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According to a national newspaper on Monday, the wife of a state governor in the country recently raised a concern about the increasing number of teen pregnancies and abandoned babies in gutters, dustbins, and other dehumanizing places, as she called it. It has been observed that these mothers are usually victims of rape or those lured into premarital sex with older men. She said, “we founded an interventionist agency, Movement Against Child Abandonment (MACA), which picks and caters for over 53 abandoned babies. Every week, we get calls from offices to pick up babies left in dustbins or very filthy environments.” While this is a laudable, idea we must begin to address some of the root causes of the problem.
Teen pregnancies is one of the major challenges young people face in Nigeria today. A recent report published by Guttmacher institute shows that in 2003, 16% of pregnancies among young girls aged 15-24 are unintended, compared to 10% in 1990. It also found out that over the same period the use of contraceptives methods among sexually active adolescent women in Nigeria had changed very little, from 4% to 8% and this has been as quoted through the research as being caused by a lack of proper information required by the young people. The study also indicates government policies to promote sexual and reproductive health information for Nigerians only exist on paper and has not been successfully implemented.
The need for proper information dissemination on sexual and reproductive health information especially on the methods of contraceptives like the use of condoms will really salvage all of these situations. Government can only salvage the situation through its commitment in budgetary allocation towards adequate programming on sexual and reproductive issues for young people in all communities as we are now experiencing in the south-south state of Nigeria. We require a lot more work, as the race is just beginning................
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by Anatic09
This is one of the reasons we must take action now!