M. O. Izzi

…Day after day, month after month, year after year, we hear of and read about customs which discriminate against womenfolk in this country… they are regarded as inferior to men. Why should it be so? All human beings-male and female are born into a free world and are expected to participate freely without any inhibition on ground of sex and this is constitutional. Any form of societal discrimination apart from being unconstitutional, is antithesis to a society built on the tenets of democracy which we have freely chosen as a people…1

This opinion expressed by Justice Niki Tobi, gives an insight into the problems that the girl child has had to contend with, within the society she has found herself. The concept of human rights is relatively new as it can be traced back to 1945 with the founding of the United Nations.2 Before then what was common were natural rights. The notion of the rights of man found expression in the writings of Montesquieu and John Locke. The failure to secure these reserved rights gave rise to series of internal revolts and revolutions which culminated in the enactment of the Magna Carta (1215) and the Bill of Rights (1688) in England. This same revolution was also experienced in the United States of America and France resulting in the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789). Although they did not enjoy universal support, they eventually resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where paragraph one of the preamble defines the nature of human rights thus:

… recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world

In view of the significant nature of this paragraph, it has been reproduced in the preamble to the other human rights instruments namely, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In Nigeria, the Supreme Court in Ransome Kuti v. Attorney General of the Federation3 also defined the doctrine of human rights, where Kayode Eso, J.S.C. observed that:

it is a right which stands above the ordinary laws of the land and which infact is antecedent to political society itself. It is a primary condition to a civilized existence... and what has been done by our constitutions since independence… is to have these rights enshrined in the constitution so that the rights could be immutable to the extent of non immutability of the constitution itself4

Flowing from the fore-mentioned is the fact that all human beings everywhere in the world regardless of gender, race, culture or religion equally possess human rights. It is against this backdrop therefore, that one will examine the position of the girl-child in Nigeria, considering the peculiar problems she faces and how the law-that is local, regional and international-have assisted in placing her on the same pedestal with her male counterpart. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to examine how the quest for gender equality began.