RESEARCH: One in two Nigerian children experience physical violence

One in two Nigerian children experience violence and are left to suffer in silence, a research titled ‘Nigeria: Violence Against Children’, has shown.

This is mostly fuelled by a culture that believes in the communal raising of children and the slogan of “spare the rod, spoil the child”.

As shown in the survey launched in February 2016 by the National Population Commission, with support from UNICEF and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, female children are more likely to suffer sexual violence, with as much as one in four girls having experienced this compared to one in 10 boys experiencing sexual violence.

But more boys experience emotional violence – one in five of them – while one in six girls experience emotional violence.

The survey reveals a startling high number of abuse against children in a country that has a high birth rate of about 11, 000 a day.

According to the research that provides Nigeria her first data on the prevalence of sexual, physical and emotional violence against children regardless of their sex, six out of every 10 Nigerian children have experienced some form of physical, emotional and sexual violence before the age of 18 years.

The violence perpetrated against the children would go ahead to impact the outcome of the society, with the children having poorer, mental and physical health outcomes.