Child Abuse and Its Implications for Sustainable Development in Nigeria

Abstract

The menace of child abuse has remained a challenge to the development of the child and the country. This has consequential implications on the sustainable development of the country in entirety. Nigeria as a nation has an estimated fifteen million children engaged in one manual labour or another and this negatively impacts the development of the populace and society in general. This paper has identified child labour, physical abuse, child neglect, child marriage,female genital mutilation, molestation and emotional and psychological abuse as types of abuse and established that poverty, cultural and religious belief, poor implementation of child protective regulations as factors encouraging the propagation of these condemnable acts particularly in developing countries like Nigeria. The paper stress that children are the future generation and hold the key to development as leaders of tomorrow as such, how they are tackled by every society reflects the level of development of any country as such, importance must be placed on tackling this menace quickly. The study amongst a number of measures recommends that qualified persons be employed to handle the affairs of children to prevent exploitation, molestation and neglect, government should establish more orphanage homes as well as financeaid non-governmental organisationsfinancially in their quest to enlighten, rehabilitate and empower victims and children, in addition, NGOs should provide accurate data on victims and perpetrators of these acts.