Researchers funded by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) at the University of Ibadan have said that violence against children especially the growing trend of child-to-child violence ongoing in Nigeria deserve evidenced based knowledge to address the phenomenon.
The principal investigator of the project, Professor Adebimpe Adenugba stated this while conducting a stakeholder’s engagement on a study “Understanding violence against children in Nigeria: the Child-to-child dimension”.
According to her while SDG support the right of every child to protection against violence, child protection systems is still weak in africa and “largely inadequate to protect children against violence”
According to the gender specialist and sociologist at the department of sociology, University of Ibadan, six out of every 10 children have suffered one or more forms of violence before reaching 18years while 70percent have experienced multiple incidents of violence.
The stakeholders’ engagement was conducted to get valuable pre-field contributions from key stakeholders including International Organization for migration, Nigeria Police Force, UNICEF, Child Protection Network, ILO, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Inclusion, National Bureau of Statistics, UNFPA, and Federal Ministry of Justice among others.
According to Professor Adenugba “prevention and response have focused on adults as perpetrators of violence against children while child perpetrators are most of the times treated as adults in terms of response and prosecution contrary to the requirements of the laws addressing children issues”
In their presentations, Professor Eze Nwokocha, Grace Adejuwon and Muyiwa Omobowale stated that the study would be conducted in four geopolitical zones of Nigeria to understand child justice system, factors promoting violence against children, rehabilitative support for child perpetrators of violence among others.
The study, which will capture 2100 in-school children and 1,700 out-of-school children, will be conducted in Northcentral (Abuja), Northwest (Kano), Southwest (lagos) and South south (Port harcourt)
