The Nigerian Child and the Right to Participation: A Peep through the Window of “The Best Interest” Clause of the Child’s Rights Act

Abstract

Prior to the Nigerian Child's Rights Act 2003 (the first holistic enactment on the rights of the child), it was not conceivable (as in several countries of the world before the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) that a child has participatory rights. The Nigerian Child's Rights Act created participatory rights, but in some of the rights, they did not employ words showing that such rights were participatory, which thereby creating doubts in respect of their enforcement. This paper critically appraises the various sections of the Act on the subject and makes a comparative analysis of the sections on the participatory rights of the child with their equivalent in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 1989 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990. It recommends that although, the Act did not expressly provide for the right of the child to participate in certain rights, these rights must be interpreted to implicitly included participatory rights in view of the omnibus provision of the Act that provides for "the best interest of the child". The paper concludes that the legislature undoubtedly did not intend to exclude participatory rights of the child because non-participation of children no longer represents the global state of the law on the rights of children.

Child's Rights and the Challenges of Educating the Girl-Child: Assessing the Contributions of UNICEF in Nigeria

“…It took over a decade after Nigeria had ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 to domesticate it through the Child's Rights Act of 2003. The decade-long period of delay was characterized by opposition by diverse groups on the grounds that certain provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child were not compliant with the cultures, traditions and other norms in the country, especially in northern states (Nzarga, 2016;AjaNwachuku, 2017;Akinola, 2019). The eventual passage of the Child's Rights Act by Nigeria's National Assembly in 2003 did not resolve the opposition against it.…”

“…Prior to the enactment of the Child's Rights Act in 2003, several subsidiary laws such as the Labour Act and the Trafficking Act existed, and contributed to the protection of the Nigerian child (AjaNwachuku, 2017;Ogunniyi, 2019). However, these laws were inadequate when juxtaposed to the provisions of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, thus necessitating a new legal framework to protect the rights of the child (AjaNwachuku, 2017: 162).…”

“…The bulk of these works focused on issues relating to either child's rights or the challenges of girl-child education in Nigeria. Thus, many of these works examined child's rights in Nigeria vis-à-vis global expectations on child's rights or from the perspectives of child's rights as a component of human rights and the attendant limitations in their actualization in the country (Egede, 2007;Ibraheem, 2015;Nzarga, 2016;AjaNwachuku, 2017;Ogunniyi, 2018;Ajanwachuku and Faga, 2018;Akinola, 2019). Other strands of scholarship focused either exclusively on girl-child education or in relation to sociocultural and religious impediments to its actualization, while also dissecting the diverse nature, manifestations and implications of girl-child education to Nigeria's national development (Eweniyi and Usman, 2013;Oluyemi and Yinusa, 2016;Ebobrah and Eboibi, 2017;Offor et al, 2021).…”

“…As important as the Child's Rights Act might be, its non-adoption ought not to acquit the states that are yet to adopt it from the responsibility of protecting and promoting the human rights of children in their domains. This is because there are other subsidiary legislations (such as the Labour Act and the Trafficking Act), with provisions that address child-related issues and which could therefore serve the legal purpose of protecting children (Ajanwachuku, 2017;Ogunniyi, 2018). However, these adjunct legislations do not strictly focus on the rights of children to education.…”