By Sadiya Ahmad Musa
Early marriage simply refers to the situation where by a young couples got a legal relationship as husband and wife.
One of the major benefits of early marriage is that the two people have no major expectations. This is their new experience. They build their family life brick by brick, they don’t have years of hope, ups and downs, understanding what the perfect marriage is, etc.
Young people who marry for the first time in their life are free of ‘baggage’. This can be a great thing for a new relationship that will grow, blossom and bloom if the two people bring their love into each other’s life. This gives more opportunities for a stress-free marriage that could last for many years.
Young people can develop together, grow together, explore each other’s character and discover personalities, early marriage can be a great path for both partners who have a unique chance to grow from youth into adulthood side by side.
Some of the challenges faced by those working to reduce child marriage include: low public awareness of the illegal nature of child marriage, and of the consequences of child marriagegaps in service delivery and ineffective response mechanismslack of trust in authorities among rural and ethnic minorities communities.
The Solutions to early marriage is education, because education plays a critical role in keeping girls safe from child marriage. In fact, the longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to be married before age 18 and have children during her teenage years.
Every girl has the right to decide her own future, but not every girl knows this that’s why empowering girls is very crucial to ending child marriage.
Parents and community leaders are often responsible for deciding when and whom a girl marries. In many traditional communities, it’s believed that marriage keeps girls safe, protected and economically provided for by their husbands.Thus, Change is possible if we work together to end what is considered ‘normal’ for millions around the world.
SADIYA AHMAD MUSA, WRITES FROM DEPARTMENT OF MASS COMMUNICATION, ABUBAKAR TATARI ALI POLYTECHNIC BAUCHI.
