By Bassey Inyang - Calabar
The Founder and Board Chairperson of Partnership Opportunities for Women Empowerment Realisation (POWER), Mrs. Obioma Liyel Imoke, has urged young people, especially adolescent girls, to be focused on their academics.
The Chairman of POWER who is the wife of the Cross River State Governor said concentrating on their academics will enable them set priorities and boundaries for their lives to enable them grow into responsible and career-driven adults in future.
Mrs. Liyel-Imoke stated this during the combined Stakeholder Rally for the 2013 State of the World Population (SWOP) report launch and the commemoration of the International Day of the Girl Child.
The rally was aimed at raising awareness on the two mutually reinforcing themes of “Adolescent Pregnancy” and “Innovating for Girls’ Education.”
Sharing personal life experiences of how she withstood male advances while growing up, she urged the girls to respect their bodies and to make responsible choices that would shape their lives both now and in the future while avoiding situations that would make them vulnerable to abuse. She revealed her personal mobile number to young girls as a help line when faced with the danger of sexual abuse and molestation even as she cautioned them against abusing the privilege.
She advised young male students to raise their awareness on teenage pregnancy especially with regards to the role they play.
“If you respect your mothers at home, then you’d respect the girls around you”, she said.
The governor’s wife also highlighted the negative effects of teenage pregnancy on young males even if they are not direct bearers of the pregnancy along with the attendant effects of engaging in early and unprotected sexual activities such as contracting sexually transmitted infections.
In the same vein, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) Country Representative for Nigeria, Ms. Victoria Akyeampong, in her remarks, encouraged the young students to take their studies seriously to become great men and women in the future. She advocated girl-child education by calling on all stakeholders to join hands in fighting teenage pregnancy.
The Commissioner for Social Welfare and Community Development, Patricia Enderley, said the rally was aimed at sensitizing all stakeholders including parents /guardians, schools, government and the society on the need to address issues that affect adolescent girls especially teenage pregnancy and child-marriage.
She said that child marriage is a criminal offence, as she called for the empowerment of the girl-child, noting that “when you empower the girl-child, you empower the nation.”
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