When
I was fourteen, I bought my first padded bra. It was a Marks and
Spencer t-shirt bra with foam in the cups instead of the lace that I was
used to. I went from being poorly endowed to a little less poorly
endowed. In school uniform, the transformation
was unnoticeable but on
the weekends, wearing a T-shirt or a cotton dress, you could see the
beginnings of a figure.
When I was fourteen, I’d had my period
for three years. It came in a rush of blood at eleven. We’d had the sex
talk at school. Then I had an even more detailed and awkward sex talk
with my mother, who is a doctor. As if on cue, a few days later, the
bloody period arrived. There was a gap of about six months between my
first period and my second, in which time I went about announcing that I
had reached menopause. I was wrong. I soon discovered that this
bloodletting happened once a month and in theory, it meant that I who
was a child, could also have a child.
When I was fourteen I was tall for my
age. In fact, at twenty-five, and 5ft 7, I am only an inch taller than I
was then. On meeting me, people always assumed I was older. I’d have
people guess as old as twenty-one. But you couldn’t have a conversation
with me for five minutes and retain that guess. My worries and concerns
were childish: boys, pimples, exams in no particular order.
Boys, or the lack of them, was a serious
worry. At fourteen, I moved to an all girls’ school in Winchester.
There was an all boys’ school just fifteen minutes walk away with
hundreds of boys to choose from but alas, I didn’t seem to be their
type. I was not blonde or blue-eyed enough. I waited patiently for the
summer holidays, when my friends from Nigeria would come and I would
have eight weeks to try and secure that most wonderful of things: a
boyfriend.
A boyfriend not a husband.
In case my dad is reading this, I must let you know that I didn’t succeed.
A boyfriend not a husband.
In case my dad is reading this, I must let you know that I didn’t succeed.
Pimples were another trauma. In my
secondary school in Nigeria, a teacher touted washing your face with
urine as a cure for spots. I didn’t go that far but I tried everything
else. Dudu Osun, toothpaste, Robb, Pro-Active, Clearasil, Neutrogena,
the list was endless.
And of course exams. When I was fourteen
I was in school. My main purpose was to wake up in the morning and go
to class and study and excel. Like the students sang in Sister Act 2,
‘If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you better wake up
and pay attention.’ Exams were important. Through passing annoying
things like my GCSEs and my A-levels, I could get to my dreams.
When I was fourteen, my worries were
childish, but my dreams were as big as any adult’s. I wanted to be a
writer. I wanted to be a politician. I wanted to be a singer. And nobody
said no to me. Nobody put any obstacles in my way. Nobody clipped the
wings of my childhood by forcing a husband on me.
I
was shocked and incensed to read of the case of Habiba Isa who at
fourteen is now the ‘wife’ of the sixty four year old Emir of Katsina,
Alhaji Abdulmumuni Usman. There are allegations that she was abducted
and forcibly converted to Islam. Her marriage was declared valid on
three grounds. First, she had reached puberty, evidenced by
menstruation. Secondly and thirdly, in front of a council of men, old
enough to be her fathers and grandfathers, she had denied being forced
to marry the Emir and being forced to convert to Islam.
Horrifying, as it seems, there are
actually conditions under which the marriage of a fourteen-year-old girl
can be legal in present day Nigeria. Under customary law, there is no
age limit for marriage. With the consent of the child and parental
consent, the marriage is valid. Under Islamic law, once a Muslim child
reaches puberty and has the consent of their father or male relative, a
marriage is valid. This means that if indeed, Habiba was not abducted or
forcefully converted and had her father’s consent, then her marriage
would be legal. The Constitution, the supreme law of the country, the
only document that can supersede cultural and religious convention, is
silent on what is a correct marriageable age.
The Child’s Rights Act passed in 2003
prohibited child marriage (S.21) but sadly, only 26 out of 36 states
have adopted this act. Nigeria has ratified the international treaty on
the Convention of the Right of the Child and the African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child, both of which state that anyone below
18 is a child. This would imply that the country does not sanction the
marriage of children but until there is a constitutional amendment and
the constitution speaks unequivocally on the matter of marriageable age,
anybody can decide in their house that twelve is old enough to marry.
Where are our lawmakers? Ben Murray
Bruce (Bayelsa East), Dino Melaye (Kogi West), Rẹmi Tinubu (Lagos
Central), Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom West), Mustapha Bukar (Katsina
North), Abu Ibrahim (Katsina South), Umaru Kurfi (Katsina Central),
Mallam Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central), Rose Oko (Cross River North),
Gbolahan Dada (Ogun West): where are you?
A woman getting married is cause for
celebration, a Bellanaija feature and an instagram hashtag. A fourteen
year old girl being ‘married’ is a travesty and causes the creation of
another type of hashtag. When will we stop having to use hashtags to
free the girls of Nigeria. #BringBackOurGirls. #FreeEse and now Habiba.
#WhenIWas14 I was a child not a bride.
***
You can join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #WhenIWas14 by telling us where you were at 14.
No comments:
Post a Comment