Sometimes I think about the Nigerian girl, how she grows up learning to shrink and stretch at the same time. She learns to lower her eyes but raise her grades. To be quiet but still find her voice. To survive, she becomes soft where the world is hard and strong where it expects her to break.
This year’s theme for the International Day of the Girl Child , “The girl I am, the change I lead: Girls on the frontlines of crisis”, sufficiently portrays the average Nigerian girl. This is because the Nigerian girl has always lived on the frontlines of poverty, of conflict, of culture, of survival, yet she finds ways to lead. She finds light even where there is none.
However, it is not easy. Inequality follows her like a shadow. In sub-Saharan Africa, nine million girls aged six to eleven are out of school. Some spend their mornings fetching water or selling groundnuts by the roadside, while their brothers sit in classrooms. Many face child marriage before they turn sixteen. Others drop out because of insecurity, or because their parents can only afford to educate one child and that child is never the girl.
According to the 2025 Nigeria Youth Shadow Report, many of these challenges remain painfully real. The report highlights that girls in rural and underserved communities still face the steepest barriers to education from poverty and insecurity to poor school infrastructure and inadequate WASH facilities. Despite initiatives like the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE), too many girls remain out of school or unprepared for life beyond it. The report warns that unless deliberate efforts are made to bridge these gender and regional divides, Nigeria risks leaving behind the very girls who hold the key to its future.
In the North, girls displaced by war are teaching others under trees. In Lagos, girls are building apps, telling stories, and coding dreams into reality. In Plateau, girls are leading peace talks in communities torn by violence. These girls do not wait for help. They create it. They carry the same fire that burned in the Aba women who protested colonial injustice in 1929. The same courage that has kept girls marching, studying, and leading for generations.
Yet, the system keeps testing their strength. When girls try to speak, they are told to wait for their turn. When they try to lead, they are told to slow down. But the truth is, Nigeria cannot move forward without its girls. They are half of the sky. They are the ones raising their younger siblings, holding families together, building hope from scraps.
To invest in girls is to invest in life itself. Give her education, she gives you innovation. Give her safety, she gives you power. Give her a chance, she changes the game!
So today, as we mark the International Day of the Girl Child, let’s stop seeing the girl as someone to protect and start seeing her as someone to trust with leadership, with vision, with the future.
Because the girl child is not waiting. She is already leading. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear her voice rising from the markets, from the classrooms, from the corners of this country, strong, steady, and unstoppable.
Written By Cheryl-Victoria Udom
Associate, Youth Activators Lab.
