Child Marriage; Nigeria's Next Step?

This might not be the most patriotic thing to say, but it is the truth. There is only little I am proud of in Nigeria. In fact I desperately hang on to these few positive sentimental factors, reminding myself she is a developing country. The major word being "developing", but now I am terribly scared this term might just be an illusion.

I recently heard about the vote in the House of Senate to legalize under age marriage and found it shamefully surprising as the outcry worldwide is to stop child marriage, and I wondered why a country like Nigeria who is struggling to feed its citizens and provide basic social amenities will add this atrocious, dehumanizing, shameful and patriarchal act to its list of ills.

Rides in the tubes, trains and buses in London, with poster of Say No to Child Marriage pasted in every carriage always left me disturbed and partly proud of my country as this is one problem we can or could - as the case may be now-  boast of not having. I thought the idea of “developing” is to cross out barbaric and medieval elements hindering the healthy living of human and not just a title!

To think that women in the house of senate, celebrities who will do anything to gain international recognition  and the first lady, a mother of daughters herself, who had in the past very embarrassingly aired her views and meddled in issues that were not her business has refused to stand up and speak out against this disturbing notion. Is the First lady willing to give her young daughters to dirty old men trying to fulfil sadistic and paedophilic fantasises? How is this vote going to solve the long list of problems already tormenting Nigerians? How is it going to advance our move from developing to developed countries?

Africa is very poplar for its many tribulations and this is even more so exaggerated in the western countries. Phrases like "Don’t waste food, there are kids suffering in Africa" or "Do they have cars or houses in Africa?" gets to me all the time, and I desperately hope for a Africa that stops receiving charity and caters accordingly for its own but gradually, news after news, laws after laws, this hope increasingly fades away.

Now I am torn between joining the large amount of Africans, clamouring for British or American citizenship and fulfilling the urge to rip the heads of these fools in power trying to promote very obvious adverse laws that benefits only those thinking with the member between their legs rather than ears.