CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background to the Study
Education can be described as a dynamic activity which involves an orderly, deliberate and sustained effort to develop knowledge and skills (Olusakin, 1998). As Awoniyi (1999) puts it, formal education is a process by which the human mind develops through learning at school in stages from pre-primary through primary, secondary to tertiary (university) institution. The present socio-economic situation in Nigeria has made it obvious that the women must be given sound, formal education as their male counterparts are given.
According to Lai (1995), in the olden days, a woman had little or no status as a person in her own right. In the Nigerian society, women were viewed as their husbands’ properties, and as such, had no say in the affairs of their own home. The women’s roles were basically those of taking care of their husbands and their children, their in-laws, the family compound, child-bearing and child rearing. Also, her place was believed to be naturally, in the kitchen. However, only few people would deny the functional roles of women in the larger society. Even through the average Nigerian woman still performs her basic traditional roles as a daughter to her parents, sister to her siblings, wife to her husband, mother to her children, daughter or sister inlaw to her husband’s family, she is economically viable, she contributes financially to the up keep of the family.
According to Adiele (2000), the education of the girl-child was not a common phenomenon in the traditional Nigerian society before independence. In fact, her birth would not attract so much celebration as that of the male-child, and depending on the number of female children the mother had given birth to before her, the birth of an additional girl-child could cause her mother her marriage. This is still a major problem in some homes even among educated men.
Education should be considered as a great line of defence for women faced with life threatening situations that traditional life-styles perpetuate. It opens the door to a lot of choices that are not found by tradition (Nwagwu, 1996). Grange (1997) posits that education encourages shaping one’s destiny. The situation of the educated Nigerian woman steps up beyond the confines of motherhood and enhances the quality of life in her family.
Therefore, incessant child-bearing places a woman in a very weak position physically, economically and psychologically, yet barrenness is viewed as a curse in the Nigerian society due to high infantile mortality, the capacity to breed was much valued but advances in the field of medicine have greatly increased the survival rate among both infants and adults. According to Onyeanwu (2001), the incessant child-bearing is therefore, no longer necessary, instead, it poses great danger to the health of the mother and also increased family size that cannot be supported with the family resources, especially now that the Nigerian economy has nose-dived and the resultant effect of unemployment among men in the society.
Therefore, to improve the living condition of Nigerian families, the life of the women who are the cornerstone of every household should be improved and the regulation of the size of the regulation of the size of the size of the regulation of the size of the nuclear family, through family planning, cannot be overemphasied (Lai, 1990).
There has been a lot of discrimination against the female gender. In fact people just see them as breeding machines, in spite of the availability of family planning. The dissemination of appropriate and relevant information would lead to the acquisition of knowledge skills and women empowerment. This can help in breaking the intractable poverty cycle which many Nigerian families have come to be associated with due to ignorance of family planning devices and the attitude of many women towards the application of such devices.
According to Halsall (1997), if women’s health and status remain poor, if their access to land and other facilities continue to be limited and if they continue to be held down by ill-timed or unwanted pregnancies, then the societal development would be retarded.