The Challenge of Domesticating Children's Rights Treaties in Nigeria and Alternative Legal Avenues for Protecting Children

Abstract

The domestication of child-related treaties is not a straightforward process in Nigeria. Unlike treaties with another thematic focus, the majority of constituent states must give their full consent before any child-related instrument may be domesticated at the federal level and subsequently re-enacted in the domestic states. In many ways, the plural legal orders in the country and the differing perceptions of childhood make consensus difficult to achieve in terms of child rights legislation. In this regard, even though the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been domesticated (through a contestable procedure), 11 of Nigeria's 36 constituent states have failed to re-enact the domesticating instrument. This study elaborates on this problem, and then examines some instruments that are not affected by the domestication challenges and may offer useful protection to children with regard to certain sectoral aspects, especially child labour and child trafficking.

Child's Rights and the Challenges of Educating the Girl-Child: Assessing the Contributions of UNICEF in Nigeria

“…In the case of the Child's Rights Act, the National Assembly failed to meet this constitutional requirement. Nevertheless, it went ahead to enact it into law (Ogunniyi, 2018). The lack of consensus surrounding the enactment of the Child's Rights Act exculpates the states from any form of duty to implement it.…”

“…The bulk of these works focused on issues relating to either child's rights or the challenges of girl-child education in Nigeria. Thus, many of these works examined child's rights in Nigeria vis-à-vis global expectations on child's rights or from the perspectives of child's rights as a component of human rights and the attendant limitations in their actualization in the country (Egede, 2007;Ibraheem, 2015;Nzarga, 2016;AjaNwachuku, 2017;Ogunniyi, 2018;Ajanwachuku and Faga, 2018;Akinola, 2019). Other strands of scholarship focused either exclusively on girl-child education or in relation to sociocultural and religious impediments to its actualization, while also dissecting the diverse nature, manifestations and implications of girl-child education to Nigeria's national development (Eweniyi and Usman, 2013;Oluyemi and Yinusa, 2016;Ebobrah and Eboibi, 2017;Offor et al, 2021).…”

“…Nigeria passed the Child's Rights Act (CRA) in 2003, thus domesticating and giving legal backing to both the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (Ogunniyi, 2018;Akinola, 2019;Assim, 2020). The passing of the Child's Rights Act was a watershed in the aspirations of child's rights campaigners in Nigeria.…”

“…Some of such provisions include the prohibition of child marriage and betrothal (sections 21 and 22), the definition of a child as anyone below the age of 18 (section 277), and the prohibition of marriage between an adopted child and members of the adoptive family (section 147), among others. 2 It has been suggested that these northern states oppose the Child's Rights Act because of the incongruence of some of its provisions with their cultural and religious norms (Ogunniyi, 2018).…”

“…Without nationwide applicability, the Child's Rights Act, lacks the capacity to effectively improve the conditions of children (Ogunniyi, 2018;Akinola, 2019). In addition to cultural and religious forces such as child-marriage, female genital mutilation, scarification and begging (Assim, 2020), the Nigerian child faces new threats, namely, abduction, rape, drug abuse, recruitment as soldiers and dehumanization occasioned by security-induced internal displacement (Kajjo and Kaina, 2020;Ajakaiye et al, 2021).…”