Teenage Pregnancy and Its Influence on Secondary School Education in Nigeria (Published)
Teenage pregnancy continues to rise in today’s society. It is estimated that about 16 million girls are married off every year (WHO, 2018) contributing to the number of teenage pregnancies across the globe. In Nigeria, 23% of females aged between 15-19 years are bearing children. This can be attributed to illiteracy, societal practices and poverty encouraging girls enter into sexual relationship at an early age. This condemnable situation leads to numbers complications which include; sexually transmitted diseases, school drop outs, pressure on the health sector, increased mortality to mention but a few. These impacts of school enrollment and drop out have significant implications on national development and therefor needs to be tackled urgently. This study therefore, seeks to analyze the influence of teenage pregnancy on secondary school education in Nigeria using a case study of Obio-Akpor L.G.A, Rivers State. The instrument for data collation was a semi-structured questionnaire and the data obtained analyzed employing SPSS version 2.0. A total of 802 respondents responded to the interview making the rate of response 96.2 %. Majority of the respondents were teenagers and 151 (18.1%) being parents. Findings from the study revealed that teenage pregnancy significantly impacted school enrollment, that a significant percentage of teenagers are pregnant before 15, lack of education of parents and teenagers increased the probability of teenage pregnancy, poverty and drug abuse increased the likelihood of teenage pregnancy while teenager mothers 61.2 percent likely to withdraw from school because of the financial obligations of being a mother. In addition, the study makes a number of recommendations which include; sensitization programs should be initiated by relevant bodies to educate the populace on the impact of teenage pregnancies, Policies that facilitate better health care services for teenagers should be deployed by government and non-government organizations, Government and non-governmental organizations should make contraceptive services easily accessible and affordable, School-based daycare facilities should be provided for soon to be/already teenage parents, Psychological help should be provided to students in secondary to help them deal with pressures of peers and societal stigmatization.
Keywords: Education, Nigeria, Teenage Pregnancy.