REDUCING THE INCEDENCE OF EARLY MARRIAGE IN THE ZUJUNG COMMUNITY OF THE TAMALE METROPOLIS

Abstract

Zujung is located in the Tamale South Constituency and under the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly. It is located in the outskirts and southern part of the Metropolis and shares boundaries with Builpiela to the North-West and Lamashegu to the East. Recently, the incidence of early marriage has been very high in Ghana. The project therefore, was designed to explore the effects of child marriage on the young people and the Zujung community at large and finding ways to reducing the incidence of child marriage in the community. The researcher adopted the action research strategy and the design method used in this study was the qualitative research design strategy. This design method dealt with identifying and finding solutions to social phenomena, thus, reducing the incidence of early marriage in the Zujung community. Both secondary and primary sources of data were used to elicit information from the metropolitan assembly, victims of early marriage, parents and opinion leaders, as well as reports and other documents written by people on the study area. With respect to factors that lead to child marriage, it was evident that poor parenting, poverty, peer influence were the major causes of teenage pregnancy. Again, it was an evident that early marriage has several negative consequences on the people as well as the community in general. The study revealed that most of the teenage mothers drop out of school, most of the child brides suffer financial challenges, most child brides indulge in adultery and prostitution due to the fact that they do not love their husbands and again do not have the financial ability to cater for their basic needs, hence forcing them in to prostitution, maternal as well as infant mortality among child brides since they are not fully ready for child birth.