Using Drama for School-Based Adolescent Sexuality Education in Zaria, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper describes the use of drama and participatory methods in a girls-only secondary school in Zaria, Nigeria, as a means of sexuality education, carried out by the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance and the Second Chance Organization of Nigeria. The issues addressed had to come from the students, to allow them to develop critical thinking and learn useful lessons. The topics that concerned the group of 15 girls who participated from the school included abortion, premarital sex and pregnancy, teacher–student relationships and lesbianism. Participants developed a play about teacher–student relationships and presented it to the whole school. The presentation was stopped several times in order to involve the audience in discussing the choices available to the protagonist and what they would do in her place. This allowed all the students to explore the problem, generate and assess alternative solutions and communicate their learning to others. It also started a process of change in how the school dealt with girls who were forced to drop out due to sexuality-related problems, including pregnancy. Our long-term aim is advocacy to support the introduction of sexuality education as a permanent element in the curriculum throughout the school system.

Résumé

Cet article décrit l’utilisation du théâtre et de méthodes participatives pour l’éducation sexuelle dans une école secondaire de filles à Zaria, Nigéria, par l’Alliance nigériane de théâtre populaire et l’Organisation de la seconde chance du Nigéria. Les élèves devaient proposer les questions à aborder pour leur permettre de développer leur pensée critique et d’apprendre des leçons utiles. Les 15 élèves de l’école ayant participé ont souhaité parler de l’avortement, des relations sexuelles avant le mariage et de la grossesse, des relations enseignants-élèves et du lesbianisme. Elles ont écrit une pièce sur les relations entre élèves et enseignants et l’ont jouée devant toute l’école. La représentation a été arrêtée plusieurs fois pour que les spectatrices puissent discuter des choix offerts à l’héroïne et de ce qu’elles auraient fait à sa place. Toutes les élèves ont ainsi pu étudier le problème, créer et évaluer des solutions et communiquer leurs enseignements à d’autres. Cela a aussi déclenché un processus de changement du traitement réservé par l’école aux jeunes filles forcées d’abandonner leurs études en raison de problèmes liés à la sexualité, notamment la grossesse. Notre objectif à long terme est de soutenir l’introduction de l’éducation sexuelle comme élément permanent du programme d’études dans l’ensemble du système scolaire.

Resumen

En este artículo se describe el uso del drama y métodos participativos en un colegio de enseñanza secundaria de niñas, en Zaria, Nigeria, como medio de educación sexual, llevados a cabo por la Alianza Nigeriana Popular de Teatro y la Organización de Nigeria para una Segunda Oportunidad. Los asuntos tratados surgieron de las estudiantes, a fin de permitirles desarrollar ideas y opiniones críticas y aprender lecciones útiles. Los temas preocupantes para el grupo de las 15 colegialas participantes fueron: aborto, relaciones sexuales y embarazos prematrimoniales, relaciones entre maestros y estudiantes y lesbianismo. Las participantes elaboraron una obra sobre las relaciones entre maestros y estudiantes, la cual presentaron ante todo el colegio. La presentación se detuvo varias veces a fin de incluir a la audiencia en las conversaciones sobre las opciones disponibles a la protagonista y sobre qué harían en su lugar. Esto permitió a todas las estudiantes explorar el problema, generar y evaluar otras soluciones y comunicar lo que aprendieron a otros. Además, inició un proceso de cambio en la forma en que el colegio trata a las niñas que son forzadas a abandonar sus estudios debido a problemas relacionados con la sexualidad, como el embarazo. Nuestro objetivo a largo plazo es realizar actividades de promoción y defensa para apoyar la introducción de la educación sexual como un elemento permanente en el currículo de todo el sistema escolar.

Key Words:

• adolescents and young people
• peer education
• sexuality education
• Nigeria

This paper describes the use of drama to address adolescent sexuality issues in a girls-only secondary school in Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria, in 2005. The project is entitled “For Tomorrow” and was carried out by two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Zaria, the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance and the Second Chance Organization of Nigeria.

The basic premise of the project was that while there is a need for participation of the people in the development process to achieve sustainability,^1–4 the manner and nature of participation remains to be determined and acted upon. Adolescent health and sexuality education is an example. Appreciating the potential of adolescents to participate in the education process is one thing but involving them is another.

Developing sexuality education packages without knowing what adolescents know and need to know shows contempt for their knowledge and capacities and may lead them to resist or ignore the messages offered. Anyone who has worked with adolescents will know that they particularly hate being talked down to, especially by adults whose private lives contradict what they are preaching publicly. This is exactly what some projects do, preach to adolescents. Yet, behaviour change is not like learning in the formal classroom sense, nor like going to a religious gathering.

It was in this context that a different approach to participation of adolescents was developed by the two Zaria based NGOs. The Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance is a voluntary, non-partisan alliance of theatre artists, performers, cultural and development workers who are interested in using theatre for development purposes. It was founded in March 1989 after a workshop that brought together popular theatre animators from across the world. Its headquarters remains in Zaria while it operates in the six geopolitical zones of the country. Its emphasis is on communication and development through popular theatre and other participatory methodologies in relation to health issues, agriculture, environment, politics, governance, conflict resolution and transformation. With adolescents, the aim has been to provide correct information about sexuality matters, help young people to make informed choices and equip them with life-long skills to avoid falling prey to common sexuality-related problems, including HIV.

The Second Chance Organization of Nigeria is focused on the promotion of girls’ education through programmes focusing on topics such as traditional and social biases in favour of boys, unwanted pregnancies and reintegration into the educational system of girls who have dropped out of school.

Background

The sexuality education project was preceded by a baseline study in seven secondary schools in Zaria during May–June 2002: two co-educational, two all boys and three all girls. In addition, the project included a group called the “non-attenders”, comprised of boys and girls from the various schools who have had to drop out of school for making a girl pregnant (in case of boys) or being pregnant (in case of girls). The discussion that follows, however, covers only the issues that emerged from the work at the Government Girls Secondary School, Dogon Bauchi, Sabon-Gari in Zaria, where this researcher worked.

The research team – a male sociologist, a female nurse and a female graduate student in development communication – asked questions to school principals, guidance and counselling teachers, officials of the Parents-Teachers Associations (PTAs) of the various schools, and girls who had dropped out of school due to problems related to sexuality of some sort. The team wanted to know the health status of the students in the schools, as well as the attrition rate and the reasons for their dropping out of school. Other questions that interested the research team were what policy the schools had in place for sex education and what plans the schools had in place for girls who became pregnant, or were victimised through sexual violence and abuse. This concern followed the discovery that there was a high rate of teenage pregnancy in Nigerian schools and an attendant high attrition rate among the girls. It was also discovered that sex education was not taught as part of the academic curriculum in any of the schools surveyed.

The project’s research questions had to take into account the persistent gender and sexual biases of Nigerian society, particularly in the specific context of northern Nigeria, which is male dominated and where girls live and go to school within specific power relations. Patriarchy is so entrenched in the north that women, especially older women, unconsciously take on patriarchal attitudes and become advocates of their own and younger women’s oppression. For instance, the society expects girls to remain virgins and maintain their chastity until marriage but never asks the same of boys and men. At the same time, paradoxically, access to global media ensures that children have (mostly half-baked) knowledge of a wide variety of sexual practices and are therefore prone to experimentation, which creates crises. While parents and school authorities combine to deny adolescents sexuality education, they are also harsh in their condemnation of the “mistakes” made by adolescents, especially girls. Some parents marry their girl children off at a very young age for cultural reasons, while others abandon them to even greater dangers because of their “mistakes”. School authorities will not give a chance to any adolescent girl who becomes pregnant. Yet the most these schools have ever done to help girls to avoid these “mistakes” – to say nothing of protecting themselves from abuse and violence – is to offer a few words on reproduction in biology and home economics classes or moralising during Christian or Islamic religious classes.

In constructing its research questions and implementation strategy, the “For Tomorrow” project took cognisance of these levels of gendered power relations and the complexity within which girl children had to operate. Because the project recognises the influence of the family and society in general on girls, it brought on board PTA and religious leaders in order to expose them to the final drama performances and discussions. “For Tomorrow” was based on the belief that schools needed to examine the role of school laws and regulations in girls dropping out of school and being prevented from returning. The programme also raised the question of how much lack of information and peer pressure accounted for adolescent sexuality problems, and what the roles of other stakeholders – parents, religious leaders, the church and other institutions – should take in addressing adolescent sexuality problems.

The project described here took place in 2005 at Government Secondary School (Senior) Dogon-Bauchi, a girls-only school in Zaria whose young teachers are half men and half women. The girls who come to a senior secondary school like this are at least 14–15 years old and are maturing and becoming aware of their sexuality. When the education system was better organised, with boarding facilities, the movement and mixing of teachers and students could be controlled more easily since access to female dormitories and teachers’ quarters was restricted. But now, with only an off-campus facility for housing, movement and mixing of teachers and students after school hours (either by consent or intimidation) can no longer be controlled.

The school has predominantly Muslim and Christian teachers and students. The two guidance and counselling teachers chosen to work with the project each represented one of these religions. In the selection of students by teachers to participate in the project (15 girls in all), it happened that both religions were represented, including an almost equal number of veil-wearing Muslim students and their Christian counterparts. The group met every day except Sundays, immediately after school closing at 12:30pm, and on Saturday mornings at 9am.

Reasons for sexuality education and issues addressed

The reasons to prioritise peer education need to be teased out with participants, but it boils down to being informed. Being informed implies that people have choices, that they make decisions based on those choices, and that they are aware of the consequences. Peer education through drama therefore takes the educators and their audience through a process of critical thinking and decision-making. It begins by unpacking the concepts of choice–decision–consequences,⁵ and discussing the aims and objectives of the project with participants so that they have a clear understanding of what educators are doing and can express their expectations and fears.

Although the focus of this paper is on peer education using drama, it is necessary to touch briefly on the peer counselling part of the project, which preceded the drama component. This component was important to the understanding of the issues teased out later and the overall goal of leaving students with skills they could continue to use after the lifespan of the project to help and counsel their peers who find themselves with problems. Activities undertaken included, among others, exercises dealing with peer pressure, listening exercises and understanding dating and relationships in simulated counselling sessions. Emphasis was on making students understand the issues in relation to their own lives so that, when confronted with a real-life situation, they would be able to cope in a way that expresses their self-confidence and empowerment.

Drama-making and rehearsals

What is drama? We could not assume that young people or adults understand drama, and we needed to show that the way drama is used for peer education is different from drama on the stage, films or TV. The use of drama as a learning tool includes the elements of location, conflict, issues and characterisation.

The next stage is for the adolescents to identify the issues that concern them and the problems they have and what they know about these issues. They are asked to list and cluster those that are similar and analyse them to try to get to the root causes. This is necessary because very often we are quick to identify the manifestations of a problem rather than its root causes, and if we deal with the symptoms, we have not dealt with the problem itself. Secondly, without digging deep, we very often trace problems or issues exclusively to factors outside ourselves, such as blaming parents or society, while some of the problems that confront us have to do with our own attitudes and behaviour as well. Drama in education is targeted at critical thinking and attitude and behaviour change while also taking into account gender issues.

Participants then choose one of the issues they have identified, around which they will develop a storyline and create a scenario, using personal or real-life stories to illustrate the issue or problem, integrating details of where, when, how and who. Then character description and analysis of the characters who are in the play is needed, which will make it possible for the actors to prepare their roles and understand the characters they will be playing.

The drama should be about 10–15 minutes long with two scenes. A short, precise play allows for effective processing and time for audience discussion and response. The play should have a clear protagonist who is overwhelmed by the problem that the group has chosen. Scene one should end at the point when the protagonist is confronted with choices. At that time, the facilitator stops the drama and asks the audience or participants what choices or options are available to the protagonist. They can list as many choices as possible and cluster or synthesise them into the clearest set of choices that can be made under the given conditions. For each choice, the group discusses what the advantages and disadvantages are.

The drama then continues and the audience sees where the choice that the protagonist has made leads them. The facilitator should again stop the play just before its conclusion to ask the audience what is likely to happen and why, what the consequences of the protagonist’s decision are, and if they were the protagonist what they would have done. Contributors from the audience can be encouraged to come forward and replace the protagonist in order to act out their own suggested solutions. In each case, the consequences should be examined with the audience. Thus, members of the audience also learn to examine the consequences of decisions so as to be in a position to make and take informed decisions.

Peer education through drama

The second part of the project was devoted to helping the students who became peer educators to reach a larger audience – the reservoir of young people, their schoolmates, who are bursting with energy and looking for avenues to channel their energy. This involved taking the students through the basic rudiments of the drama-building process and teaching them how to develop an effective drama, but always on the understanding that the drama was not for entertainment purposes. The play could be entertaining but only as a means to an end. Education was the key issue, built on the schema of choices–decisions–consequences.

Based on the methods of Freire^6–8 and Boal,⁹ the play should be constructed in such a way as to allow for audience intervention. The second requirement is that the issues to be treated have to come from the students, to allow them to identify with the topics and learn useful lessons.

In the use of these methods at Dogon-Bauchi School, the students exploded with enthusiasm; they seemed to like role-playing a lot. Indeed, even during the peer counselling sessions, they came to life most when they had to re-enact situations.

Deciding on the issues

No one can claim to know the sexuality issues that concern them more than the students who experience them first-hand. For the purpose of this exercise, the students were divided into two groups, where they were asked to come up with a broad list of topics related to sexuality that concerned them. Their lists included abortion, pregnancy, teacher–student relationships, lesbianism, premarital sex, getting pregnant by a teacher, students writing love letters to their teachers, and molesting of students.^* Other topics listed included smoking, drug addiction, drinking and improper dressing, as well as issues related to violence. Each topic was discussed in turn with the whole group.

The next stage was to identify two sexuality issues for the two groups to focus on. We discussed the fact that abortion was unsafe because of its illegality and the opposition to abortion in Nigeria, which forces those who seek abortions underground to find them. Similarly, we talked about the stigma of premarital pregnancy and how costly a mistake it was; most of the students knew of someone whose life and career had been curtailed due to pregnancy. However, there was a limit to how much we could work on abortion and premarital pregnancy with the students if we wanted to avoid the wrath of conservative parents, religious leaders and the school authorities who permitted us to work in their schools. So we asked them to choose other topics. Nonetheless, recognising that these issues are threatening the future of a lot of young students who become pregnant, we resolved to take them up with the authorities separately, along with the question of the future of a group of out-of-school students we were working with. This last group included girls from different schools who had become pregnant and boys who had made a girl pregnant, all of whom had lost their places in school.

Through a weeding-out process, the two school groups each chose one issue. Group 1 chose teacher–student relationships and Group 2 chose lesbianism. Arriving at these issues was not an easy task, however. Though the girls had observed what they thought were tendencies towards lesbianism amongst their peers, e.g. girls fondling the breasts of their friends, no one would admit to having these “tendencies” themselves or point to any of their mates. Lesbianism is frowned upon culturally and by both religions represented in the school, and this was reflected in how the girls reacted. In the presence of the two guidance and counselling teachers who were working with us, they found it difficult to explore this issue. We had to convince some of them that it was only acting and that no one was in any way suggesting that they were lesbians before they agreed to take part in preparing the drama. Yet because some of them felt strongly that some girls were behaving in a way that was “too close” for comfort, it was agreed that it should be the subject of a play, to raise awareness. Within a short time, the two groups came back with and acted out the following presentations.

Scenario 1: This scenario features a young girl who is harassed by a new male teacher in the school from his first entry into the classroom, to the surprise of all the other students. Even when she gives correct answers, she is condemned and sent to cut the grass or do other manual tasks. Finally, this teacher comes out plainly to tell the girl that if she would “cooperate” with him, all his criticism of her would stop and he would treat her well in class. The pressure becomes so unbearable that she finally agrees to keep a date with this teacher one day after school hours.

Scenario 2: In this scenario a young girl being brought up by a single mother is told never to have anything to do with boys. The mother constantly drums into her head that men are evil. An older schoolmate, another girl, noticing the girl’s withdrawn attitude towards men, uses this to draw her into a relationship. This older girl gains entrance and acceptance in the home of the young girl, since the mother is happy that her crusade to get her daughter to spend time only with other girls has worked. This situation continues until the mother discovers, rather belatedly, that when she wants to introduce her daughter properly to a future husband, the daughter has actually over-imbibed her lesson of hatred towards men.

The counselling mistress, who was also a trainer on the project, sat enthralled throughout the two presentations. As she was later to confess, it was not just the acting skills of the students she marvelled at, but that these issues had been “hidden” all the while. “So this is why, when our students serve punishments, neither they nor the male teachers punishing them will explain what it is they have done…!”

After a thorough analysis of the two presentations with the girls, we asked them to choose one of the two presentations to act out for the whole school, without their feeling that one of the groups had “lost out” or the other had “won”. The students debated and agreed that the more dangerous issue was teacher–student relationships. In order not to completely ignore the issue of lesbianism it was agreed that it should be incorporated into a scene of the other play. At the end, this was the storyline that emerged:

Chidesco and the Teacher: Students come into class in the early morning. Two friends, who appear to be lesbians, walk in last; a few of the students show distaste at the way they are holding and cuddling each other. They sit down. One of them grabs the breast of another girl in the class, which creates an outcry. Just as the offending girl makes to leave the class, Mr Okoronkwo, the new biology teacher, comes in.

Everyone becomes quiet and the students stand in unison and do the traditional greeting of “Good morning, Sir”. Mr Okoronkwo proceeds to introduce himself and his new subject rather laboriously. The reason for this, we will soon discover, is that Mr Okoronkwo has been carried away by the sight of Chidesco, one of the biggest and most beautiful girls in the class. Mr Okoronkwo stammers while saying his name and the topic of his lesson, and cannot stop looking at Chidesco. While Mr Okoronkwo is trying in vain to control himself over Chidesco, another student, “African Queen,” is wriggling like an earthworm that has been stepped on, trying in vain to get Mr Okoronkwo’s attention.

Mr Okoronkwo asks the students to define biology. Even though Chidesco’s definition is one of the best and most correct in the class, he rejects it. At the end of the lesson, he gives the students a homework assignment and asks Chidesco to meet him in his office immediately after class. He walks out in pretentious anger to wait for his prey, Chidesco. But African Queen is faster. She dashes out just as the confusion of the students over the attitude of their new biology teacher is dying down. African Queen knocks on Mr Okoronkwo’s door. When he discovers it is not Chidesco, his countenance changes. Disappointment is written all over his face. He quickly adjusts himself and asks her to come in, but then hurriedly dismisses African Queen because she is disturbing him and is not the one he wants to see. Another knock and Chidesco is finally there.

The harsh Mr Okoronkwo suddenly becomes so nice, offering Chidesco a seat next to him. He proceeds to inform Chidesco that all his harshness was a pretense and that if she will “cooperate” with him, she will not only enjoy her life in the school but pass all the exams with ease. As he inches his way towards her, the petrified girl unconsciously moves away until she slips off the chair and falls down. Before he can touch her and help her up, a frightened Chidesco runs out of the office and Mr Okoronkwo pours invectives on her.

Back in class, Mr Okoronkwo collects the homework assignment. To punish Chidesco, he flips through her homework and declares it to be rubbish. Chidesco is told she must cut grass manually immediately after closing. While Chidesco is cutting the grass, one of the women teachers asks her what offence she has committed. Chidesco says she does not actually know, so the teacher promises to intervene. On asking Mr Okoronkwo, she does not get any concrete reason other than Mr Okoronkwo babbling that Chidesco is rude, lazy and dull. Mr Okoronkwo storms out of the office, finds Chidesco and tells her to meet him immediately at the school gate in her own interest.

Performance and reactions

The school performance date was fixed and letters of invitation were sent to the principal, staff and members of the Parents–Teachers Association. The students were also encouraged to invite their parents. On the morning of the performance, initially some of the teachers did not appear. When the principal saw the unfolding plot and that it concerned teacher–student relationships, she begged that the play be stopped and sent for all the teachers, especially the male teachers, to attend.

The presentation was first stopped at the point where Chidesco runs out of Mr Okoronkwo’s office. The audience provided various scenarios of the choices available to Chidesco. Each choice was scrutinised, and the merits and demerits debated. The play then continued. When it turned out that Chidesco had not made any of the “obvious” choices, such as telling a classmate, the female teacher who queried her punishment, the principal or even her parents, many of the students were disappointed. One student was angry and retorted that “only a fool would suffer like Chidesco in this drama, even if I did not want to report him before, once the opportunity came and the teacher asked me, I would tell her everything and save myself from further punishment”. Yet another student asked: “How are we sure Chidesco does not want this relationship? How can she miss every opportunity to free herself from this harassment?” However, one of the more sober students cautioned that it was not as easy to free herself as people think, since Chidesco could not be sure whether the woman teacher would support her colleague and not her. She was sure that “the only place I blame Chidesco is that if I were her, I would have told my mother immediately it started”.

At the critical moment of Chidesco caving in and promising to meet the teacher at the “end” of the drama, the audience were asked: “If you were Chidesco, what would you do?” Nearly all the students said they would report to the school principal. One of the girls said she thought Chidesco had made a mistake, and that she would have told the whole story to the woman teacher who asked the reason why she was being punished. Another student cried out: “Chidesco must be a loner in the school, why can’t she discuss it, at least with any of her friends, if telling the teacher was difficult? I am tempted to agree with the person who suggested earlier that maybe she wants this relationship – nobodi fit shave me for my absence (pidgin English for: no one can do anything to me without my consent)”. Yet another said: “I don’t believe this thing will happen and somebody will bear it, my mother will hear.”

Although no male teacher at the time of the project was on record as having been reported for harassing a female student, there were cases of girls getting pregnant and never disclosing the name of the person responsible. The Principal stepped in and asked the students to move from the fiction of the play to reality. She assured them that anybody sexually harassed like Chidesco should report it to her. She also advised the students that they knew very well within themselves that a number of them indulged in high risk behaviour and they too needed to reform their behaviour, so as to avoid ruining their own futures.

The PTA chairman urged the students to be bold and to report any teacher who betrayed the trust the system had reposed in them by harassing or abusing a student. He said that if the Principal failed to take action in such a case, the PTA would take it upon itself to take up the matter with the Ministry of Education. He warned the teachers: “The veil used to cover your students’ eyes has been uncovered by this drama, so beware.”

Discussion

One obvious advantage of the drama methodology is that it is not only participatory but also visual. According to Gill Gordon: “Visualization encourages participation and avoids the problems of adults taking additional notes or adding their own analysis.” She also notes that theatre pedagogy is a powerful process for enabling children to explore and understand their reality, generate solutions to their problems and communicate their learning to others. Those involved gain confidence and can become leaders and educators of other children and adults.¹⁰

This kind of learning is akin to Freire’s conscientisation in which he advocates a radical change in the educational process in order that the process of learning is about the perception of social, political and economic contradictions and taking action against the oppressive elements of reality.⁸ For Freire, a person’s ontological vocation is to be a subject who acts upon and transforms his/her world and in so doing can move towards new possibilities and a fuller and richer life, individually and collectively. He applied his concepts with Brazilian adults in an oppressive situation, but it is at least as appropriate with regard to sexuality education for adolescents.

The project demonstrated that the world is not static and handed down, and that by using a dialogic approach, adolescents can move from lack of knowledge and a culture of silence in a paternalistic system of education to participation, dialogue and the freedom to learn.

There was one important exception to this, that is, as regards the issue of lesbianism, which was never explored further. Those of us in charge of the project were also not prepared to deal with this subject with the sensitivity and understanding that it required. It proved easier for all concerned to tilt the blame, parry the problem of lesbianism and focus on the problem of relationships between male teachers and female students. While readers of this paper from countries where homosexuality and lesbianism are better accepted will have cringed at the stigmatising way in which these adolescents saw and depicted lesbianism, it is an accurate reflection of how far there is to go in a context like northern Nigeria before this form of sexuality is accepted.

Despite this exception, the project increased the knowledge of students on sexuality issues and their confidence in discussing the issues, as evidenced in comparing the period before the scenarios were produced to the debates near the end of the project. It unearthed a number of problematic sexuality issues in the school, especially in a girls-only school. And it engendered the participation not just of the immediate students involved in preparing the scenarios, but the entire school and Parents-Teachers Association.

As similar projects have done, it demonstrated in a Nigerian school setting the efficacy of allowing young people to have a say in their own educational process. The democratic nature of the project’s execution contributed to its success, as every phase of learning was to a great extent negotiated. The learning atmosphere was also highly informal. This helped the students to open up and discuss freely with the facilitators, thereby offering the opportunity to learn more and develop a sense of pride and ownership in the project.

Though targeted primarily at adolescents, the project was broad enough to encompass the participation of other stakeholders, especially through the presentation of the drama and discussion of the issues with the entire school and the teachers, parents and others. This started a process of change in how the school deals with students who have been forced in the past to drop out due to sexuality-related problems such as pregnancy. It also pointed the way toward future projects involving use of similar methods with both out-of-school adolescents and young people.

The project developed the capacities of the guidance and counselling teachers, who gained new approaches for dealing with adolescents’ behaviour instead of using the traditional method of demonising anyone who makes a mistake as a bad element. In addition, part of the larger strategy of the project was to invite officials from the state Ministry of Education to the final performances, which brought all the participating schools to a central location. The aim here was not only to promote the need for sexuality education among secondary school students but also to show the stark reality of conditions for girl students as a result of government procrastination. Finally, because the project also recognises peer pressure (from other girls and boys), a component of peer counselling was built in to encourage girls to talk to one another, negotiate sexual relationships and practise safer sex. One important indicator of the success of these efforts is that many of the parents who had withdrawn their children from the project due to opposition or misunderstanding of the aims and content later asked for them to be included when they discovered their children were missing out on important information and skills.

Our hope is that the project’s initial success record will be followed by continuing interaction with those students who were trained as peer educators and training new ones to replace those completing their course of study. The longer-term issues include the need for funding to run further workshops in this and other schools and advocacy with parents, state and local education departments and school heads and managers as well as religious leaders to support the introduction of sexuality education as a permanent element in the curriculum throughout the entire secondary school system. In this regard, the pioneering efforts of Action Health Incorporated and Girls Power Initiative, especially in the south of Nigeria, must be acknowledged. These organisations have worked to bring a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum – one that recognises sexual diversity without stigma or discrimination – to public school programmes in Lagos, Edo, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Delta States among others (Grace Osakue, Girls’ Power Initiative, Personal communication, 20 January 2008).

However, in the north, the more liberal document, Guidelines to Sexuality Education in Nigeria was changed by local religious and political forces to a more conservative National Family Life and HIV/AIDS Curriculum. Hopefully, modest efforts such as the “For Tomorrow” project will bring the northern states closer to the standard set by Action Health and Girls Power Initiative in the not too distant future.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to both Adenike Esiet of Action Health Incorporated and Grace Osakue of Girls Power Initiative for personal communications and useful project reports, which have enriched this work.

Notes

* These are the words of the students, but I believe “teacher–student relationship” is a euphemism for sexual abuse and harassment while “getting pregnant by a teacher” can include rape, not just consensual relations.