ABSTRACT
The
study examined the impact of girl-child rights on education in missionary
secondary schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. The descriptive research design was
used in order to assess the opinions of the respondents using the questionnaire
and the sampling technique. A total of 300 (Three Hundred) respondents (made up
of 150 males and 150 females) were selected and used in this study as the
sample of the study which represented the entire population of the study. Five
research questions were raised in the study and were analyzed together with the
bio-data of the respondents using the simple percentage frequency counts, while
two null hypotheses were formulated and tested using both the Pearson's Product
Moment Correlation Coefficient and the independent t-test statistical tools at
0.05 level of significance. At the end of the data analyses, the following
results emerged: There will be no significant relationship between child’s rights act
and girl-child education in Lagos State, Nigeria and that there will be no
significant gender difference in the education of the Girl-Child due to the
Child’s Rights Act in Lagos State,
Nigeria. With the above results, it is summarized that there is a positive
relationship between Child’s Rights Act and Girl-Child Education in Lagos
State, Nigeria. Based on the above results, it became imperative to recommend
that: Nigerian girl-child should be sensitized about their rights. Many
of them do not know their Fundamental Human Right such as rights to education,
right that could allow them to challenge and reject all conditions that seek to
make them inferior, subjugate them, oppress and deny them equal access to
policy and decision-making positions.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
PAGES
Title page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgement iv
Abstract v
Table of contents vi
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background to the
Study 1
Statement of the
Problem 11
Research Questions 13
Research Hypotheses 13
Significance
of the Study 13
Scope of the Study 13
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction 16
Concept and Nature of education 16
Aims of Education 18
The CRA and the
Education of Girl-Children 21
Strategies and
Approaches for a Right Perspective ECCD 23
in Nigeria
Theoretical Framework 27
Concept of the
Girl-child Education 30
Western Education 30
Right to Education 32
Criteria for the
Right to Education 33
Objectives of
Girl-Child Right Education 34
Purpose of
Girl-Child Education in Nigeria 36
Benefits of
Girl-Child Education 36
National Policy on Education on the Girl-child Right Education42
Challenges to
Girl-Child Education in Nigeria 43
Male Preferences 43
Traditional
Practices, Religious Beliefs and their Effects on 44
the Girl-Child
Perpetual Ignorance
and Misconception 44
Strategies FOT
Improving the Girl-Child Education in Nigeria 47
On the remedial
measures 49
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction 50
Research Design 50
Population 50
Sample and Sampling
Techniques 50
Instrumentation 51
Validity and
reliability of Instruments 52
Method of Data
Analyses 53
CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
OF
RESULTS
Introduction 54
Presentation
of Demographic Data 54
Testing
Of Hypotheses 62
Summary of Findings 64
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY,
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction 65
Summary of the Study 65
Conclusions 67
Recommendations 67
Suggestions for Further Research 70
References 72
Appendix 79
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Primary education started in Nigeria in the 1840s with the advent
of the missionaries and the traditional system of governance. The traditional
rulers and chiefs who had the direct contact with the colonialists were very
reluctant to send their children and wards to the early schools established
because they were not sure of the motive of the British. Instead, the
traditional rulers and chiefs sent children of slaves and others who were'
serving them as house-helps to these schools. It was after these; slaves became
literate and were employed by the missionaries as clerks and interpreters that
it dawned on the traditional rulers that it could after all be beneficial to
send their children to school (Adeleke, 1997).
According to Ayodele (2000), the traditional education in Nigeria
is such that the girl-child is made to understudy her mother while the boys are
made to also understudy their fathers in their chosen professions. The
expectation therefore, was that the culture of the people never encouraged the
girl-child to do more than help out in cooking food and doing other domestic
chores. Over time therefore, everybody imbibed the culture and the girl-child
education suffered tremendously. Informal education was what the culture
requires to train and prepare both men and women for survival. What is known as
formal education was introduced to Nigeria with the advent of British rule and
the coming of Christian Missionaries to Nigeria.
According to Awolowo (1981), education is that process of physical
and mental culture whereby a man's personality is developed to the fullest. To
him, an educated man is one whose personality is fully developed, he never
feels inferior to anyone, no matter the colour, stature or strength of such a
person or individual, he or she is self-reliant, and will resist any form of
embarrassment until the last breath in him is exhausted. Fafunwa (1979: 26),
defines education as 'the aggregate of all the processes by which a child or
adult develops the abilities, attitudes and other forms of behaviour which are
of positive value to the society in which he or she lives, that is to say, it
is a process of disseminating knowledge either to ensure social control or to
guarantee rational direction of the society or both.
Over the years, the girl-child has been grossly neglected (Oleribe
2002). Girl-child are left out in decision-making, utilized at homes without
due remunerations, kept as home keeper and never allowed to earn a living for
herself used by men as wife, by children as mother, by other women as
house-girl and by men as bed-mate (Fishel, 1998; Oleribe, 2002; Sarwar and
Sheikh, 1995). She has never ever been given a chance to make her own choices.
According to Ebigbo and Abaga (1990), in Nigeria, the rate of
child abuse and child hawking has assumed a worrisome and alarming proportion.
He further noted that in Ibadan, Ondo and Ogun metropolis, it is a daily
occurrence to see children, especially the girl-children below 14 years,
hawking wares and other products along the roadsides thereby depriving them
going to school.
Christian Missionary Society (CMS) started both primary and
secondary education in Nigeria. With this, even the girls that were opportuned
to go to school got pregnant because of lack of self-discipline. They were
forced to get married and this led them to bid good-bye to their educational
careers. But the ugly trend and reluctance to send the girl-child to school
because of cultural factors, which hither-to affected the growth of the
girl-child education was checked as the Roman Catholic Mission (RCM) activities
started in Nigeria in 1948. According to Oyedeji (2001), "The RCM opened
girl's convent school in Abeokuta in 1886, St Agnes College Yaba Lagos for the
training of women teachers in 1933. Soon, there were schools for girls, both
primary and secondary in some other parts of southern Nigeria".
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is no doubt the
most widely accepted framework for action with respect to children. It is the
most widely ratified human rights instrument. The CRC guides international
efforts to identify the continual life conditions that put very young children
at risk and pre-empt their healthy and optimum growth and
development/education. The Convention can be used to actively promote the
quality of care through policies and practices that young children need and are
entitled to as part of their basic human rights (Angeles-Bautista, 2001). But twelve
years after the ratification of the Convention and eleven years after the World
Summit for Children, the Childhood Care Development and Education first
presented at the OMEP Nigeria, 2001 National Conference, held at the University
of Ibadan. The programme continues to face challenges. It is the duty of all
those responsible for the care, development and education of young children to
continue to remind governments and state parties of their obligations towards
them (Bellamy, 2001).
Nigeria has ratified several human rights instruments including
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its
Optional Protocol on individual communications, the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the
International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination (CERD), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its Optional Protocol, and the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Nigerian child protection policy
is rooted in the Child Rights Act, which President Olusegun Obasanjo signed
into law in 2003 (UNICEF Nigeria, 2007). This defines all persons under the age
of 18 years as children, outlining specific protections and prohibitions
necessary to meet the mandate of providing all care necessary for child
survival, well-being, education and development. The Act has been passed on a
state level by 24 out of 36 Nigerian states (Defence for Children
International, 2010). It covered child trafficking, child labour and child
abuse, at the highest levels. A plethora of other policies and programmes, at
national and international levels supplement this framework and provide tools
for implementation.
Education is one of the fundamental rights of individuals. Article
26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the
United Nations General Assembly in December, 1949 stipulated that:
• Everyone has the right to education. This
shall be free at least in the elementary and primary stages.
• Elementary education shall be compulsory
while technical and professional education shall be made generally available.
• Higher education shall be equally
accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• Parents have a prior right to choose the
kind of education that shall be given to their children (Nwangwu, 1976).
Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) in 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations has adopted numerous
treaties, declarations and conventions concentrated on human rights including
the right to education. The General Assembly refers most items relating to
human rights to its Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian and
cultural matters (Anynwu, 1990). The human rights of children are fully
articulated in one treaty: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC) offering the highest standard of protection and assistance for
children under any international instrument. The approach of the Convention is
holistic, which means that the rights are indivisible and interrelated, and
that all articles are equally important. The CRC defines a "child" as
everyone less than 18 years of age "unless under the law-applicable to the
child, majority is attained earlier."
The World Summit for Children also held in 1990 re-emphasized that
all children should have access to basic education by the year 2000 as well as
increasing female literacy. Following the World Convention on Education for the
Female Child (WCEFC), the Dakar World Education Forum (WEF) was held where new
sets of education goals were stipulated to be attained by the year 2015. The
goals include, amongst others, ensuring that all children, especially girls, in
difficult circumstances and from ethnic minorities have access and complete
free and compulsory primary education of good quality; eliminating gender
disparities in pre-tertiary education by 2005, and migrating to gender parity
in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls full and equal access to
basic education of good quality. Similarly, the Millennium Development Goals 2
and 3 reiterated the achievement of universal primary education and the promotion
of gender parity and women empowerment respectively. Based on the developments,
the Universal Basic Education Act (2004) and the Childs Rights Act (2003)
documented that Nigeria government shall provide free, compulsory and universal
basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age.
Access to education for girls is also affirmed in the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), agreed in 2000 following the Millennium Summit
and intended to be achieved by 2015. MDG2 is to "Achieve universal primary
education" and MDG3 is to "Promote gender equality and empower
women". The girl-child education has been a burning and continuous issue
in the developing countries of which Nigeria is one.
In spite of the fact that improvement and ordering of access to
education has been a major goal of African Government since in
the 1960s, the history of educational provision to date is a catalogue of
enduring inequality between boys and girls and men and women. Again, though
educational opportunities have indeed greatly expanded for all children in
Nigeria, there is still an under-representation of females in schools, showing
a disparity in educational access and achievement widened to the growing
disadvantages of females (Gender Training Manual, 1999).
Nigeria is a signatory to many international conventions aimed at
bringing the gender imbalance in education, yet the girl-child lags
conspicuously behind. The 1984 Universal Development of Human rights states
that "every person has a right to education". Article seven (7) of
(UNICEF, 1995) and the right of the child also states "every child (male
or female) is entitled to receive free and compulsory basic education and equal
opportunity for higher education based on individual ability."( Ayande,
1990).
In 1990, the world Conferences on Education for All (EFA) held in
Jomtien, Thailand, declared among others, that every person shall be able to
benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning.
Despite the concerted efforts at national and international levels to bring
about gender equality between boys and girls in many areas and particularly in
education, in equality still persist worldwide. (Mamma in Eze, 2011), captures
the fate of the girl child, "it is a well known fact that many parents in
Africa give preferential treatment to boys especially in matters concerning
education. It is really sad that up till now in some societies, girls are still
made to live in their shadows, denied education and other rights, and socially
exploited. What is more disturbing, is that even the passage of the child
rights act into law in 2003 by Law makers in Nigeria on the issue of the
girl-child education has not been fully addressed (Ayodele, 2000).
The child rights law seeks to facilitate the realization and
protection of the rights of all children in the country regardless of their
tribe, gender, and parents' status. There is continuing national gender
disparity in basic education enrollment, retention and completion against the
girl child. -Available statistics revealed that we have about 10 million
children in Nigeria, and 60 percent are girls who are presently not in school
(Jackson and Walwana, 2009). The girl-child education has been a burning and
continues issue in the developing countries of which Nigeria is one. The
girl-child education can be compared to a coin which has two sides. This is
because in the northern part of Nigeria, the girl-child is not encouraged to go
to school, whereas in the Southern part of the country, reverse is the case.
But culturally women are confined to their traditional roles with lots of
sanctions imposed on them either by custom, norms or religion (Onyeaku, 2001).
It has been revealed that the girl-child education has suffered a
lot in the society as cited by Mohammed (2008). This has been the case since
independence in 1960. In the sixties, the situation was really break because
out of 10 school children that went to school beyond primary 4, only one was a
girl. Missionary activities started in certain parts of northern Nigeria before
the turn of the century. In 1860s, Baikie of Christian Missionary Society
founded a settlement at Lokoja. A school was opened the same year and
instruction was given in Hausa and Nupe languages right from the beginning. The
girl-child education in Northern states has been lagging behind all this while
in terms of education one can wonder why the situation should persist like this
in respects of the light of the clear provisions in National Policy on
Education that education is a right for every Nigerian Child, The National
Policy on Education (2004) also has as its 5th objective, the building of a
"bright land full of opportunities for all individual". Northern
states in Nigeria as a whole, there is the presence of discrimination against
girl-child in the access to basic education. The Northern region which is so
much dominated by the Hausas who have no interest in girl-child education as it
was viewed exclusively for the male child. The girl-child was not only denied
formal education, but also the Qur'anic education. The few girls that attempted
school during western education after the amalgamation in 1914 did that under
duress.
The problems of the lack of girl-child education emanates from the
root of:
• The culture of the
northerners
• Religion
• Poverty
• Weak father figures and
ignorant mothers who knew no better
• Early marriage and
Placement of priority on the Boy-Child etc.
The recent report to the African Union on the rights and
welfare of the Nigerian child showed that about 6,000 children are in prison
and detention centres across the country. Girls make up less than 10 per cent
and they mainly come into contact with the law as a result of criminal acts
committed against them such as rape, sexual exploitation and trafficking.
Statement of the Problem
The panacea of poverty, family disorganization and. societal true
development has suffered several sets backs over the years due to
socio-cultural and economic factors. Till date, girls constitute the largest
population of illiterate children worldwide. Extreme poverty, mass illiteracy,
large scale ignorance, high maternal mortality and fertility rates, child
wastages and lack of access to health, education and social services may sound
far and fictional to many indigenes and visitors.
The problems of girl-child education have been in existence since
the introduction of British rule in Nigeria. Parents were very reluctant to
send their female children to school. This was partly because the traditional
system of education often dictates that the place of the girl or woman in the
society is in the home. Many children, who should be in school, particularly
girls, were involved in unpleasant acts such as child labour, child abuse,
child trafficking, prostitution and were all deprived from Child’s Rights Act
decree law enforcement. More often than not, these children were subjected to
inhuman treatment as some suffer physical abuse, economic exploitation and
denial of opportunity to education. Most of them were under-fed and if they are
fortunate enough to be in school, they are hardly given any time to play and
rest properly.
Mohammed (2008) opined that most girl-children are engaged in
either hawking goods on the street for
their parents, and at some other times, the girl-children were engaged in early
marriages as a result of parental poverty and financial problems where some
parents cannot afford to pay school fees for their many children. In some
families, parents who have many children select the boys and educate them, thus
leaving the girl-children untrained and uneducated. Not only that, the
girl-child has suffered enough discrimination among siblings and parents, and
even the society and this has affected her education negatively. For instance,
in many African traditions and customs, the girl-child is regarded as inferior
to the boy-child, and this has made many African parents to devote more
attention in training the boy-child than the girl-child.
The above identified problems, gave rise to the examination of the
impact of child’s Rights Act on the education of the girl-child among students
in Missionary Senior Secondary Schools in Mainland Local Government Area of
Lagos State, Nigeria.
Research Questions
The following research questions were raised in this study:
(1) What
are the cultural-factors affecting the girl-child education in Lagos State,
Nigeria?
(2) What
are the most perceived effects of lack of girl-child education by the students in Lagos
State, Nigeria?
(3) How do
students perceive the influence of child Rights Act on girl-child education in
Lagos State, Nigeria?
(4) What
are the solutions for implementing the Girl-Child’s Rights Act in Lagos State,
Nigeria?
Hypotheses
(1) There will be no significant relationship between
child’s rights act and girl-child education in Lagos State, Nigeria.
(2) There will be no significant
gender difference in the education of the Girl-Child Due to Child’s Rights Act
in Lagos State, Nigeria.
Significance of the
Study
Students
would be able to find the results of this study very important for them to use
as a guide towards their works on the issues concerning child’s Rights Act and
Girl-Child education in Nigeria in general and Lagos State in particular,
especially students in the missionary secondary schools in the state. This is
because the issues of the education of the girl-child are very vital issues
that need to be paid attention to, due to the importance of the education of
the girl-child in any Nigerian family.
The
teachers in our secondary schools, especially in Lagos State, would be able to
see the outcomes of this study as very important because they would have
correct insights about the importance of training the girl-child in the
Nigerian families.
This
study will be beneficial to the government, especially the Ministry of
Education, because it will assist them to be in the-know concerning the
important role the education of the girl-child play in any nation of the world,
particularly in Nigeria and Lagos State.
This
study will be also be very beneficial to the society who will be in good
position to have fair knowledge of the training of the girl-child in Nigeria.
Scope of the Study
This study examined the relationship between Child’s Rights Act
and Girl-child Education in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study covered all the
teachers and students in the Missionary Secondary Schools in the Mainland Local
Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. This study was limited to access for
the panacea of the Girl Child Education, Missionary Schools in Lagos State;
it did not take into consideration the other crucial issues in girl-child
education like retention and equity, enrollment, quality and achievement in
school subjects. It's also restricted to missionary schools in Lagos state
only. The major reason to conduct this research in only Lagos state was due to
time and financial constraints.
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