The Child Right Act 2003 and the Challenges in the Nigerian Society, any Hopes for the Nigeria Child?
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Date
2021-04
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Publisher
Port Harcourt Journal of Business Law
Abstract
The hue and cry of child abuse in Nigeria is an age-long phenomenon. The ugly trend
has persisted for reasons not well addressed by successive governments. The Nigeria
constitution 1999 and the Child Right Act 2003 recognised the right to dignity of the
human person. The Child Right Act recognises the rights of a child to survival, care,
love, education, dignity to the human person, etc. and these rights are enforceable
against whoever tramples upon them. The primary objectives of this paper will,
therefore, be to identify the rights of the child, identify whether these rights are often
respected or abused by adult members of the society and make recommendations
towards reducing the incidence of abuse to the barest minimum or stamp out the
abuses completely. This paper approaches the concept of the rights of the child by
reference to the law textbooks, Law reports, Internet sources, Newspaper publications,
statute books and the Nigeria constitution. The findings in this paper are that Nigeria
law enforcement agents are not committed to protecting and enforcing the rights of
the Nigerian child. Many cases of abuse of the rights of the child are swept under the
carpet and so it goes on in our society unnoticed, uninvestigated and unprosecuted.
This paper brings to the bare a few cases and instances the Internet and the Nigeria
newspapers have exposed child labour and other forms of abuses.
Description
Keywords
Child abuse, Child rights, Circumcision, Barbaric practice, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)