Varsity Don Seeks Laws To Stop Early, Forced Marriages

A professor of Sociology at the University of Abuja, Philomena Ibhade Ozo-Eson, has asked the government to come up with legislations that would punish those involved in child marriages, forced marriages and wife inheritance.

Ozo-Eson stated this in Abuja  while delivering the 43rd inaugural lecture of the university.

She urged the government to enact laws to prevent members of the ruling class from sending their children to foreign schools, and urged parents to give equal attention to their children’s education irrespective of the sex, noting that there is need for girl-child rights law to be implemented and enforced by all states.

She emphasised the need for political, socio -economic policies of Nigeria to be geared towards meeting the basic needs of Nigerians, instead of the current stealing and looting of common resources by a few members of the ruling class.

She said, “Nigeria operates a patriarchal social relation that enforces male domination of females.

Females and males are both conditioned to a pattern of behaviour that underrates females.

“The inferior status of women in a patriarchal Nigeria is taken for granted and reinforced by the various social institutions. Through these institutions, the females are consciously or unconsciously made to internalise inferiority complex through the dehumanising practices against them.

“This, there is the need to correct this yoke, burden of womanhood. The correction should start from the family, then the educational system and the society at large.”

Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, commended the lecturer for being one of the first to incorporate virtual learning into their teaching in the institution’s history.