Trial marriages on campuses

Recently, a couple living together in one of the campuses had a baby and lost the baby due to their inability to cater for the baby. The accidental mother and father are all dependent on their parents; they have not completed their education, as such are jobless.
Most children from such upbringing lack basic care from their parents because the two parents are not prepared for child-bearing, do the children at their tender age are prone to be school dropouts, have malnutrition and unnecessary hardships of life. The forceful union often cracks and leads to divorce and social/welfare matters.

   A lot of male and female students often cohabit or live together under the pretext of studying together, but in the real sense they tend to live as husband and wife, which they commonly refer to as "trial marriage" without having any thought for marriage. The effects of students living like couples are enormous and have a number of disadvantages for those involved .This in turn has a number of disadvantages for the larger society. So the big question is why are students adopting this lifestyle and how can it be nipped in the bud?

  It is important to unravel how they come to live together; to discover if it is economy or emotional factors that drive them to cohabit. The next question would be to how it affects their academic performances. According to Sherifat Alani, A final year student in one of the nation's tertiary institutions; "It has been figured out that a lot of  students cohabit, i.e. living together as man and wife and some even go to the extent of having kids for themselves which affect their education automatically. This act is mostly without the knowledge of their parents while some parents even encourage it due to economical or financial challenges."

For Alani, it has become "shocking that sex, cohabiting is now a common subject and you hear jokes about it from campus girls and guys, secondary school students as well as in the story lines of some of the videos we watch on television. For this group, cohabitation and sex have been identified as the only means to prove their love towards each other. On the other hand, you also find a few that keep sex till after marriage. Interestingly, they are usually seen as a weird or religious fanatic by their colleagues."

 She adds that: "But there is more to cohabitation when you think about the consequence. Sexual activity that is not planned for can bring pain more than we can imagine. As a matter of fact, casual sex is like placing your bed spread on the floor at a chicken house. Don't get me wrong, one male student to one female relationship is not bad if there is sincerity in the relationship."

  Olayemi spoke on how he came about cohabiting with his girlfriend Eniola. His words: "We met ourselves in the school market when she just came to the school for registration. It was late in the evening and i saw her crying. Unfortunately, she had not finished what she came to do in school and she couldn't travel back home that night and also had nowhere to spend the night. I had compassion on her and asked her if she could come to my place to pass the night. She agreed and i took her to my house where she spent the night in my room.

 That night I spent the night in a friend's apartment so she could have her privacy. When I came back home I found that the house had been tidied up and you know how boys rooms are always scattered. Since then I had set my eyes on her that she would make a very good wife material but I didn't tell her anything but kept my eyes on her until towards the end of her ND1 first semester.

   Sandra Agbor also tells you about falling victim bacause my boyfriend was at the extreme but I was able to resist him. For me at that point in my life my education and probably what people would say was more important for me".

 She adds that: "why buy the cor when you can have the milk for free is the answer of cohabiting?" Many couples in the a world would rather cohabitate before marriage because they have the errorneous belief that doing so will enable them to know if they are suited for marriage but there are two ways to it, the advantage and the disadvantages. The advantages of cohabiting are that it lowers the cost of living, emotional support and sexual satisfaction without the commitment of marriage.

 "It enables you know your partner's loyalty to you and build trust, you can also test your compatibility through the process and learn to tolerate bad habit and attitudes before marriage. But at the same time there disadvantages of cohabiting; the longer you stay together, chances are that you might be comfortable living with each other and later forget about marriage. It also makes it easier for one partner to walk out of the relationship because he or she is not obligated to you legally", Agbor informs. While some cohabiting students find it difficult to live apart because of the strong physical intimacy between, the addictive prowess of sex over them makes it quite difficult for the couples to receive their problems.

    Many a times, the need for companionship and fear of loneliness becomes so strong among students that they begin to think they cannot wait for marriage before living together, which eventually leads. The off campus phenomenon is most preferred by students in most tertiary institutions considering some genuine reasons like poor sanitary condition in hostels and the overcrowding. However, most students have their selfish and unrealistic reasons.

  The marriage license is only a piece of paper; it doesn't automatically make you committed. Some argue that they are already committed to each other and don't need a piece of paper to prove it.

   Physical implications of cohabitation are that those who are sexually active before marriage have greater behavioral problems: According to a study reported in pediatrics, early sexual activity leads to serious behavioral problems. Those living together abuse each other more common and more severe among live-in couples than among those who are married. Previous studies have revealed that men  typically cohabit with expectation that it would lead to marriage.

 Those who live together before marriage often lay a foundation of distrust and lack of respect; mature love is built on the security of knowing that your love is exclusive and that there is no one else.

Premature intimacy cause you to wonder if he or she has this little self-control with me now; have there been others before me and would there be others after me in the future.

   The implication of the drastic trend is that most female students that engage in this act usually end up becoming mothers half-way through their education. The ante-natal period and nursing period after delivering of the unplanned baby is enough vacation for any accidental mother to forget or drop her education half-way.

   Change starts with one person standing up and saying "no more". The Somali Mam Foundation is dedicated to ending sex slavery and end empowering its survivors as part of the solution. Our multilateral approaches support rescues and recovery centers, survivors-driven advocacy centers, survivors-driven advocacy, and next generation change through strategic partnership, grassroots activism and the media all led by the vision and life's work of Cambodian survivor and anti-trafficking activist.