By Mike Adeyemi
Pre-marital pregnancy among school age girls has been blamed largely for prevalent poverty in the country.
The founder of an Ilorin-based Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Resource Builders Initiative, Abdullahi Abdulrazak stated this on Tuesday during a seminar tagged; “The menace of sexual harassment and teenage pregnancy on our society, held at Adewole Multi-Purpose Hall, Adeta, Ilorin.
According to him, the level of poverty in Nigeria would have been reduced minimally had emphasis been placed on sensitising the teenage girls on time.
“It is unfortunate that while parents who are low income earners could hardly meet up with the economic wellbeing of their children, the uninformed girls would compound the family’s woes through unwanted pregnancy.
“This vicious cycle would definitely revolve to the next generation, because an uninformed mother will beget illiterate children,” he said.
Abdulrazak stressed the urgent need for government at all levels to incorporate sex education into the school curriculum so as to tutor the teenagers on the danger inherent in pre-marital sex.
In her remarks, Dr. Fatimoh Lah, from the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, charged parents on the need to start educate their wards on sex from age 13 to 18.
“Some parents in this part of the clime see sex education as an attempt to damage the moral conscience of a child.
“As a parent, if you fail to teach your children what they ought to know at home, surely they would be taught outside, which could even be late,” she said.
Lah further charged teenage girls to always seek redress at the appropriate quarters anytime they are sexually harassed.
She stated that pre-marital pregnancy in Nigeria is the highest in sub Sahara Africa, particularly in the northern part of the country.
The seminar was attended by students from no fewer than six secondary schools from Adeta and Adewole area of Ilorin.
