I have often wondered why Mental Health Day and the Day of the Girl Child fall on the same day, October 10th. Commemorative days are important, because they provide opportunities for grassroots mobilisation, high-level advocacy, sensitisation and awareness raising and media visibility. Where appropriate, these events also serve to amplify the voices of survivors. The reason why I have felt uneasy about these two issues falling on the same day, is the possibility that one might drown out the other, especially if there is a competition for media attention and the presence of key policy-makers. Some might argue that the target audiences are different, so there should not be a concern about divided attention and focus. I know believe that as long as these events fall on the same day, we need to keep making the connections between the two.
A few years ago, when I was First Lady of Ekiti State, I was part of a delegation that visited a women’s prison in a State in Northern Nigeria. One of the women appealed to us for help. She was married at fourteen and when she was sixteen, her husband married another wife. She murdered the child of her co-wife because she was jealous. There was another woman there who had murdered her husband when she was seventeen. How do girls this age find themselves in these kinds of circumstances? Should they have been navigating the dynamics of polygamous households at that age or in school? How does a girl who is still a child become a cold-hearted murderer? What are the drivers for this? Are our own safe, treasured and valued daughters who got to school with glossy hair and white socks faced with the same circumstances? In discussions with my colleagues afterwards, there was a consensus that nothing good comes from taking a girl’s life away from her. I saw a video last week, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. The Somali government has just ratified the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, becoming the 52nd African State to do so. The provisions of this law made the legal age of marriage 18 in Somalia. There was an uproar in some religious circles. The video I watched featured an adult Somali man, who expressed his outrage that the government had committed an unforgiveable sin by going against the teachings of Islam. He was so worked up he was weeping. An adult male was shedding tears because men like him would no longer have the right to marry underage girls. The video also showed images of girls as young as 12 side by side with their ‘husbands’ who looked old enough to be their grandfathers.
According to the African Child Policy Forum, the minimum age of marriage in most African countries is 18, with the exception of those who have a lower age for girls than boys such as Burkina Faso (17 for girls, 20 for boys), Democratic Republic of Congo (15 for girls and 18 for boys), Mali (16 for girls and 18 for boys) Niger (15 for girls and 18 for boys) and Sudan (age of puberty for girls (which could therefore be as young as 11) and 10 for boys for Islamic marriages and 13 for girls and 15 for boys for non-Islamic marriages. It is baffling how anyone would think that a 10- or 15-year-old boy is old enough to be a husband, regardless of the age of his ‘wife’. It is also interesting to note that most predominantly Muslim countries in North Africa such as Morrocco, Egypt, Libya and Algeria, all have 18 years as their minimum age of marriage for girls. In Nigeria, the Child Rights Act was passed by the National Assembly in 2003, and this pegs the minimum age of marriage at 18. For years, this was fiercely resisted by clerics and legislators, and domestication at State level was slow. Attempts to include this in constitutional reforms failed, till eventually, by the end of 2023, 34 out of 36 States in Nigeria had domesticated the Child Rights Act, twenty years after it was passed. In June 2000, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum declared a State of Emergency against Sexual and Gender Based Violence. This led to the expedited domestication of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act of 2015 as well as the Child Rights Act. This is the year 2025, and we are still debating the fact that girls need to be in school and not in the bedrooms of their ancestors. Religion and culture should not be an excuse. Too many young lives have been ruined by allowing girls who can barely look after themselves assume the role of wives and mothers. On moral, health, social justice, and common-sense grounds, girls need to be allowed to grow into women with dignity and hope, and not thrust into a life of servitude, and guaranteed poverty. There is unfortunately, a strong link between mental health and the well-being of the Girl-Child. A girl who grows up with emotional, physical, sexual and economic violence, will become a woman with limited potential and opportunities. She will give birth to children who will also go through mostly the same experiences, creating a cycle of generational suffering and poverty. Whenever we commemorate Mental Health Day, let us also give consideration to those who have circumstances or choices forced upon them, hereby predisposing them to poor mental health outcomes. As we advocate for the Girl-Child, let us not forget that majority of them live in isolated rural areas and their chances of breaking the inevitable cycle are slim, unless we intervene in intentional ways. We do have legal and policy frameworks through which we should be able to hold our government at all levels accountable, but we also need to fill in the many gaps. Our Mental Health challenges are real, they are not exaggerated, and the lives of our girls living in villages and farmsteads is vastly different from the experiences of our polished, articulate, and ambitious daughters in the big cities. We can do a combination of the following:
Advocate for the implementation of the Child Rights Act where it has been domesticated, with reports to the public on progress and challenges.
Advocate for a Mental Health Law/Policy in your State, as well as the required resources for implementation.
Support organisations that work on these issues around you with donations, by volunteering or offering professional services pro bono.
Raise awareness. Be a crusader. Set an example and practice what you preach.Be a whistleblower. If you see something, do something. Why would you be a guest at the ‘wedding’ of a thirteen-year-old?
Be a reliable mentor for both girls and boys. It is tiresome to have the same conversations year in year out. However, being tired or giving up is not an option. As long as there are those out there who lack the empathy, decency and compassion to allow children be children (this applies to ALL religious tendencies) we will not stop pushing back and we will not stop protecting our daughters.
Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi is a Gender Specialist, Leadership Coach, Policy Advocate and Writer. She is the Founder of Abovewhispers.com, an online community for women. She can be reached at BAF@abovewhispers.com