Maryam Abba is 18, has two children, married at 14 and has never been to school, but she still wants an education because she believes it would help her care for her children and ensure they also get the opportunity she missed.
Development Diaries reports that Maryam and Fatima Umar, 22, are among married young women in Tashan Kangele community in Maiduguri, appealing for another chance to go to school.
Fatima married at 16 and later divorced after her desire to be educated like her co-wife became a source of conflict in the marriage, but she has not given up on completing her education before she turns 30.
Both women live only a short drive from the Borno State Ministry of Education, but neither knew that adult and second-chance learning centres were available in the state.
Borno already has an Accelerated Basic Education Programme (ABEP) for children whose schooling has been interrupted, particularly girls, while the state is also implementing a Gender-Responsive Education Sector Plan (GRESP) that identifies poverty, early marriage and insecurity among the major barriers keeping girls out of school.
Education stakeholders, including local government officials and officials of the Borno State Ministry of Education, have also been discussing the rollout of the gender-responsive plan across the state’s local government areas.
But if women sitting a few kilometres from the ministry still do not know where to find a learning centre, the problem has moved beyond creating programmes to getting those programmes to the people they were created for.
For women who left school because they married early, having a second chance on paper means little if nobody tells them where to go, how to enrol or how they will get there.
Mobility is particularly important for married young women, who may have children to care for, limited control over household transport and social restrictions that make attending a distant centre difficult.
A learning centre that is too far away can therefore be as inaccessible as one that does not exist, and the same problem appears in the way government measures who needs help.
Out-of-school data is commonly broken down by factors such as sex and location, but married adolescent girls and young mothers are not clearly visible as a separate group in the planning process.
Maryam is an 18-year-old mother who needs an education system capable of accommodating both her learning needs and the responsibilities that came with marrying as a child.
For Fatima, her situation is even more complicated because she is trying to rebuild her education after a marriage that ended partly because she wanted to go to school.
A conventional school may not be designed for either woman, but that is precisely why second-chance education exists.
Section 18 of Nigeria’s constitution directs government to eradicate illiteracy and provide free adult literacy programmes, while the Universal Basic Education Act provides the statutory framework for basic education.
Nigeria’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women also require equal access to continuing education and programmes for women who leave school prematurely.
Government therefore has a duty to ensure that women who leave school prematurely can find and access the education programmes created for them.
That responsibility falls most directly on the Borno State Ministry of Education and the Borno State Agency for Mass Education, with local government education officials responsible for taking information about available centres into wards and communities.
The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) also has a role through the funds it provides for adult and non-formal education, while the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) need better data to show who is being missed.
Women and girls with disabilities are another largely invisible group.
If girls already make up about 70 percent of Borno’s out-of-school children, the absence of reliable data on disability means government cannot tell how many girls face both barriers at the same time or plan services around their needs.
Rural and internally displaced families face even greater obstacles when poverty, insecurity and distance are added to the problem.
Community organisations can begin to close the information gap by demanding that local government education officials publish the location, eligibility requirements and enrolment process for every adult and accelerated learning centre in their wards.
Women’s groups, mothers’ associations and ward development committees can then take that information directly into communities, particularly to married adolescent girls and young mothers who may never walk into a ministry office to ask for help.
Residents should also demand access to public records showing how much money is being spent on adult and non-formal education in Borno and what those funds are producing.
The government of Borno State should go further by mapping second-chance learning centres across the state, publishing enrolment figures and providing transport support or stipends where distance prevents married learners from attending, while the Federal Ministry of Education and NBS should also include marital status in data collection on people who are out of school.
If child marriage continues to push girls out of classrooms, government will spend more money helping women recover from an education they should never have been forced to abandon.
