Every person has his own discernment and way of thinking based on our individual differences both in terms of religion, moral, culture, social orientation and to an extent sex education in Nigerian schools.

In the absence of a cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS, educating children about safe sex is regarded by many as the primary means for prevention – the United Nations and others have described it as “the social vaccine” – but the question of how best to do this has long been debated.

The need for such efforts remains acute but is fraught with difficulty as deep-rooted socio-cultural, religious and moral constraints remain barriers to effective sex education across Africa and beyond.
Over a two-year period, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Commonwealth Education, along with others in the UK and three countries in Africa, approached the problem by thinking beyond the classroom and asking a fundamental question: how much do children know already?
“We worked with children at grade 6 in primary school [median age 12] because this is the final year of compulsory education in the countries we were working in, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, and also because of a common perception that primary age is too young – that educating this age group is a risk rather than a protective factor,” said Dr Colleen McLaughlin, who leads the ASKAIDS project.

So, Nairalanders, do you think sex education should be taught?

Of course