Condom messages hampering abstinence among youths?
By Abiose Adelaja

"With condom, I dey Kampe"

"If you no fit hold body use condom"

"Play safe, use condoms"  

These are a few of the slogans that rent the air waves, TV screens and billboards to  promote the practice of safe sex by using condoms. Movies and music also have their lines laced with similar advice meant to protect a population at growing risk of HIV infection: that condoms are the super saviour from an incurable disease contracted from a desirable pleasure. It almost sounds like poetry.  

A Yoruba popular Fuji musician, Obesere dedicated an entire video to pushing the pro-condom message, dramatized with sexually provocative acts. "Ema a lo condom," he sings, compelling listeners to be "be using condoms."

Popular HIV prevention strategy is three-fold, described with the acronym ABC: Abstinence, Being faithful and Condom use. In Nigeria, the awareness campaign has shifted from the first two and is increasingly focused on the last – condoms. Indeed, condom use can reduce the risk of HIV transmission by up to 85 per cent. This figure, however, is based on consistent use, a standard which is not usually achieved by adolescents and the poor alike.

The HIV virus is transmitted in several ways, but sexual transmission accounts for the largest percentage of all infections. Because of their high sexual activity, young people (aged 15-30) constitute a larger risk group than any other group. The danger this statistics poses to the future of the nation is the clear underlying message in the growing dialogue around safe sex. 

The message is not restricted to adverts and entertainment. Recently, the Lagos State Ministry of Education introduced sexual education into its public secondary school curriculum, with the aim of empowering the youths especially girls to protect their reproductive health rights. Youths as young as 10 (Junior Secondary School 1) are taught sexuality education as a subject under Integrated Science and Social Studies.  The course content is on ejaculation, masturbation, erection, menstruation, ovulation, pregnancy and conception.  

But instead of receiving praise for openly addressing a subject that previously was discussed in whispers and behind closed doors, the program has generated a lot of negative reaction.

"It is a time bomb," says a teacher at Randle High School, Apapa, preferring to remain anonymous. "Most of them already know about this before they come to school. The students in this school live in areas like Ijora, Badia, Ajegunle, and Police Barracks, where there is already gross immorality," he says.

According to our source, every session, a lot of students drop out as a result of teenage pregnancy. He worries that sexuality education actually encourages promiscuous behavior instead of controlling it.

But others disagree. Mrs Maria Onwuegbenan, Social Studies teacher at the Apapa High School, Lagos reports that since the inception of the sexuality education classes the incidence of teenage pregnancy has dropped, although most are still sexually active. The conclusion that can be drawn here is that while youth are still having sex, they are protecting themselves when they do.

The drawback, she says, is not the education itself but that practical advice on how to use the condom which is lacking. If used properly, condoms are widely recognized for being highly effective at preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS between sexual partners. As described by the Centre for Disease Control in the United States, "Latex condoms cover the penis and provide an effective barrier to exposure to secretions such as semen and vaginal fluids, blocking the pathway of sexual transmission of HIV infection." According to the Center’s literature, latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles of the size of STD pathogens.

The question is how many young people in the heat of sexual passion have the patience or discipline to use condom effectively. Trojan-Enz, a well-known manufacturer, has nine different instructions written in English with tiny fonts. The instructions read that condoms should be used before foreplay. This is to avoid exposure to any body fluid, e.g. the semen that can carry any infection. Myriads of people only put on the condom after foreplay and are about to penetrate the vagina.  

Many users don't know that if a latex condom touches oil in any form (petroleum jelly, baby oil, or talcum powder) it can become ineffective. Oil weakens the strength of natural rubber latex.
 
Cajetan Ezeorah, program officer of Project for Human Development (PHD), an NGO that promote abstinence in Lagos secondary schools explained that most youths do not use condoms. Those who do, he says,   use them with a careless assumption that their partner is HIV negative. "When I asked them if they would still insist on having sex if a girl told them she was HIV positive, all of them said no. I would come back to myself, one says. This is a clear picture that because of HIV they would abstain."

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