ramification, it’s nothing to write home about especially in rural communities. If school education is poor, Sexual Reproductive Health information is not even a priority

These are the matters arising and should be addressed.