The First Lady of Osun State, Kafayat Oyetola has decried the surge in the number of teenagers between age 6 and 15 involved in street hawking and unsafe abortions.
Oyetola warned against stigmatising pregnant teenagers, forcing abortion on them and denying them further education, saying, “teenagers must go to the proper place for advice, allowed to keep the pregnancy and go back to school.”
The governor’s wife spoke while receiving delegates from the Society for Family Health led by its Deputy Managing Director, Jennifer Anyanti in Osun State Government.
She said: “It is very sad to see our teenagers going through an unsaved abortion; this has been giving me great concern as a mother and wife.
“We need to reach the teenagers. If you go to the streets you see an increase in the numbers of children hawking as early as age six which exposes them to a lot of danger.
“When you go to secondary schools these days you will see a lot of them that cannot even complete their education because of pregnancy, I think we have a lot of advocacy to carry on this, train them not to engage in a sexual relationship at a tender age.”
While conferring the title of Ambassador for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health on Mrs. Oyetola, Anyanti said: “Importantly, we’ve seen 1in5 girls who are likely to have children before thier 19th birthday and many girls are dying from unsafe abortion and so what we came to do was to ask her to join hand with the society for family health to work toward addressing this dire situation within the state.”
