Female Circumcision and its Effect on the girl Child

Female Genital Mutilation (FMG) otherwise known as Female genital cutting or female circumcision is a barbaric act carried out behind closed doors in some parts of Africa, Nigeria inclusive. This act is carried out in such a way that a tip of the clitoris or the entire clitoris is cut off from the female genitalia. This act is part of child abuse, imagine the physical and psychological trauma that girl will go through. We do hear cases of some girl child that bled to death during this act. Some of the girls that survive this trauma will tell you, they feel less of a woman if they grow into adult. I was reading an article published by one of our NGO's in Nigeria the other time where a 16 year old girl and her mother were banished from their village because the girl refused being circumcised. According to their tradition, every first female child of a family (otherwise called the Ada) will be circumcised on her 16th birthday. I was like, how do they expect a fully grown, educated 16 year old girl to lie down and let you use blade or knife to cut off part of her womanliness all in the name of one tradition? That is very much impossible. I was pondering on why these people carry out this heinous act on their daughters and according to my findings, apart from the fact that it is part of their tradition; they carry out this act because; help me