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A professor of Demography at the Department of Demography and Social Statistics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Akanni Akinyemi, has advised traditional and religious leaders to put an end to unsafe abortion and save young girls from unnecessary death.
Akinyemi spoke in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital on the sideline of the National Forum on Unintended Pregnancy and Unsafe Abortion in Nigeria, organised by the Partnership for Advancing Abortion Research and Reducing Unsafe Abortion in Nigeria.
Akinyemi said that the call became imperative to reduce the death rate among young girls and women who engaged in unsafe abortions.
He said, “What we are trying to do is to look into how we can address one of the biggest problems we have around us, which is about young girls and women dying for being pregnant when it was not planned.
“Such pregnancy constitutes a problem to a young girl or a married woman. It is a situation that threatens their lives and, you know, we have lost a lot of women due to this. There are things teachers in schools should know; there are things pastors should know; there are things we must be able to discuss among ourselves without government intervention.
“There are things the community should know. If a young boy rapes a girl, we can settle it, not to be thinking about the consequence. Yes, there are issues about the government but it doesn’t start and end with the government. I’m one of those scholars who believe that it is not right to always blame the government for everything.’’
“It is about an individual, the society, community, religious leaders, traditional leaders, then to the government. At each of these levels, we need to come together and speak with one voice, we need to come together and agree that we don’t need to lose our young girls because they had sex or unprotected sex. We don’t need to lose women because they don’t know the right thing to do. So, we must all collaborate to save them, the traditional rulers, religious leaders and other stakeholders.”
