Lukman Abdulmalik
Living in a remote community of Yandadi in Ghari LGA OF Kano state, when Maryam Muhammad lost her first pregnancy at fourteen, she thought her body had betrayed her.
The bleeding came in waves, so heavy she could barely stand.
In the dimly lit room she shared with her husband, she pleaded for help.
He told her she was exaggerating.
By morning, she lay unconscious in a neighbour’s car racing toward a small primary health centre, known as Korafawa PHC, one with no functional ambulance, no doctor on duty, and barely enough equipment to handle severe complications.
The nurse later handed her a torn piece of cloth to clean herself and told her to “be strong.”
Nothing about that moment felt like strength.
“It felt like dying, but slowly,” Maryam recalls.
Maryam’s experience is far from rare.
Across Kano, early marriage, often justified as tradition, religious duty, or economic necessity, robs girls of safety, health, and opportunity.
Behind every wedding photograph of smiling parents and shy young brides lies a reality few dare speak openly about: violence normalized as discipline, education abandoned as a luxury, and bodies treated as vessels for childbirth long before they are ready.
Where the Violence Begins
In many communities across Kano, from the congested compounds of Gwale to the quiet farmlands of Kura local government area, the pressure to marry off girls early remains strong.
Poverty, cultural expectations, misconceptions about religion, and fear of “waywardness” all converge to push families into decisions with lifelong consequences.
For girls like Hauwa Usman, married at thirteen, the home becomes a space of danger rather than protection.
The first time her husband hit her, it was because she placed his meal on the floor instead of a stool.
She apologized, thinking it would never happen again. It did, many times.
“I was a child. I had nowhere to go, what could I do?” she asks quietly.
Once a girl becomes a wife, the social and legal structures meant to protect her dissolve.
She often cannot file a police report without a guardian’s involvement, cannot leave the marital home without permission, and has no financial independence to escape.
In many cases, she does not even know where to seek help.
Muhammad Sani, a social worker, described early marriage as “a fast track into gender-based violence,” one that traps girls in situations they cannot legally, emotionally, or economically walk away from.
When School Doors Close
The tragedy of early marriage is not only what it forces upon girls but also what it steals away.
At a public school in Kano city Gaida Makada primary school, a mathematics teacher, Abdulmalik Bello, still keeps the exercise books of her former student, Fatima Abubakar, who was withdrawn from JSS2 and married off to a trader twice her age.
Fatima had dreamed of becoming a midwife. She was bright, determined, and adored by her classmates.
The day she stopped coming, her friends waited for her during break time. She never returned.
“I kept her books for a year,” the teacher says, raising her chin slightly to steady her voice.
“I hoped she would walk into my class again.”
But married adolescents rarely return to school.
The social stigma, pressure to prove fertility, domestic responsibilities, and lack of childcare form an invisible wall that keeps them out.
The loss is not only personal but societal.
Studies show that every extra year of schooling for girls increases their earning capacity, improves health outcomes for their future children, and contributes to national development.
In Kano, where girls’ education is already fragile due to poverty, insecurity, and overcrowded schools, each dropout pushes the future further from reach.
The Health Toll Hidden Behind Closed Doors
Doctors in Kano’s major hospitals see the consequences of early marriage more clearly than anyone else.
At Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, one of the busiest maternity centres in northern Nigeria, Dr. Sa’adatu Bature says adolescent pregnancy is among the most dangerous conditions seen in the labour ward.
She explains: “These are girls whose bodies are simply not prepared for childbirth.
“Their pelvis is narrow, their blood levels are low, and many arrive after prolonged labour at home.”
She recalls a fourteen-year-old brought in after two days of obstructed labour.
“The baby did not survive.
“The girl suffered internal injuries that caused a vesicovaginal fistula, a condition that leads to uncontrollable leakage of urine.
“She lived with the smell, the shame, and the isolation for nearly a year before an NGO, Rahama Girl Child and Women Empowerment Initiative (RAHAMA), brought her for corrective surgery.
“These cases are not rare,” Dr. Bature stresses. “They are weekly.”
Beyond physical injuries, mental health consequences, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and chronic emotional numbness are widespread but rarely acknowledged in a society where girls are expected to endure in silence.
Why Families Continue the Cycle
To understand why early marriage persists, one must look beyond judgment and into the layered realities faced by families.
For many households, especially in rural LGAs such as Gezawa, Kunchi, Makoda, Madobi, and Warawa, marrying off a daughter is seen as economic relief, one less person to feed in times of rising food prices and unemployment.
Some parents fear harassment or sexual assault in increasingly urbanized neighbourhoods and believe marriage offers protection.
Others are pressured by relatives, community norms, or interpretations of religion that place the burden of sexual purity solely on girls.
When interviewed, many parents insist they are protecting their daughters from modern societal dangers.
Yet, as one child psychologist, Aliyu Umar, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, note, “The fear of imagined risks is driving families into decisions that create real ones.”
The People Fighting Back
Despite the challenges, a quiet but powerful movement is pushing back against the tide of early marriage in Kano.
Hajara Ibrahim, founder of the Girls’ Safe Home Initiative, has become a lifeline for teenage mothers escaping abusive marriages.
Her shelter has handled more than seventy cases in two years, some involving girls as young as twelve.
Hajara organizes community dialogues, trains mothers’ groups, and works with some Imams to correct misunderstandings about Islamic doctrine on consent and maturity.
She says “People say we are attacking culture, but culture should uplift, not destroy. We’re saving daughters, not insulting fathers.”
One of her strongest allies is Imam Abdullahi Sani, a respected cleric in Fagge.
He uses his Friday sermons to challenge misconceptions.
“Islam does not encourage harming children. A child bride cannot provide consent. Marriage must be a union of adults capable of responsibility,” he emphasizes.
Their efforts have inspired other religious leaders to speak publicly about the risks of early marriage, breaking a long-standing silence that has shielded the practice.
The movement is also being shaped by survivors themselves; some now speak on radio programs, at school clubs, and in women’s groups.
Sixteen-year-old Fati, who escaped an abusive marriage, says she advocates because silence nearly killed her.
“I lost my childhood, but maybe my voice will save another girl’s,” she says.
What the Future Could Look Like
Kano State has taken steps toward strengthening child protection mechanisms, including the domestication of the Child Protection Law. But implementation remains slow, fragmented, and often resisted at the community level.
Experts warn that laws alone cannot end early marriage.
Hadiza Bala Fagge is the Executive Director of Women Widows and Orphans Development Initiatives (WWODI).
She says real change requires strengthening household income so parents do not rely on marriage as a survival strategy, supporting mothers’ empowerment through skills training and microfinance, ensuring girls stay in school by improving safety, reducing costs, and providing incentives, funding shelters and safe spaces for girls who flee abuse.
“It also includes training teachers, health workers, and police to identify and respond to gender-based violence, engaging religious and traditional leaders as partners in reform, not opponents, and most importantly, it requires giving girls something early marriage steals: the right to imagine a future.”
In a small tailoring workshop run by the local NGO, SUJUD Foundation, young mothers sit behind sewing machines, laughing, learning, and stitching their independence one seam at a time.
Among them is Maryam, who lost her baby at fourteen and nearly lost her life.
Today, she is learning to read, saving for her own sewing business, and raising her surviving child with more confidence than fear.
Asked how she keeps going, she pauses, fingers resting lightly on the fabric.
“I don’t know what my childhood could have been, but I know what I want my daughters to be,” she says.
And in that fragile but persistent hope lies the force strong enough to break the cycle.
(Names of survivors in this report have been changed to protect them.)
GBV: “Break the silence. End violence.”
