A NATION’S CHILDREN CANNOT WAIT: NIGERIA MUST TURN CHILD PROTECTION LAWS INTO REAL PROTECTION
ISSN: 2354-4481
By John Mbonu Uchenwoke-Ekperechi
A country can measure its wealth in oil reserves, its strength in military hardware and its progress in kilometres of roads. But the most honest measure of a nation's future is much simpler: how safely its children can grow, learn, eat, receive healthcare and dream.
That is why the recent engagement between the Honourable Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, and the Executive Director of Legend Golden Care Foundation, Mrs. Kanayo Olisa-Metuh, deserves attention. Their focus on children in conflict with the law, rehabilitation, psychosocial support and reintegration touches one of Nigeria's most urgent governance challenges.
Yet the uncomfortable question must be asked: after decades of laws, policies, agencies and billions of naira in public expenditure, why are millions of Nigerian children still growing up without adequate protection?
The answer cannot simply be blamed on poverty, insecurity or social norms. Government bears the primary responsibility for creating institutions capable of protecting children.
THE NUMBERS ARE A NATIONAL WARNING
The 2026 KidsRights Index ranks Nigeria 191st, with an overall score of 0.304. Its protection score stands at 0.385, while Nigeria's life domain score is an especially troubling 0.029. The index is not a direct assessment of the Child Rights Act; rather, it measures broader national performance across children's rights, including life, health, education, protection and the enabling environment.
That ranking should not become a political weapon. It should become a policy alarm.
Nigeria has nearly 105 million children and adolescents aged 0–17, representing roughly half the population. The Federal Government and UNICEF's 2024 situation analysis acknowledged progress in areas such as immunisation and child mortality, but also identified persistent problems involving poverty, education, nutrition, newborn survival and violence.
The contradiction is profound: Nigeria has the human and material resources to do better, yet too many children continue to pay the price of institutional weakness.
WHEN HOME IS NO LONGER SAFE
UNICEF reports that six in every ten Nigerian children experience some form of violence, while one in four girls and 10 per cent of boys have experienced sexual violence. Even more disturbing, fewer than five per cent of children who reported violence received any form of support.
UNICEF data also show that 90 per cent of Nigerian children aged 1–14 experienced physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers.
This is where child protection must move beyond legislation into homes, schools, police stations, courts, hospitals and communities.
A child who is beaten, sexually abused, trafficked or neglected does not need government sympathy after the damage is done. The child needs prevention, protection, justice and recovery.
INSECURITY HAS TURNED CHILDHOOD INTO A BATTLEGROUND
Nigeria's security crisis has also become a child-rights crisis.
In June 2025, more than 200 people were killed in attacks around Yelewata and neighbouring communities in Benue State, according to a UNICEF situation report. More than 3,000 people were displaced, while children and women faced heightened risks of sexual violence, psychological trauma and neglect. A 10-year-old girl was reportedly sexually assaulted within 24 hours of arriving at an IDP camp.
In November 2025, UNICEF condemned the attack on Government Girls School in Maga, Kebbi State, where the vice-principal was killed and 25 students were reportedly abducted.
These are not merely security statistics. Every dead, abducted, traumatised or displaced child represents a broken part of Nigeria's future.
EDUCATION AND HEALTH: THE OTHER EMERGENCY
Nigeria still has one of the world's largest populations of children outside formal education. UNICEF puts the number at about 10.5 million children aged 5–14, while its 2024 situation analysis reported that approximately 10 million primary-school-age children and eight million secondary-school-age children were out of school.
Healthcare presents another sobering picture. UNICEF data put Nigeria's 2024 under-five mortality rate at 115.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, with an estimated 855,676 under-five deaths. Only 41 per cent of under-five children with symptoms of acute respiratory infection were taken to a health facility or provider for advice or treatment.
The 2024 national situation analysis also reported 2.1 million zero-dose children, meaning children who had received no routine vaccine doses.
Nutrition is equally alarming. UNICEF says Nigeria has the world's second-highest burden of stunted children, with about 32 per cent of under-fives affected, while an estimated two million children suffer severe acute malnutrition. Another UNICEF analysis found that approximately 11 million Nigerian children under five—one in three—experience severe child food poverty.
THE LAW MUST BECOME A LIVING INSTITUTION
Nigeria's Child Rights Act 2003 was a landmark intervention. But legislation alone cannot rescue a child.
The country needs stronger implementation mechanisms, sustainable funding, specialised child-protection personnel, functional family courts, child-sensitive policing, reliable birth registration, better social workers and accessible shelters and rehabilitation services.
Children in conflict with the law particularly deserve a justice system that distinguishes accountability from abandonment. A child who commits an offence should face appropriate consequences, but rehabilitation, education, counselling and reintegration should remain central.
The government's 2024 national assessment of children and young adults deprived of liberty identified institutional challenges and service gaps requiring legislative and policy reforms.
A BETTER STANDARD OF GOVERNANCE
The engagement between the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development and LGCF should therefore become more than another official meeting.
It should contribute to a national child-protection architecture in which every reported abuse triggers a response, every vulnerable child has somewhere safe to go, every child in conflict with the law receives due process, and every government budget treats children as an investment rather than an afterthought.
Nigeria cannot continue to boast of resources while its children are denied the fundamentals of childhood.
A nation that cannot protect its children is not merely facing a child-protection crisis; it is confronting a governance crisis.
The objective should not be to produce perfect statistics or defend government records. It should be to produce better outcomes.
Nigeria's children deserve protection without discrimination, justice without cruelty, education without exclusion, healthcare without barriers and childhood without fear.
The question before government is no longer whether Nigeria has enough laws.
The question is whether Nigeria has enough political will to make those laws work.
And history will ultimately judge the country not by the promises written in its statutes, but by the children who survived, learned, healed and prospered because those promises were kept.
Ideas, Issues, Integrity and Democracy.
For every child protected today is a stronger Nigeria tomorrow.
John Mbonu Uchenwoke-Ekperechi
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Inside Agwa News (IAN)
Media Consultant | Columnist, Shadow of the Flag | Convener, Renaissance Oguta Constituency (ROC) | Political Affairs Analyst & Social Commentator
Studied History and International Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN)
Writes from Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.
