By Muhammad Bello Haladu
Education helps men and women claim their rights and realizes their potentials in economic, political and social arena. It is the single most powerful way to exonerate people out of the poverty.
Traditionally and naturally women remained mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives, and are playing a significant and important role in both social phase and home affairs.
Yet, they are not enjoying equal right to quality education as their male counterparts.
Many females in northern part of Nigeria who are academic oriented in different fields of studies are faced with numerous challenges withing and outside the community they lived.
Most men of the northern Nigeria are insisting that it is a female doctor or nurse that will attend to their wives when on labour, yet they can’t enroll any of there daughters to school to study health courses. Some parents will said God forbid, how about marriage?
If she is opportune to be in school, the community will regard her as prostitute and they will be calling her with different sort of names due to the nature of her lectures which demand frequent movement.
Any suitor that come to seek for her marriage will be discourage by the community members, that she can’t make a wife because she is too expose, and if she is already a graduate or a worker, they would say she can’t be controlled because of the nature of her income while her close friends and relatives will regard her as woman with pride and ego because she is not available to them most a time.
If she eventually marries, her in-laws will call her irresponsible for dropping the kids with them while she is on service or duty .
The husband will put so much pressure on her expecting her to be best doctor and also performing like a traditional house wife.
The most painful part is that, she is not even safe in her working place, the administrators will mount pressure on her for either coming late or deny her a maternity leave when she demand. Even her fellow colleagues don’t like working with her due to the excuses she raises. We can’t expect to have female workers to attend to us, our wives, daughters and mothers while we go round condeming them.
Therefore, working or education can’t make a woman worse than she already is. If she had proper upbringing, she had taken that wherever she goes. Support and encouragement are what our female daughters really want weather in school or in working place.
If you are a man marry one, she is not intimidating or stronger than you. All that seriousness is at work, inside, she is still a tender lady.
To be frank, everyone needs a literate female especially health workers in our society, the best we can do is to give them support and help them financially to achieve their goals.
In the final note, as we use our pen to communicate to the world, we still sieze this golden opportunity as a matter of urgency to draw the attention of all relevant and concern bodies to work tiresely and collectively to end the discrimination the mothers of all faces in every human endeavors.
Let restore their valuable image and make them proud of us as their reliable life partners .
Muhammad Bello Haladu writes from the Department of Mass Communication, Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic Bauchi muhammadbello63@yahoo.com
