Nigeria To Record 29million Child Brides By 2050 – UNICEF

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has projected that Nigeria will have 29 million child brides by 2050.

Tagged: “Situation Analysis of Children in Nigeria: Ensuring equitable and sustainable realisation of child rights in Nigeria,” the report was launched recently in Abuja by the federal government of Nigeria in partnership with the UNICEF.

Raising concern that millions of children in Nigeria were victims of violence, the report further observed that the North-west geo-political zone had the highest proportion of women who married before 15 years or 32.5 per cent,.while the South-east earned the lowest by 4.1 percent.

Putting the country’s current number of child brides at 22 million, which represented 40 percent of such cases in West and Central Africa alone, the report warned that 7million more child brides will be added by the year 2050.

While referencing the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2013, the report said 58.2 per cent of Nigerian girls were married before they attained 18 years of age.

It stated, although a comparison of data for the period 2013 – 2017 indicated a decline in child marriage in Nigeria, the rate is, however slow as Nigeria still ranks among the countries with the slowest declining rate of child marriage in West and Central Africa.

Interestingly, the report noted that the percentage of women marrying before 18 years had declined from 48 per cent to 43 percent in 2018, while the percentage of women aged 15-19 marrying before age 15 declined from 12 per cent to eight percent.

According to the report: “The rate of decline is also not enough to significantly reduce child marriage in Nigeria under current conditions. Even if efforts are redoubled, Nigeria will add about seven million child brides by 2050. This is because the statistically observed decline will be upended by population growth and the prevalence of child marriage in some regions and cultures, erasing whatever little progress is made in reducing child marriage in Nigeria.”

Finally, the research proffered a lasting solution to the child marriage menace: “To effectively reduce child marriage in Nigeria, some challenges would need to be overcome. These include the lack of domestication of the CRA by many states in the federation (particularly in northern Nigeria) and the failure of the federal government to legislate and enforce 18 years as the minimum age for individuals seeking or contracting any marriage recognised by the constitution of the federation.”