The English oxford online dictionary defined a child as a “young human below the age of puberty or the legal age of majority”. Child Abuse occurs when a person causes harm to a child (a person under the age of majority). It consists of actions done to a child, which could be physical, emotional or sexual. In our daily Nigerian culture, parents use physical discipline to teach a child what is right or wrong. However, it crosses the line of discipline if it is done out of anger or where it makes a child to live in constant fear. There is no doubt that a child who has experienced abuse can make no sense of their experiences and can manifest itself in some way at a later date. Cases of child abuse in Nigeria have become recurrent in recent times.

Child abuse was recognized as long as the late nineteenth century, it has generally been clouded in a discourse of cruelty and neglect or subsumed within a more general concern about juvenile delinquency. A recent report by the UNICEF showed that majority of Nigerian children suffer violent abuse and trafficking for the purpose of domestic service, prostitution and other forms of exploitative labour.

Trafficking was first defined in international law through the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in persons ,Especially Women and Children 2000 which is also known as the ‘paleromo protocol’. This protocol stipulates that Trafficking in person shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or by use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, Deception of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or of the receiving of payment or benefits to achieve the consent of persons.

As much as child abuse has been recognized and has a reliable statistics ,trafficking on the other hand has no reliable estimation of number of children trafficked internally and externally primarily because of its surreptitious nature. However it was reported in the NAPTIP magazine of 2016 the six out of ten trafficked persons are Nigerians. Several people have their reasons for these absurd acts but popular reasons are poverty, illiteracy, Ignorance and unemployment.

No violence against a child is justifiable. All violence against children are preventable, yet the in depth study on violence against children confirms that such violence exist in every country in the world and to an extent it is socially acceptable and approved.

This study will create the necessary awareness about cases of child abuse and trafficking in Nigeria and it will also help to mitigate adult justification. It is the duty of every adult to protect and provide for any child under their care and not batter them.

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 Introduction

Children are one of the greatest assets that any country can have. Not only are they legitimately regarded as the future leaders, they are potentially and essentially the greatest investment for a country’s development. Young boys and girls are particularly recognized as a vital resource whose future prospects are inextricably tied to that of their country. They are valued possessions of any nation or region and centre of reconstruction and development. Without them there can be no future, this emphasizes the importance of young children and the need to protect them.

A child is a person that has not attained the age of 18. However, in Nigeria a child is recognised depending on the area of law, for instance, a child for corroboration of evidence is 14 years. While in criminal law when it has to do with a crime, a child is a person below 18 years. For centuries, the Nigerian child has been seen as “an instrument or property with no absolute privilege of its own”.

For the first time in history, the number of people in the world age 12-24 is the largestever. According to the World Development Report 2007, there are 1.3 billion people in this age group.[1]Over 85 percent of 1.3 billion young men and women live in developingcountries this figure is projected to increase to 89 per cent by 2025.[2]

Abuse is a pattern of behaviour used to gain and maintain power and control, and it can come in many forms.[3]Abuse is also defined as any action that intentionally harms or injures another person.[4] Abuse also encompasses inappropriate use of any substance, especially those that alter consciousness[5].

There is no general definition of child abuse as a result of different perceptions as to what abuse is or what it is not. The African Network for Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) defines child abuse as “the intentional, unintentional or well intentional acts which endanger the physical health, emotional, moral and the educational welfare of the child

Physical abuse can happen to both children and adults of either gender and of any sexual orientation.[6] The injuries arising can beinflicted by punching, kicking, biting, burning, beating, or use of a weapon such as a baseball bat or knife.[7] Physical abuse may result in bruises, burns, poisoning, broken bones, and internal hemorrhages.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, there were 1,530 child fatalities that resulted from child abuse (at the rate of 2 deaths per 100,000 children) in the United States in 2006.[8]About three-quarters of the children were less than four years old, with the largest number of deaths occurring in infants under one year old. In addition, about 905,000 children were victims of nonfatal maltreatment (at a rate of 12 children per 1,000 populations).[9] Nearly three-quarters of these children were victims of repeated maltreatment while, 83% of these children were abused by a parent or a parent acting with another individual.[10]

Child abuse is deliberately hurting a child causing injuries such as bruises, broken bones, burns or cuts. It isn’t accidental - children who are physically abused suffer violence such as being hit, kicked, poisoned, burned, and slapped or having objects thrown at them. Shaking or hitting babies can cause non-accidental head injuries (NAHI). Sometimes parents or care givers will make up or cause the symptoms of illness in their child, perhaps giving them medicine they don’t need and making the child unwell – this is known as fabricated or induced illness (FII).

Child abuse can be seen as any act of omission or commission, physical or psychological mistreatment or neglect of a child by its parents, guardians, caregiver or other adults that may endanger the child’s physical, psychological or emotional health and development.

In this definition, wrongfully maltreating a child or selfishly making an unfair use of a child’s services by adults responsible for the child constitutes child abuse. Thus, the adult may not be directly related to the child but a person in whose care the child is left can be an abuser. This may include the educators, health care workers, day care workers, or other responsible adults.

In thetraditional African society,the belief was that children should merely be seen and not heard.Children were not allowed to listen to adult discussions/conversation nor make contributions. This situationwas prevalent not only in the society but found its way into theeducational system. Consequently, teachers only allowed children tomake contributions when they deemed necessary.

While the caregiver is usually an adult, most often the mother of the child, it can also include teenagers who are in the care giving role, like a babysitter or a camp counselor. It is important to understand that child abuse must involve injury, whether physical or emotional, visible or not immediately visible.[11] So while most child-care professionals (for example, psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatricians, and teachers) do not recommend the use of corporal punishment due to the risk of emotional damage and accidental physical injury, spanking a child does not automatically constitute child abuse unless the child sustains some kind of injury.

Many children worldwide suffer abuse every year, affecting all educational and socio-economic levels, ethnicity, cultures, and religions. The most common form of child abuse in the United States is being left at home alone without adult supervision, also called supervision neglect.[12] All forms of neglect account for about 75% of the child-abuse reports made to child welfare authorities.[13] Other common forms of child abuse include physical assault, physical neglect, emotional abuse, and sexual assault that involve physical contact.[14]

Younger caregivers who have had child-abuse, mental-health, or drug problems in their family of origin are more at risk for abusing children. Also, adults who have trouble understanding the needs of children and appropriate parenting skills, as well as those who are single parents, of low socioeconomic status, or have transient other adult caregivers (like the parent's friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend) in the home are also more at risk of becoming child abusers. A significant number of the studies reviewed, from the UK, indicates that 33% and 92% of children in custody had experienced some form of maltreatment, and the figure in relation to sexual abuse among girls in custody was particularly noticeable.[15] The variation in the figures may be explained by the use of differing definitions of maltreatment in the different studies and the reliance on self-reporting in some of the studies. Those studies researching children who had committed more serious offense suggest that there may be some correlation between serious offending and serious and ongoing abuse, and that the prevalence of abuse is higher in those who commit more serious offenses. These findings are highlighted in the Boswell research in the UK, and in Spatz and Widom’s work in the USA.

1.2 Historical Background of Child Abuse in Nigeria

In Nigeria, child abuse is a serious criminal offense. Child abuse, as a historical subject, is deeply problematic, since the concept of abuse is inevitably relative and can be only very tentatively applied across cultures and across centuries. Parental conduct that would be considered battering abuse in contemporary America might be practiced as routine parental discipline in other parts of the world, and would certainly have been regarded thus in past centuries in America itself. Furthermore, by today's Scandinavian standards even limited corporal punishment, as practiced in some American families, might seem abusive, and there is debate about the acceptability of such punishment within the American medical establishment. Without doubt, judging across cultures, Americans would consider the female circumcision practiced in parts of the contemporary Islamic world or the foot binding that was once practiced in China as abusive. The history and sociology of child abuse thus inevitably involves recognition of relativism in identifying and describing the practice of abuse, in as much as abuse can be best understood within a particular social and cultural context.

Child abuse refers to a situation in which a child is suffering serious physical injury inflicted by other means other than accidental means, it means suffering harm by reason of suffering neglect, malnutrition or sexual abuse, it is also going without necessary physical care or growing up under conditions which threaten his or her physical and emotional survival. Child abusive practices are perpetrated on a ground scale in many parts of Nigeria. This is the present situation in spite of provisions that provide for child protection against abuse; as embodies in the Child Rights Act 2003, where it provided that;

No child shall be subjected to physical, mental or emotional injury, abuse, neglect or maltreatment, including sexual abuse

The Nigeria Chapter of the African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a nationwide study to acquire an overview of the nature and extent of child abuse and neglect in Nigeria. The 3-part study assessed the density of children working on the streets and the attitudes of adults and children related to child abuse and neglect. Counts of working street youths under age 16 years and respondent attitudes were assessed in Kaduna/Zaria, Enugu/Onitsha, and Ibadan. The densities of street children and questionnaire responses from sampled adults suggest that child abuse and neglect are serious problems in Nigeria; cultural practices and traditional attitudes contribute to the problem; institutions tasked with addressing family and child welfare have failed to do so; hawking, begging, and abandonment place these children at risk; and some handicapped children roam the streets without care. School children were surveyed to provide information on their before- and after-school chores, their views on physical punishment by parents and teachers, and their nutritional standards. 94% received three meals/day; 52% typically spent 2-4 hours after school in domestic chores such as sweeping the house, washing dishes, and preparing evening meals; and many were either scolded, beaten, or assigned additional household duties as punishment for behaving contrary to the desires of adults.Abusive behavior comes in many forms, but the common denominator is the emotional effect on the child. Children need predictability, structure, clear boundaries, and the knowledge that their parents are looking out for their safety. Abused children cannot predict how their parents will act. Their world is an unpredictable, frightening place with no rules. Whether the abuse is a slap, a harsh comment, stony silence, or not knowing if there will be dinner on the table tonight, the end result is a child that feel unsafe, uncared for, and alone.

In Nigeria, children face the act of abuse ranging from physical injuries, abandonment, sexual assault and child forcedlabour. In Nigeria for example the rights of citizens contained in chapter 4; section 30, 40 CFRN 1999 Constitution which guarantees every citizen fundamental basic human rights although it should be noted that child rights are not distinguished from adult rights thus children are expected to enjoy same rights as provided for adults in the constitution. The menace of child Abuse in Nigeria has been absurd and alarming.

Family risk factors for child maltreatment include social isolation, fragmentation, or parents who are stressed, engaging in domestic violence, or the presence of poor parent-child relationships.[16] Community issues that increase the likelihood that child abuse occurs include low community socio-economic status, high unemployment rates, high availability of alcohol or other drugs (for example, alcohol through liquor stores or bars), and poor community.

Social trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking and is defined as the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt” of a child for the purpose of exploitation.[17]Though statistics regarding the magnitude of child trafficking are difficult to obtain, the International Labor Organization estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year.[18] The trafficking of children has been internationally recognized as a serious crime that exists in every region of the world and which often has human rights implications. Yet, it is only within the past decade that the prevalence and ramifications of this practice have risen to international prominence, due to a dramatic increase in research and public action. A variety of potential solutions have accordingly been suggested and implemented, which can be categorized as four types of action: broad protection, prevention, law enforcement, and victim assistance - When it comes to psychological and behavioral health, both physical and emotional abuse can be equally damaging to children, a new study suggests.

Even though doctors and parents often believe physical or sexual abuse is more harmful than emotional mistreatment or neglect, the study found that children suffered similar problems regardless of the type of maltreatment endured. Some researchers’ report in the journal is provided thus:

The abused children had all types of problems, from anxiety and depression to rule-breaking and aggression, different types of abuse had similar consequences; physically abused children and emotionally abused children had very similar problems.

To compare the impact of different forms of child abuse on mental health, Vachon and colleagues studied 2,300 kidswho attended a summer camp for low-income children between 1986 and 2012.[19]Roughly 1,200 children – slightly more than half - had experienced maltreatment.[20]Campers were assigned to groups of children their age, with about half the kids in each group having a history of maltreatment. The kids didn’t know which of their fellow campers had experienced abuse.Counselors and other campers assessed each child’s behavior during camp, and every kid also completed a self-evaluation. Overall, children with a history of abuse and neglect had much higher rates of depression, withdrawal, anxiety, and neuroticism than campers who hadn’t been mistreated.[21]This difference held true for kids who were victims of all types of abuse, including neglect as well as physical, sexual or emotional mistreatment.[22] The effect was most profound for children who suffered from all four types of abuse, or from the most severe forms of maltreatment.[23]

1.3 Literature Review

There appears to be a large body of literature on the subject of child abuse ever since its existence or better still its recognition dating back to the nineteenth century. These literatures are in form of journalistic accounts from mass media and educative novels. It is evident that child abuse is a serious global problem that isdeeply rooted in cultural, economic and social practices and occursin a variety of ways and places. According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDA, 2006) in the United States for instance, more than 900,000children suffer severe or life threatening injury and some (1,000 to 2,000) children die as a result of abuse and those who survive often suffer emotional trauma that may take long for the bruises to behealed. In the same vein, theNigerian society is still plagued withincidences of child labor, child maltreatment, child marriage, childtrafficking, neglect, and child prostitution. The effect of such abuses are many and varied including teenage pregnancies/mothers, youthrestiveness and violence, cultism, youth decadence, joblessness,armed bandits, molestation, and school dropouts. These menaceshave eaten into the life of most Nigerian children.

This study is about righting a longstanding error and prejudice about the differences between these common childhood adversities. Child abuses are more than bruises and broken bones. While physical abuse might be the most visible, other types of abuse, such as emotional abuse and neglect, also leave deep, lasting scars. The earlier an abused child gets help, the greater chance they have to heal and break the cycle.

One of the basic principles of the international convention on the right of the child is that every child must be protected against all forms of exploitation, indecent or degrading treatment including child labour, abduction and sale. Every year hundreds of West African children were trafficked into various forms of labour, sometimes because of poverty within the family and the ignorance of some parents led them to believe their children are traveling to further their education as promised by a relative but unknown to them, the future of that child has been diverted to prostitution.

Children who are victims of abuse often experience symptoms of stress in reaction to the abuse, in addition to symptoms that are specific to the kind of abuse they have suffered. The signs and symptoms of abuse often vary according to the age and developmental stage of the child. It is also important to understand that victims of child abuse are often abused in more than one way, so the child may demonstrate symptoms consistent with more than one kind of maltreatment.

Shortcomings of the study include its reliance on official documentation of abuse and the lack of data on psychological disorders children may have had prior to experiencing maltreatment, the authors acknowledge.Even so, the psychological and behavioral effects of abuse may be similar because both physical and emotional mistreatment – whether it happens within a family or among peers – can have common elements, William Copeland, a psychiatry researcher at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

The International Labour Organization estimates that there are 246 million working children aged between five and seventeen worldwide.[24] At least 179 million of those children are estimated to work in the worst form of child labour and 111million are involved in hazardous work. It has also been observed that children stand a greater risk of work place violence.[25] Child abuse has in fact become a matter of national urgency as many children die as a result of this act. However, cases on child abuse are not given the urgent attention they deserve. This is perhaps because abuse has been overlooked not to talk of child abuse as it has been given little or no platform. There has not been sufficient study on child abuse especially of academic criminal literature. Trafficking for instance, as a form of child abuse was said to have only begun in the mid 1980’s as a reaction forced on the Nigerian government Structural Adjustment Program (SAP).[26] In reality, child abuse had existed before the said recorded period, most of the studies done on child Abuse are research surveys and not well detailed due to improper record keeping and other times limited to certain areas like southern Nigeria, Benin specifically, although there is a high rate nonetheless, trafficking exist in several states in Nigeria and should be properly attended to.

There is generally no accurate statistic but in 2003, an ILO/UNICEF report revealed that 8 million Nigerian children went through worst forms of child labor, serving mainly as domestic servants, beggars, street hawkers, prostitutes. Sixty percent of prostitutes in Italy hail from Africa and 80% are Nigerians.[27] In addition, data emanating from Nigeria show that for the period 2003-2007, 9,466 victims were intercepted at the country’s borders.[28] Information provided by NAPTIP for the period of 2003-2008 also indicates that 2,120 victims of human trafficking were rescued by the Agency.[29]

The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related matter (NAPTIP) was established because of the constant and outrageous rise in the practice. Child abuse, in any form, by anyone, is unacceptable. We can see that there is more to child abuse than what meets the eye, and much more to be uncovered and attended to.