CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Education is an inalienable right of all citizens irrespective of gender, age and nationality. According to FGN (2004), Education is seen as an instrument par excellence which equips an individual with the right skills, knowledge, ability, competence, attitude, behaviour and values in order to function effectively in society. Education is equally a means to an end which assist citizens of a nation to develop their full potentials and capacity to contribute to societal development as well as to attain sustainable livelihood. Micheal (2011) described education as a key to a successful living, especially girl - child education. Girl- child education is a catch - all- term for a complex set of issues and debates surrounding primary, secondary, tertiary and health education in particular for girls and women (Omede & Agahiu, 2016). The authors noted that denying the girl child access to education implies making her a dysfunctional member of the society. A girl child by definition is a biological female offspring from birth to eighteen years of age.
Globally, about 121 million children are out of school, 65 million are girls with over 80 percent of these girls in Sub-Sahara Africa (UNICEF as cited in Omede & Agahiu, 2016).
Successive governments in Nigeria have over the years made concerted efforts in a bid to bridge the gender disparity on education in different ways. These include: the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Right Act of 1948; the Nigerian Child Rights Act of 2003 which states that a female child who becomes pregnant before completing her education shall be given opportunity after delivery to continue with education on the basis of her individual ability; the establishment of Universal Basic Education Act in 2004; the establishment of Education for All Goals (EFA), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), among others. These declarations have helped the present generation of girls to have better educational opportunities than their mothers. Recent statistics still showed that despite marked improvement in female enrolment in the country, girls still lack behind in the formal education system particularly in the North and South- South region of Nigeria. The paper therefore, seeks to address the barriers of girl child education in Nigeria and suggest useful strategies for improvement.
The last five centuries, viewed as the age of modernity, have been essentially structured by varying historical processes. Significantly, gender and racial categories emerged during this epoch as two fundamental axes for exploiting people and stratifying societies (Oyewumi 2004:1). Eurocentrism, being a hallmark of the ensuing modernity, enabled the creation and imposition of Euro/American cultural hegemony throughout the world. Consequently, male-gender privilege as an essential part of European ethos became enshrined in the culture of modernity. In the quest of comprehending African realities, and indeed, state of gender relations in Nigeria, this global context for knowledge production has become imperative.
At the commencement of colonialism (and, of course, Christianity), rigid binaries about everything including gender perceptions were imposed on the African mind. Thereafter, the woman’s role has come to be limited to sexual and commercial labour; satisfying the sexual needs of men, working in the fields, carrying loads, tending babies and preparing food (Hammond and Jablow 1992:150).
However, the disempowering colonial ‘ideology of domesticity’ as espoused by the practice of ‘housewification’ provided the springboard for women’s educational imbalance in parts of Africa (Gaidzwanwa 1992). As such, the attainment of overall human development in Nigeria is being obliterated by this unevenness in educational accessibility across gender categories (Abdullahi 2000).
There is no doubt that societal recognition to the value of education in the north has been displaced paving way to the ignorance of the people deplorable condition of education, particularly that of the girl-child. This situation arose because of many reasons among which are; socio-cultural and ignorance, economic stagnation characterized by pervasive poverty which has virtually weakened all sectors of development, especially the education sector, and above all inefficient and ineffective implementation of the
