THE ROLES OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND PUBLIC COMPLAINT COMMISSION: A STUDY OF CHILD ABUSE IN NIGERIA

The study investigated the role of Human Rights institutions in the country in addressing the problem of child abuse. The objective of this study is causes, types and effects of child abuse on the child, the family and the nation. The work is meant to draw closer attention on this increasing scourge and access measures of addressing to preserve the fundamental human rights of the child as entrenched under the Nigeria Child Right Act. In the study, the researcher defined what child abuse is; the various forms of child abuse, and also identified some of the causes and consequences of child abuse as a reflection of the societal problem and its impact on the life of the child. The study also evaluated the extent of damages it does to the abused child and the Nigerian society. In order to gather relevant data and information on the subject matter, the researcher used the questionnaire as data collection instrument, which was administered on 200 respondents within the FCT which is the limit of the scope of the study. A self constructed questionnaire titled Child Abuse Questionnaire (CAQ) was administered on the students after validation. The instrument has construct validity co-efficient of 0.756 and reliability co-efficient of 0.95. The statistical technique that was used to analyse the data collected was Chi-Square distribution test. The result of the analysis showed that there was a significant relationship between poverty and economic deprivation and child abuse in Nigeria. Also, the study revealed that child abuse is still very prevalent in Nigeria and also that religious and cultural influences contribute to child abuse in Nigeria. The result revealed that the Rights institutions are not doing enough to arrest the problem of child abuse and that the child right act is not working in Nigeria.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The term “juvenile” designates the young or immature, encompassing both the child and the adolescent. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies a child as falling within the age bracket of 0–19 years, while some jurisdictions extend this classification to persons of 21 years and below. The Nigerian Labour Act defines a child as a person of 16 years of age and below, whereas the International Labour Organization (ILO) sets the threshold lower, at persons below 15 years of age. Nigeria’s own Child Rights Act (CRA) of 2003 is, however, unambiguous on this point: a child is any person under the age of 18 years. This definition has taken on renewed significance in recent years because, after more than two decades of uneven domestication, the CRA was finally adopted by all 36 states of the federation by 2024, following the accession of the last set of holdout states (Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation [FMINO], 2024; Tamakloe, 2025). This near-universal adoption represents a landmark step toward harmonising the legal definition and protection of the Nigerian child, even though, as this chapter will show, formal adoption has not translated into uniform enforcement.

Child abuse can be understood as any intentional act of violence, exploitation, or neglect committed against a person aged 18 years or below (Ifayomi, Ali, & Ellis, 2024). The World Health Organization similarly defines child maltreatment as physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, or commercial and other exploitation of a child, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development, or dignity, typically inflicted within a relationship of responsibility, trust, or power (WHO, 2022). Child abuse of this kind violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted in 1989), and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child — all instruments to which Nigeria is a signatory.

Framed differently, child abuse describes a situation in which the fundamental human rights of a child are compromised — where a child is denied the care and protection that it is every parent’s or guardian’s duty to provide. These rights include the right to education, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and shelter, among others. Where these entitlements are withheld, the child is routinely exposed to hardships that no child should have to bear.

Although child abuse has long existed in Nigeria, it received comparatively little sustained scholarly or policy attention for many years, an omission often attributed to the greater emphasis historically placed on more visible childhood problems such as malnutrition and infectious disease, as well as an underlying — and often mistaken — assumption that the extended family system reliably supplies every Nigerian child with love, care, and protection. Recent evidence suggests this picture is only slowly changing. A 2023 nationwide survey of 821 doctors and nurses across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones found that, more than three decades after Nigeria ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and nearly two decades after the CRA was enacted, health workers’ overall knowledge of child-rights provisions stood at just 45.1 percent, with perception and practice scores also falling short of acceptable thresholds (Adeleye, Ahmed, Babaniyi, Oniyangi, & Mukhtar-Yola, 2023). If professionals whose daily work brings them into direct contact with vulnerable children remain inadequately versed in the legal protections available to those children, the persistence of the institutional gaps that this study interrogates becomes easier to understand.

Traditional child-rearing practices, moreover, continue to expose some Nigerian children to harm even within the extended family structure — including purposeful neglect of severely disabled children and, in some rural communities, of twins or triplets. As Nigerian society has been reshaped by rapid socioeconomic and political change, new and increasingly urban patterns of abuse have emerged. These may be understood as the outcome of strained interactions among the child, parents or guardians, and the wider society. Contemporary studies document, among other things, the abandonment of infants by unmarried or impoverished mothers in Nigerian cities; the migration and exploitation of rural children brought into urban households as domestic help; and the mistreatment of children in nuclear urban families by hired child-minders. A recent study of family dynamics driving “child streetism” in Ibadan found that poor economic resources, weak parental bonding, and eroding filial relationships push families toward using children — mostly for hawking — as a survival strategy, noting that Nigeria’s minimum wage of roughly $39 a month is widely regarded as insufficient to sustain a household. Related scholarship on “child-hustling” situates these practices within a wider cultural worldview in which children’s labour is normalised as a contribution to family survival rather than recognised as exploitation (Adeoba, 2022).

Child labour remains one of the most visible and best-documented manifestations of this abuse. Nigeria’s 2022 Child and Forced Labour Survey found that 39.6 percent of boys and 38.8 percent of girls nationwide were engaged in economic activity or hazardous work, with the highest prevalence recorded in Yobe and Cross River states; a subsequent 2023 government estimate put the proportion of children aged 5–11 in economic activity, including the worst forms of child labour, at over 43 percent (as cited in Punch, 2024). A hospital-based study of child labour in Enugu similarly found hawking (39.2%) and shopkeeping (22.8%) to be the most common tasks assigned to working children, with attendant risks to their physical and psychological development (Bisi-Onyemaechi, Chikani, Chime, Mbanefo, Nduagubam, & Uwaezuoke, 2022). In the country’s northern states, the Almajiri system of itinerant Qur’anic education continues to expose large numbers of boys to street begging, hazardous informal labour, and, in the worst cases, recruitment into criminality — outcomes far removed from the system’s original educational intent.

The consequences of these experiences for the individual child are severe and often lifelong. Survivors of child sexual abuse in Nigeria have been documented to experience depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, self-blame, anxiety, distrust, and anger, alongside physical harms such as unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection (Ifayomi, Ali, & Ellis, 2024). A cross-sectional study of secondary school students in Calabar found that exposure to child abuse was a significant predictor of both depression and suicidality among Nigerian adolescents, with the risk compounding as the number of abuse types experienced increased (Edet, Essien, Eleazu, Atu, & Ogunkola, 2022). Similarly, a multi-country study found that emotional violence in childhood was independently associated with mental distress, self-harm, excessive alcohol use, and risky sexual behaviour among young Nigerian adults (Annor, Gilbert, Davila, Massetti, Kress, Onotu, & Ogbanufe, 2020). These findings lend empirical weight to the concern, long held by Nigerian educators and child-welfare practitioners, that an abused childhood tends to produce a psychologically compromised adulthood.

Poverty remains among the most consistently identified drivers of these outcomes. A major review of international evidence concluded that family poverty and economic deprivation are strongly and independently associated with child abuse and neglect, even after controlling for other risk factors (Bywaters, Skinner, Cooper, Kennedy, & Malik, 2022) — a relationship a 2024 Nigerian study likewise found in its examination of the security implications of child labour in Ondo State, where poverty, lack of access to basic education, and family breakdown were repeatedly cited by respondents as the principal drivers of children’s exposure to exploitation, sexual molestation, and other risks (Adewumi & Bwowe, 2024). A related 2024 study among secondary school students in Ibadan North found emotional and physical maltreatment to be the most prevalent forms of abuse experienced at home, worsened by weak legal enforcement and limited institutional capacity (Olarinmoye & Uchendu, 2024).

It is against this backdrop — of a legal framework only recently made nationally uniform, of institutions whose own personnel remain imperfectly informed of its provisions, and of a growing body of recent Nigerian research documenting the depth and persistence of the problem — that Nigeria’s rights institutions, principal among them the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Public Complaints Commission (PCC), are called upon to act. The NHRC is Nigeria’s statutory extra-judicial mechanism for the promotion, protection, and enforcement of human rights, with an explicit mandate to take up matters concerning the survival, development, and protection of children, including cases of neglect and degrading treatment (National Human Rights Commission [NHRC], 2024). The Public Complaints Commission — Nigeria’s Ombudsman — exists to receive and investigate complaints of administrative injustice, abuse of office, and maladministration brought by ordinary citizens against government agencies, statutory bodies, and private institutions; between July 2021 and October 2022 alone, the Commission received some 34,000 complaints, of which only about 13,000 were resolved, a completion rate that illustrates both its reach and its capacity constraints (Omaplex Law Firm, 2024). Understanding how effectively — or ineffectively — these two institutions discharge their respective mandates in relation to child abuse is central to the present study.

This study therefore sets out to bring into sharper focus the incidence of child abuse in Nigeria, the various forms of abuse Nigerian children experience, the consequences of that abuse for the child, the family, and the wider society, and the extent to which government and its rights institutions are proffering an adequate remedy.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In the course of this research, the study sets out to identify some of the causes and consequences of child abuse as a reflection of a wider societal problem and its impact on the life of the child.

The first problem the study addresses is the identification of the various forms of child abuse prevalent in Nigeria, and an evaluation of the extent of the damage these forms of abuse inflict on the abused child and on Nigerian society at large — damage that, as recent Nigerian scholarship confirms, extends well beyond the moment of abuse into long-term psychological and behavioural harm (Edet et al., 2022; Ifayomi, Ali, & Ellis, 2024).

Secondly, the study examines how the Nigerian government is addressing the situation through its various rights institutions, at a time when even the professionals meant to safeguard children’s welfare have been found to possess only a poor working knowledge of the legal instruments available to them (Adeleye et al., 2023).

Thirdly, the study considers the psychological effects of abuse on the average Nigerian child and how these effects shape that child’s future — an area in which Nigerian evidence, though still comparatively thin, has grown markedly over the past five years (Annor et al., 2020; Edet et al., 2022).

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of this study is to examine the causes, types, and effects of child abuse on the child, the family, and the nation. The work is meant to draw closer attention to this increasing scourge and to assess the measures needed to preserve the fundamental human rights of the child as entrenched under the Nigerian Child Rights Act.

The work also seeks to inquire into who the abusers of the child typically are, and to recommend appropriate sanctions to curb the act.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following questions give a better insight into the problems this research project attempts to resolve:

1. Is child abuse increasing or decreasing in Nigeria?

2. Is the government really making progress in addressing the menace of child abuse in Nigeria?

3. What are the roles of the Human Rights institutions in addressing child abuse in Nigeria?

4. What are the various challenges facing the government in addressing child abuse in Nigeria?

5. What is the relationship between poverty and child abuse in Nigeria?

6. What role do religion and culture play in contributing to child abuse in Nigeria?

1.5 HYPOTHESIS FORMULATION

Hypotheses are assumptions made by the researcher in order to test the theoretical framework of the research through empirical analysis of data collected, to enable the researcher arrive at a reasonable conclusion as to whether or not the hypothesis is valid.

The hypotheses to be tested in this research work are stated as follows:

1. H₀: Child abuse cases are no longer prevalent in Nigerian society. H₁: Child abuse cases are still prevalent in Nigerian society.

2. H₀: There is no significant relationship between poverty and child abuse in Nigeria. H₁: There is a significant relationship between poverty and child abuse in Nigeria.

3. H₀: Religious and cultural influences do not contribute to child abuse in Nigeria. H₁: Religious and cultural influences do contribute to child abuse in Nigeria.

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This research work was carried out among Nigerian adults within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and is designed to assess the causes, types, and effects of child abuse in Nigeria.

The study covered 200 adults in the FCT, and questionnaires were distributed to the following stakeholders/respondents: civil servants; the Nigeria Police Force; the Nigeria Immigration Service; the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps; and professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

This research also intends to examine the roles of Human Rights institutions in Nigeria in addressing the menace, and to proffer definite solutions to it. However, owing to the limited time and resources available, coupled with other concurrent academic obligations, the researcher restricted the study to a defined sample of individuals within the FCT.

1.7 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Every day, Nigerian children go hungry, neglected, sexually exploited, and afraid. An abusive environment is no way for any child to grow up; children are entitled to a safe and nurturing environment in which to mature. In Nigerian society, it remains common to see children engaged in petty trading and street begging, hawking goods on behalf of parents or guardians at an age when they should be laying the educational foundations of their future, and, in the worst cases, drawn into child prostitution for money. National figures bear this out starkly: Nigeria’s 2022 Child and Forced Labour Survey found that close to two-fifths of Nigerian children were engaged in economic activity or hazardous work, and a 2023 government estimate put the figure for children aged 5–11 at over 43 percent (as cited in Punch, 2024). Parents, meanwhile, often leave children uncared for at home while pursuing income-generating activities of their own.

Teachers, who are frequently the first adults outside the family to notice a troubled child, continue to report that the fallout from parental neglect and abuse shows up directly in classroom behaviour and academic performance. A 2022 hospital-based study of child labour in a Nigerian city found that children engaged in hawking and shopkeeping — the two most common forms of child labour identified — showed measurable adverse effects on their overall development (Bisi-Onyemaechi et al., 2022), while a 2024 study of child labour’s security implications in Ondo State found that affected children faced heightened risk of kidnapping, sexual molestation, exploitation, injury, and even death (Adewumi & Bwowe, 2024). There are, too, well-documented cases of inadequate nutrition and of children being used by disabled adults as aids during street begging. In an era of high parental poverty, unemployment, inflation, and social exclusion, the quality of parental care available to many Nigerian children has fallen well below what might be expected — not necessarily because parents are illiterate, ignorant, abusive, or neglectful, but often because of deep and persistent inequality in access to child-welfare resources (Bywaters, Skinner, Cooper, Kennedy, & Malik, 2022). Where parents are unable to adequately meet their children’s welfare needs, one would expect family and childcare institutions to intervene; in Nigeria, however, these institutions are themselves frequently constrained by poverty or a shortage of funding.

The long-term consequences of unaddressed abuse are now considerably better documented than they were even a decade ago. Nigerian evidence indicates that abused children carry a significantly elevated risk of depression and suicidality into adolescence and beyond (Edet et al., 2022), and that survivors of child sexual abuse specifically often struggle with distrust, anger, and impaired psychosocial development that can truncate their educational and career trajectories (Ifayomi, Ali, & Ellis, 2024). These are precisely the kinds of outcomes that, left unaddressed at scale, contribute to the various cadres of street children found across Nigerian cities.

This project work represents a timely contribution to knowledge and to ongoing efforts to combat child abuse and neglect in Nigeria, with particular attention to the girl-child, who continues to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of abuse. It focuses on the causes, types, and effects of child abuse, and suggests remedies grounded in current evidence. It also examines the roles of security agencies, policymakers, stakeholders, rights institutions, and the judiciary in tackling the rising incidence of child abuse in Nigeria — with the National Human Rights Commission and the Public Complaints Commission receiving particular attention, given their statutory mandates to receive, investigate, and redress citizens’ complaints, including those touching on the welfare of children (NHRC, 2024; Omaplex Law Firm, 2024). This project work also provides a foundation on which further research on this subject might be built by students of the humanities and social sciences.

To the Nigerian public and to security agencies, this work offers an evidence-based assessment handbook on child abuse in Nigeria and its negative effects on the social and economic life of both the victim and the country. To this end, a number of crucial hypotheses have been formulated, to be tested against primary data collected for this study.

1.8 LIMITATIONS OF STUDY

It must be understood that a number of constraints were encountered in the course of this project work. One such limitation was inadequate access to documents; information was gathered largely through relevant documents, questionnaires, interviews, and newspapers held at the national library, supplemented by peer-reviewed Nigerian and international studies published between 2020 and 2025.

It would also not be entirely accurate to rely wholly on the validity of interviews conducted, since some members of the public tend to respond in ways shaped by the level of their own knowledge of the subject matter.

Economic hardship was a further constraint on this project. The cost of research materials has risen considerably, and higher transportation costs and other incidental expenses, such as photocopying, presented additional challenges.

REFERENCES (CHAPTER ONE)

The following sources, all published between 2020 and 2025, were used in this chapter. They should be merged into the consolidated reference list at the end of the project.

Adeleye, Q. A., Ahmed, P. A., Babaniyi, I. B., Oniyangi, O., Mukhtar-Yola, M., & Adelaiye, A. Y. (2023). Identifying challenges in implementing child rights instruments in Nigeria: A nationwide survey of knowledge, perception, and practice of child rights among doctors and nurses. Annals of African Medicine, 22(2), 189–203. https://doi.org/10.4103/aam.aam_169_22

Adeoba, G. H. (2022). Child-hustling in Ibadan metropolis: A cultural worldview. British Journal of Multidisciplinary and Advanced Studies, 6(7), 605–611.

Adewumi, S., & Bwowe, P. (2024). Child labour challenges and security implications in selected local government areas in Ondo State, Nigeria. Social Sciences, 13(10), 512. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13100512

Annor, F. B., Gilbert, L. K., Davila, E. P., Massetti, G. M., Kress, H., Onotu, D., & Ogbanufe, O. (2020). Emotional violence in childhood and health conditions, risk-taking behaviors, and violence perpetration among young adults in Nigeria. Child Abuse & Neglect, 106, 104510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104510

Bisi-Onyemaechi, A. I., Chikani, U. N., Chime, P. U., Mbanefo, N. R., Nduagubam, O. C., & Uwaezuoke, N. A. (2022). Toward eradication of child labour: Assessment of the present situation in a Nigerian city. Nigerian Journal of Medicine, 31(5), 515–520. https://doi.org/10.4103/NJM.NJM_67_22

Bywaters, P., Skinner, G., Cooper, A., Kennedy, E., & Malik, A. (2022). The relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect: New evidence. Nuffield Foundation.

Edet, B. E., Essien, E. A., Eleazu, F. I., Atu, G. E., & Ogunkola, I. O. (2022). Childhood adversity as a predictor of depression and suicidality among adolescents in Calabar, Nigeria. Journal of Global Health Neurology and Psychiatry, e2022005. https://doi.org/10.52872/001c.33811

Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation. (2024, November 21). Universal Children’s Day 2024: Nigeria’s efforts to advance children’s rights and end violence against children. https://fmino.gov.ng

Ifayomi, M., Ali, P., & Ellis, K. (2024). Child sexual abuse in Nigeria: A systematic review. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 33(5). https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380241254077

National Human Rights Commission. (2024). Child rights. https://www.nigeriarights.gov.ng/focus-areas/child-rights.html

Nwabachili, C., & Iloka, C. (2023). Adoption of children in Nigeria: Problems and prospects. African Customary and Religious Law Review, 4.

Olarinmoye, A. T., & Uchendu, O. C. (2024). Prevalence and pattern of child maltreatment at home among secondary school students in Ibadan North Local Government, Oyo State, Nigeria. Child Abuse & Neglect, 158, 107090. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.107090

Omaplex Law Firm. (2024). The role of the Public Complaints Commission in ensuring administrative responsibility in Nigeria. https://omaplex.com.ng

Punch. (2024, April 21). Nigeria’s imperative to end child labour. Punch Newspapers.

Tamakloe, D. (2025). Recent child rights law updates in Nigeria & Ghana: Progress and challenges.

World Health Organization. (2022). Child maltreatment: Fact sheet. WHO.