41% of girls in North-West marry before 15 – Report

A non-governmental organisation, Save the Children International, says 41 per cent of girls in the North West still marry below the age of 15 years.

The organisation said this in its latest report titled “Reaching and Empowering Adolescents in Health (REACH)” carried out in Gombe, Kastina and Zamfara state.

According to Save the Children, 2018 adolescent girls who were married before the age of 15 years were 54 per cent but has been reduced to 41 per cent.

The Programme Director for REACH, Rahinatu Hussaini, who disclosed this at the close-out of the project in Abuja maintained that although teenage childbearing in the North-West and the North-East had dropped, it was still an issue that needed to be addressed.

According to Hussaini, teenage pregnancy in the North-West dropped from 36 per cent in 2013 to 28 per cent in 2018 while that of the North-East dropped from 32 to 24 per cent within the same period.

Hussaini said there are still a lot of issues around Adolescents Sexual Reproductive Health in the region.