The expulsion of Miss Goddy-Mbakwe, Chiamaka Precious (wonderful name), a third-year student of History and International Studies, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, raised pertinent questions about the survival of the girl-child in a culturally-biased society. Looking at the larger implication for her future, I had wished that the expulsion be reduced to a one or two-year rustication to enable her to take some lessons therein, and, perhaps, pick up the pieces and start again.
Many a time, youthful exuberance, poor parenting and bad exposure tend to taint latent talents. But on a lighter note, if Chiamaka could bully a man in the public without batting an eye, she could be useful in civil rights demonstrations and anti-oppressive government protests on the streets. However, I completely lost empathy for her when another video of hers surfaced online where she tried to smart off the incident without any form of remorse or public display of penitence. Nonetheless, hers is a one-off case.
While thinking about the girl-child, I curiously moved to Chapter 11 (My Home Front: My Life with Maryam) of the newly released IBB’s autobiography, ‘A Journey in Service,’ to find out what made the late Mrs. Maryam Babangida thick as a girl-child. According to IBB, “… I admired her greatly for her reserved nature and the fact that she was well brought up…I could not have made a better choice.” That nature and nurture combination affected Maryam’s worldview and proactiveness in managing people, first, as the president of Nigeria Army Officers’ Wives’ Association (NAOWA), when the husband was Chief of Army Staff in 1983, and later as a ‘go-getter’ First Lady. Undoubtedly, she set a benchmark for successive wives of Presidents and governors in Nigeria.
Beyond Chiamaka’s shameful manners, an interesting development involving another girl-child spoke volumes about the place of modesty, contentment and responsible upbringing in character formation. Indeed, the down-to-earth and appreciative virtues of ex-corps member from Cross River State, Miss Arat Abam, is not only praiseworthy but also inspiring. As soon as she passed out from NYSC and returned to her hometown in Ugep, Cross River State, she decorated her father with the NYSC uniform, arranged a lone march past and gave a formal salute to her father in front of the family’s thatched-roof house. The video clip went viral and caught the attention of Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State, who directed his team to look out for her home address through where she served in Bayelsa State. The governor was moved to reward such public show of gratitude at a time when most youngsters are living fake lives.
The young graduate was not ashamed of her lowly background. She paraded dignity without the sickening sense of entitlement that is common nowadays. Neither did she take for granted her father Mr. Ubi Obono Abam’s deprivations and sacrifices to put her through a university education. She was proud of her father’s investment in a girl-child, and for her the world would hear it. And as a great enabler, social media made it a national sensation. The little thing she did made a whole lot of difference and gave her away as a proud daughter of the family. Her phone, unlike Chiamaka’s, did not put her in trouble. Instead of attracting unpleasant comments from netizens, she unwittingly demonstrated native intelligence that earned her accolades and changed the family’s material condition.
Thus, despite being from another state, Governor Umo Eno, out of his large heart, built and donated a well-furnished three-bedroom solar-powered bungalow for her father, noting that “the moral lesson behind what that young woman did is to go back to that (thatch) house and make her father proud.” The gesture is in tandem with the late UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s saying, “There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.” A late sage from my hometown once told me that the girl-child, no matter the distance of marriage, has a greater tendency of taking care of her parents than the male-child.
The story of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistan girl-child and a co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17, is instructive here. She is the youngest Nobel laureate. By accident of birth, she comes from a village where girls were banned from going to school. In fact, the birth of a male child was celebrated with gunshots, but that of the girl-child was received with mixed feelings. This affected the name given to her. Typical of the biblical Jabez, Malala means, ‘grief-stricken’ or ‘sad’.
However, with the encouragement of her father, an educationist and a great advocate of girl-child education and women’s rights, Malala mustered courage to speak against the ills of stopping girl-child education. She was deeply pained the day she saw school-age children in a garbage dump, sorting out something to sell to earn money, instead of being in school. Drawing inspiration from a quote in Paulo Coelho’s book, ‘The Alchemist’, “When you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it”, she internationalized the struggle through blogging for reputable news media such as BBC and the New York Times. The Taliban marked her out for elimination, but she was not cowed. Her life was almost snuffed out in a targeted shooting while returning in a school bus one day in October 2012. That incident was a silver lining. The goodwill across the globe became overwhelming. After her discharge from the hospital, Malala said, “I realized that what Taliban has done was to make my campaign global.” She turned a global voice against girl-child disempowerment and extended the frontiers of girl-child education beyond Pakistan. In Nigeria, the likes of Dora Akunyili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Chimamanda Adichie are good examples. It is heartwarming to note that the 2024 ThisDay Young Global Leaders had proud daughters like Olori Ivie Atunwase III, Jennifer Adighije, Neya Uzor-Kalu, etc, among the winners. Indeed, daughters are great treasures to families, homes, and nations. They should not be suffocated!