By Soffiyah Layole
There are few evils as persistent, as cruel, and as quietly accepted in modern Nigeria as the horror of child marriage.
Decades after the nation pledged to protect its children and guarantee them free education, the country continues to watch millions of its daughters disappear into premature marriages robbed of childhood, education, and dignity.
In Nigeria, where education is constitutionally declared a fundamental right, a disturbing contradiction persists: millions of girls are still being married off before they can complete primary school.
Despite decades of advocacy and policy reform, child marriage remains a deeply entrenched crisis, and recent data suggests it’s rising again.
Child marriage is not a relic of the past. It is a living, breathing injustice that continues to thrive in silence. And lately, it’s rising again, not that it ever truly stopped. The numbers are climbing, the stories are multiplying, and the silence is deafening.
The Nigerian constitution and the Universal Basic Education Act guarantee free and compulsory education for every child up to junior secondary school. Yet in practice, these rights are routinely denied to girls in rural and impoverished communities, where marriage is seen as a form of economic survival, religion, or cultural obligation.
Girls with no formal education are three times more likely to be married before 18 compared to those with secondary education. In the poorest households, the prevalence of child marriage is significantly higher, a reflection of how poverty, gender inequality, and lack of access to education intersect to perpetuate the cycle.
While global efforts have led to modest declines in child marriage over the past two decades, Nigeria’s progress has been uneven. Recent trends show a resurgence, particularly in rural areas and conflict-affected regions. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue, with school closures and economic hardship pushing more families toward early marriage as a coping mechanism.
UNICEF’s Situation Analysis of Children in Nigeria warns that without urgent intervention, the country risks reversing hard-won gains in girls’ education and empowerment.
Child marriage is beyond a violation of rights; it’s a sentence to a life of limited opportunity. The legal age of consent in Nigeria is 18, yet a lot of girls are married young, even at age 7 – 10, mostly after their first menstrual period, which is seen as a sign of maturity.
These girls, yes girls, because it never happens to boys, are very likely to drop out of school, suffer complications from early pregnancies, and experience domestic violence. They have very little understanding of life itself, talk more of what they want from it, and so they are denied agency over their own bodies, futures, and voices.
The consequences ripple across generations: children born to child brides are more likely to face health challenges, lower educational attainment, and poverty.
Why is this even happening? The usual explanations are rolled out like clockwork: religion (often misinterpreted), culture (often romanticized), or economic survival (often oversimplified). Let’s be honest: none of these fully justify the act of marrying off a child. Before anyone is a religious adherent, a cultural custodian, or a struggling parent, they are human, and humanity, at its core, should recognize the difference between protection and exploitation. A well-meaning, mentally sound adult, especially one old enough to be a grandfather, should instinctively know that a child is not a bride. That a girl who still plays with dolls should not be handed over to a man as a wife. This isn’t just a failure of systems, it’s a failure of conscience, a lack of humanity, and at the core absence of sanity!
No tradition, no scripture, no poverty should ever be used as a shield for what is, at its heart, a betrayal of our shared humanity, an act of sheer wickedness, and thorough injustice.
Ending child marriage requires more than laws; it demands enforcement, education, and cultural transformation. It needs to be approached as a national emergency that it is. Some key steps include: Strengthening community-based education programs to keep girls in school, empowering local leaders and religious institutions to challenge harmful norms, providing economic support to families to reduce the financial incentive for early marriage, and enforcing existing laws that criminalize child marriage and protect minors.
The resurgence of child marriage in Nigeria is a wake-up call. Rights on paper mean nothing if they’re not upheld in practice. Every girl deserves the chance to learn, grow, and choose her own future, not be traded into marriage before she can even write her name.