20.06.2008 - Source: Child Rights Information Network

Report from a Nigerian children's organisation on the situation of children living on the street ("Voices from the Street"), Autor: Child to Child Network [ID 23682]

Document(s): Open document

11.03.2008 - Source: US Department of State

Reasons for children to become homeless ("Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2007") [ID 19941]

"Numerous children were homeless and lived on the streets. According to the Consortium for Street Children, there were no known statistics on numbers of street children in the country. Major factors that caused children to turn to the streets included instability in the home, poverty, hunger, abuse and violence by parents, and displacement caused by clashes in the community. AIDS also had a tremendous impact on the numbers of orphaned street children."

Document(s): Open document

11.03.2008 - Source: US Department of State

About 2 million "almajirai", children sent to urban areas to study with Islamic teachers, exist in the north ("Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2007") [ID 23745]

"In the north, an estimated two million children were "almajirai," or children whose parents sent them from their rural homes to urban areas with the expectation that they would study and live with Islamic teachers. Instead of receiving an education, however, many almajirai became child beggars who were forced to work manual jobs or beg for money that was then turned over to their teacher. The religious leaders often did not provide the almarajai with sufficient shelter or food, and many of these children were effectively homeless."

Document(s): Open document

09.12.2007 - Source: Guardian

Akwa Ibom state: Children called evil by evangelical pastors are abused and abandoned; parents often pay as much as average four month salary for 'deliverance' offered by local churches ("Nigerian witch hunts hit children") [ID 21789]

Document(s): Open document

18.06.2007 - Source: ReliefWeb

Child trafficking has been identified as unremedied source of infections related to HIV, traumatic and psychiatric diseases and illnesses in children ("Child trafficking exposes children to high risk infection"), Autor: Government of Nigeria [ID 22109]

Document(s): Open document

22.10.2003 - Source: Integrated Regional Information Network

115 children from Benin freed at Ogun State in Western Nigeria ("Security officials discuss child trafficking") [#16982],  [ID 15205]

""In recent weeks, our police, acting on tip-offs raided a camp at Ogun State in western Nigeria where 115 children were freed and repatriated to their home country in Benin. We are doing our best.""

Document(s): Open document

10.2003 - Source: UK Home Office

Government and charities are active in childcare issues ("Country Report - October 2003") [#17332],  [ID 15206]

"6.121 There appears to be little central Government provision for orphanages in Nigeria. The Government is active in dealing with some childcare related issues, and appears to register orphanages, but a lack of funding appears to prevent it doing more to address this issue. In major towns and cities there appears to be orphanages run by charities, some of these are connected to religious groups."

Document(s): Open document

10.2003 - Source: UK Home Office

The government seldom enforced laws designed to protect the rights of children ("Country Report - October 2003") [#17332],  [ID 15207]

"6.118 While the Nigerian Government has increased spending on children's health in recent years, it seldom enforced even the inadequate laws designed to protect the rights of children. Cases of child abuse, abandoned infants, child prostitution, and physically harmful child labour practices remained common throughout the country. The Government only occasionally criticised child abuse and neglect, and it made little effort to stop customary practices harmful to children. There were credible reports that poor families sell their daughters into marriage as a means of supplementing their income. Young girls are often forced into marriage as soon as they reach puberty, regardless of age, in order to prevent the "indecency" associated with premarital sex."

Document(s): Open document

26.08.2002 - Source:

Human rights of children violated during administration of justice ("26/08/2002 - IRIN : Focus on the administration of juvenile justice") [ID 15213]

"Despite Nigeria's legal framework and stated commitment to international charters and conventions to protect young offenders, rights activists are worried that their rights are being consistently negated. More and more children who should have been reformed are either traumatised or hardened in crime.
"In Nigeria children are tried like adults," said Clement Nwankwo, head of the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP), a leading local human rights group. "They are jailed and incarcerated with adults instead of being given more reform-oriented, non-custodial forms of sentencing," he told IRIN.
This is not how the treatment of young offenders was envisaged in the country's law."

Document(s): 26/08/2002 - IRIN : Focus on the administration of juvenile justice

26.08.2002 - Source: Integrated Regional Information Network

Children tried as adults [ID 15214]

"Another study on juvenile justice administration conducted by CRP with the assistance of Penal Reform International (PRI), found that police officers often falsified the ages of juveniles to pass them off in court as adults, in order to avoid adhering to the legal requirements for their treatment. This, the study said, was often the case in parts of the country where borstals or remand homes were not available.
"Some (children in prison) claimed that the police never asked them about their ages, others said they were compelled to exaggerate their ages and, when they refused, the police just inserted any age above 20 years for them," the CRP report said. "Others claimed that the police refused to accept their ages and insisted that they were above 18 years and wrote their ages as such.""

Document(s): Open document

26.08.2002 - Source: Integrated Regional Information Network

Administration of juvenile justice under Sharia [ID 15216]

"The recent introduction of Islamic or Shari'ah law in parts of northern Nigeria has created new deficiencies in the administration of juvenile justice. Under Shari'ah, the age of criminal responsibility is taken to be either 18 years or puberty. In cases involving fornication or adultery, which may attract flogging or the death penalty respectively, the age of responsibility is set at 15. The implication is that, in cases where children reach puberty earlier than 18 years, no distinction is made between them and adults in dispensing Shari'ah punishments.
In January 2001, a young girl, Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, whose age was variously put at between 13 and 17 years, was subjected to 100 strokes of the cane in public in Zamfara State, after she gave birth to a child without being married."

Document(s): Open document