How brilliant teenager became a village farmer married to a man thrice her age

Nigeria Abroad

Over 20 years since leaving secondary school, I never stopped asking of Ada,* the effico who topped the class and became a challenge to boys wanting to date a beautiful, brilliant girl. She was the left-handed girl that broke Further Maths and the sciences as the rest of us watched in awe. Former classmates said they knew nothing of her, until some of us started a WhatsApp group in 2018, and someone said Ada was a farmer in a village in Eastern Nigeria.

It’s a long story that started with the end of her reign as head girl in school. In the first term of our SS3 session, she stopped coming to school ahead of rumors that she was pregnant. The news shocked everyone, given Ada’s religious devotion. After school, we all moved on—some to the university, others to big cities for what life could bring.

We later learnt she was impregnated by an undergraduate from a neighboring village: he was said to be a law student at the University of Calabar and came from a family considered elite at the time. He denied the pregnancy and, from what I gathered from our WhatsApp group, has never showed up till date and has had no hand in the upbringing of the boy, now 20.

I spoke to Ada from the US in 2019. We talked about many things, including briefly about what happened to her—she was unwilling to fully have that conversation. I respected that. She is now a mother of four more children, lives in poverty in the village, and needed help for her son who was learning a skill. I imagined the pain she had gone through over the years.

After giving birth to the boy, she actually moved in with her married elder sister in another community, hoping to sit for her WAEC exam there. But it was clear her elder brother, her hope for further education, had backed out. Her parents were old. Her sister advised her to instead learn hairdressing to improve her chances of getting “a good husband.” When she was through with the apprenticeship and requested funding for a shop and for machines, her deeply religious brother said he had nothing for her—that she had made her choice in life by getting pregnant.

Then came a widower asking to marry her. A local farmer, over 50. He would set up a hairdressing shop for her in the neighboring town, he was said to have promised. Ada’s motherhood and youth, for a man with five daughters, meant she could bear the son he never had. Her family was only too eager to shift responsibility to someone else, so they had no objections. She was 19 at the time. She said it seemed like her only option especially as the man’s undergraduate daughters were in support.

Now in his 70’s, her husband is dependent on her now-married daughters who support when they can. Times are hard, Ada told me on phone, so they can only do little. She’s grateful that they sponsored the son she had outside wedlock through secondary school. In her maiden family, hardship has worsened in the past decades. All through the conversation, I could not connect the barely literate woman speaking to me to the egghead that ruled the class in the late 90’s. The transformation was heartbreaking.

Teenage pregnancy was a huge taboo in parts of Nigeria, with girls bearing alone the burden of pregnancy amid the open scorn of society. I’m not sure if things have changed much, as I reckon that pregnant teenagers from poor homes possibly face the same neglect. There is no reason to allow a young girl degenerate for life over such a mistake. Recalling my conversation with Ada often fills me with sadness, which was why I decided to share her story for the benefit of other parents.

Many women have gone on to become successful in their careers after giving birth as teenagers. I’m saddened that men escape accountability in Nigeria in things like this given a poor legal and social framework. I don’t know if the man who got Ada pregnant can be compelled to do a DNA test and possibly be held accountable for years of neglect if the result turns out positive.  Not like Ada would be willing to pursue that, as she has “left it all for God.”

Every generation has its own failings. Scores of talented Nigerian women are living in squalor today because of families that failed to make the right call over teenage pregnancy. My hope is that my generation learns better to handle this kind of problem.

This story first appeared in Nigeria Abroad