COUNSELLING AGAINST EARLY MARRIAGE OF THE GIRL-CHILD IN ANAMBRA STATE

This study investigated the capacity building strategies for counselling against early marriage of the Girl-child in Ogidi Education zone of Anambra state. Three research questions were used and descriptive survey design was adopted. The population for the study is all the parents who are members of the parents’ teachers’ association of all the schools in Ogidi education zone and all the eleven counsellors in the chosen zone. A sample of 660 respondents was chosen through random sampling and all the 11 counsellors were chosen because the population size is small. On the whole 671 respondents were used for the study. Instrument used was questionnaire and mean rating was used as the statistical tool. The results showed that all but one of the items are the capacity building strategies as agreed by the respondents. This implies that unless the parents work together with the counsellors, counselling might not contribute much in the fight against early marriage of the Girl-child. Recommendations include that parents in conjunction with the counsellors should mount campaigns through seminars, workshops, etc to modify the girls’ attitude towards early marriage.