Female Circumcision Is Dangerous To Women's Health; It Should Be Scrapped.

Female genital mutilation defined by WHO as "partial or total removal of the external female Instruments or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons."
This act is common amidst African countries. It is done at birth or before puberty.
Further information
As of 2013, there was legislation against FGM in the following practising countries (several introduced restrictions short of a ban; an asterisk indicates a ban according to UNICEF–UNFPA in 2012):
Benin (2003)Burkina Faso (1996*)Central African Republic (1966, amended 1996)Chad (2003)Côte d'Ivoire (1998)Djibouti (1995, amended 2009*)Egypt (2008*)Eritrea (2007*)Ethiopia (2004*)Ghana (1994, amended 2007)Guinea (1965, amended 2000*)Guinea-Bissau (2011*)Iraqi Kurdistan (2011)Kenya (2001, amended 2011*)
Mauritania (2005)Niger (2003)Nigeria, some states (1999–2006)Senegal (1999*)Somalia (2012*)Sudan, some states (2008–2009)Tanzania (1998)Togo (1998)Uganda (2010*)Yemen (2001).
Some states in Nigeria is still practising this act. That is why am writing this article to call the attention of the Nigerian government to it.
More facts............

Female Circumcision(FC), also known as female genital cutting and female genital mutilation, is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female Instruments. Typically carried out by a traditional circumciser using a blade or razor (with or without anaesthesia).
For the advantage of non-medical student I will like to outline the procedures.
PROCEDURES


The procedures differ according to the ethnic group. They include removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans(the visible part of the femalecore), removal of the inner labia and, in the most severe form (known as infibulation), removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the Arrow. In this last procedure, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid, and the vagina is opened for intercourse and opened further for childbirth. Health effects depend on the procedure, but can include recurrent infections, chronic pain, cysts(closure of the vagina for easy intercourse), an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth and fatal bleeding. There are no known health benefits.
Futhermore,the practice is rooted in gender inequality, attempts to control women's sexuality, and ideas about purity, modesty and aesthetics. It is usually initiated and carried out by women, who see it as a source of honour, and who fear that failing to have their daughters and granddaughters cut, will expose the girls to social exclusion.
However,the laws are poorly enforced. There have been international efforts since the 1970s to persuade practitioners to abandon it, and in 2012 the United Nations General Assembly, recognizing FC as a human-rights violation, voted unanimously to intensify those efforts. The opposition is not without its critics, particularly among anthropologists. Eric Silverman writes that "FGM has become one of anthropology's central moral topics, raising difficult questions about cultural relativism, tolerance and the universality of human rights."

HISTORY

Until the 1980s FGM was widely known as female circumcision, which implied an equivalence in severity with male circumcision. The Kenya Missionary Council began referring to it as the sexual mutilation of women in 1929, following the lead of Marion Scott Stevenson, a Church of Scotland missionary. References to it as mutilation increased throughout the 1970s. Anthropologist Rose Oldfield Hayes called it female genital mutilation in 1975 in the title of a paper, and in 1979 Austrian-American researcher Fran Hosken called it mutilation in her influential. The Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual Mutilation of Females.

EFFECTS OF FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION

Immediate consequences of FGM include severe pain and bleeding, shock, difficulty in passing urine, infections, injury to nearby genital tissue and sometimes death.
Almost all women who have undergone FGM experience pain and bleeding as a consequence of the procedure. The event itself is traumatic as girls are held down during the procedure. Risk and complications increase with the type of FGM and are more severe and prevalent with infibulations.
“Thepain inflicted by FGM does not stop with the initial procedure, but often continues as ongoing torture throughout a woman’s life”, says Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
Additional risks for complications from infibulations include urinary and menstrual problems, infertility, later surgery (defibulation and reinfibulation) and painful sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse can only take place after opening the infibulation, through surgery or penetrative sexual intercourse.
Conclusively I think with these it's high time the government looked into this and do something about it. Parents should stop affecting the future of their daughters with a meaningless culture.
References
-WIKIPEDIA
-ENDFGM
-WHO.