Before 2015
voters will be warming up for yet another opportunity to exercise their franchise in the 2015 polls for the National Assembly, Presidential gubernatorial and state Assembly elections.
The ritual is a constitutional issue which is binding on all the political parties even though disturbing echoes of the 2011 polls are still lingering at the various High Courts of the land.
Hopefully, the Nigerian Constitutional Review Report believed to be in the pipeline may tackle the issue decisional. To move the country forward Nigerians want the panels to prescribe a reasonable time limit within which all pending electoral petitions must be determined by the court of appeal to the Supreme Court.
One of each electoral cases involving the incumbent Governor of Ekiti state, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and his challenger was only on Friday, May 31, 2015 determined by the apex court in favour of the sitting governor.
In reality, the country’s growth in the area of nation building is selective and discriminatory. The massive infrastructural transformations of the environment disguise the true picture. These are tangible aspects of nation building as against the intangible which has much to do with attitudinal changes and
reorientation. For real growth, environmental transformation must be complemented by behaviourial changes and maturity.
The political class has indeed failed this nation. Held in leash and in bondage by greed and insatiability, politicians have preferred the road to infamy to that of honour, credibility and patriotism. It is for this reason that the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA leadership crises which is as old as the history of the political party is still blinking oddly and wastefully being one of the political setups by opponents.
The registration of the merger party, the All Progressive Congress, APC is still on hold due to some subtle political technicalities.
Unfortunately, certain categories of the political class abhor normal competition on a level field as is the case in some of the world’s foremost vibrant democracies like Britain and the United States. In these two countries with two major political parties, victory at the polls could go to either of the political divides without acrimony. The Conservatives or Labour in the case of Britain; the Republicans or Democrats in the US.
However, the most lethal bottleneck along the route to 2015 remains the depopulation of some Northern States by the insurgency of the Islamist Boko Haram. The large movement of Nigerians away from the Boko Haram,
militarized territories down to parts of Southern Nigeria particularly the South-East has induced large scale distortions of the population figures used in the 2011 polls.
INEC must factorize the ugly development into the delimination exercise for the 2015 general elections for national acceptability.
Already, some Nigerians have tended to be jittery and restive over what may become of the 2015 polls. They are right to feel this way. The contention is that if the recently conducted elections into the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF which polarized the body is a guide to the looming 2015 polls, only the special divine intervention could save Nigeria and Nigerians from what they wished themselves.
Effects of Early Marriage
I wish to use this opportunity to sensitive readers out there to have a prior knowledge about the dangers inherent in “Early marriage” otherwise known as “child marriage”
Early marriage or child marriage is a situation where children are given in matrimony before marriageable ages. It is usually associated with arranged marriage. In most cases only one marriage partner is a child usually the female due to the importance placed upon female virginity. These girls are usually at a great disadvantage because they are considered in some places as liabilities only good for marriage and for that they are denied sound education which destroy their career.
Child marriage most times are influenced by the monetary power and of the male spouse, at times families use child marriage to cement political or financial ties to the disadvantage of their female daughter for selfish reasons.
The betrothal is considered a binding contract upon the families and their children. That type of marriage always see the poorer people marrying out their daughter into a rich home in order to use her “bride price” settle debt in the home. The money paid as “bride price” is used to train the elder folks in the school and for other things in the home.
In Nigeria, many girls are married out before the age of 15 which is very wrong, some of these girls may not be used to marital live and not ready to settle down and hence they face the turbulence of marriage. The funniest part of it is that most of the men marrying these children are usually men that are old enough to be their fathers.
Imagine a little girl being forced into the bush by her parents, so as to perform marriage rites with a man older than her father in order for the man to help train her younger brothers and parents. Is this not inhuman? Is this not injustice? Why don’t parents consider the dangers they are putting these girls into? For Christ sake, these girls are too young to be tied down in marriage they end up suffering from different kinds of diseases which may be either premature births, still births, sexually transmitted diseases (including cervical cancer) and atimes malaria.
Child marriage has to stop. I think its high time the government join hands with NGOs to and enact marriageable age laws at least make a law allowing marriage from age of 18-22 as minimum so as to protect the lives of our young girls by reducing the high maternal mortality rate of the children wives or high mortality rates of the infants who are the victims of circumstance.
Olivia Uzoma
