By Charles M’Kotama

I missed a lucrative and substantive debate on the bill in parliament that sought to have age of sexual consent reduced from the current 18 years to 14 or 16 years.

With the current sprawling cases of teen pregnancies I feel the bill should be given a fresh listening ears, it may not narrow the age of consent but will offer fresh perspective to the current debate on teen pregnancy.

To begin with, comparing the age and body structure of your schoolmates, both in primary and secondary during your time and today there is a big difference.

Sexual maturity and the type of toys and content on media exposed to this generation is more diverse than what we had, let us say a decade ago.

Media spewing Nigerian and Telenovela movie sexualize and imbibe material mindest to younger generation, and the effect is what we see today.

Our musical artists are also to blame, perhaps not greatly because they only sing as per the demands of the audience, but their choice of lyrics leaves more to be desired on the moral compass we are faced with.

 You may cringe at lyrics in the songs like Wamlambez Wamnyonyez, Pekejeng’ or Pigwa Mboko, and faint a hundred time in your heart as a parent when you see the videos with explicit content.

One only needs to take an evening walk or a dawn jog in any Kenyan setup, from rural to urban area, to see teenagers in sexual zombie acts oblivious of the implications.

The peer pressure among these age set for sexual adventurer is high, but sadly it is compounded by older generation preying on their naivety.

While the Covid 19 has played a pivotal role in the up scaling of teenage pregnancies through parents facing socio-economic downturn, other factors like older people preying on these young generation has added fireworks to a tinder box,