The Travails of Women and Girls in Northern Nigeria: A Human Rights Issue

Abstract

The vulnerability of women and girls in Northern Nigeria is likened to an ‘endangered species’ that struggles daily to survive. That region of the country is notorious in negativities: poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, insecurity and now, blatant abuse of health and reproductive rights of women and girls. This article, hence, exposes the precarity that pervades the region and highlights the factors above i.e., poverty, illiteracy, unemployment etc., and how women and girls have been made escape goats by the socio-cultural, economic and religious establishment in Northern Nigeria. Using statistics and scholarly findings of researchers and literature, the article articulates these factors, which include but not limited to, abuse of the health and reproductive right of women and girls, illiteracy and early marriage and insecurity. The article concludes by calling the government of Nigeria to treat the condition of women and girls in the Northeast as an emergency, by setting up structures headed by or headed by shared leadership roles of women, that will investigate their situations and proffer solutions. An Empowerment Education Fund should be created to provide accessibility for compulsory primary, secondary and even tertiary education to the girl child in Northern Nigeria.