…Says 68% Have No Lawyer From First Contact With Justice System
Daud Olatunji
About 26,000 children enter custodial and remand facilities across Nigeria every year, with 74 per cent of them held in pre-trial detention and 68 per cent having no lawyer from their first contact with the justice system, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has disclosed.
The minister described the figures as evidence of a deep-rooted failure in Nigeria’s child justice system, warning that detention had increasingly become the default response to children in conflict with the law instead of diversion, rehabilitation and reintegration.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim made the disclosure on Tuesday while delivering a keynote address at the 66th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
The conference, which is being held from August 21 to 28 under the theme, “Beyond Limits,” brought together lawyers, judges, government officials and other justice-sector stakeholders.
Speaking during a plenary on justice for children, the minister urged the NBA and other stakeholders to adopt the figures as a baseline for measuring reforms in the country’s child justice system.
“I want this conference to adopt these numbers as its baseline,” she said.
“About 26,000 children enter custodial and remand facilities every single year in Nigeria. Over 122,000 in five years. Nearly 74 per cent wait in pre-trial detention without a timely hearing opportunity, and some 68 per cent have no lawyer from the first contact.”
According to her, the statistics expose interconnected failures in the justice chain.
“The 68 per cent shows that the system breaks down before a child is even charged. The 74 per cent shows that remand has become the default response rather than the exception. And the 26,000 shows that diversion, as currently applied, is not working,” she said.
The minister said the most critical point of intervention was often the first 48 hours after a child was arrested, arguing that early legal assistance could prevent children from being unnecessarily pushed into prolonged detention.
She called on the NBA to establish and expand Duty Solicitor Schemes across its branches to ensure that every child taken into custody has access to legal representation within 24 hours.
“Our difficulty is not the absence of a statutory hook. It is the absence of a framework around it,” she said.
“Only the Bar can put a lawyer beside a child in a police station tonight.”
Sulaiman-Ibrahim also called for the establishment of substantive Family Courts, mobile family and children’s courts for underserved communities, and stronger training for lawyers, prosecutors and police officers handling cases involving children.
She further proposed a legal presumption of minority where the age of a child cannot be established.
The minister said Nigeria’s criminal justice system must also confront the country’s low birth-registration rate, noting that uncertainty over a child’s age could expose minors to adult justice processes.
She said only about half of Nigerian children under five had their births registered.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim also criticised Nigeria’s current minimum age of criminal responsibility of seven, describing it as “indefensible in 2026” and calling for it to be raised.
The Ebonyi State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Ben Odoh, said the major challenge was no longer the absence of laws protecting children but the failure to translate those provisions into practice.
“The challenge we have is that while the law provides for statutory rights, converting and translating these rights into a live reality remains difficult,” Odoh said.
He noted that prosecution should be a last resort in appropriate cases involving less serious offences.
According to him, Section 209 of the Child Rights Act already provides five diversion measures — supervision, guidance, compensation, reintegration and reconciliation.
Odoh urged state attorneys-general to develop formal prosecutorial policies on diversion, saying this would enable the police, prosecutors and Ministries of Justice to operate under a common framework when handling children’s cases.
He also pledged to establish a specialised child prosecution unit in Ebonyi State to work with the police unit responsible for prosecuting children.
UNICEF seeks shift from detention to rehabilitation
The UNICEF Chief of Child Protection, Natalie Macaulay, said Nigeria must move beyond having child-protection laws on paper and ensure that the laws produce tangible changes in the lives of children.
“We have to go beyond response to prevention. Beyond laws on paper to change lives instead. Beyond the courtrooms to the police stations, the communities and the places where the children first encounter the justice system,” she said.
Macaulay advocated greater use of diversion, rehabilitation and reintegration rather than detention as the first response to children in conflict with the law.
The stakeholders’ position aligns with provisions of the Child Rights Act and the 2024 Prosecution Guidelines, which encourage alternatives to prosecution for less serious offences.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim proposed the establishment of a formal Child Justice Compact between her ministry and the NBA.
She said the proposed agreement should include joint monitoring and measurable indicators covering access to legal representation, diversion rates and the functionality of Family Courts.
She said the reforms were achievable if government and justice-sector stakeholders were willing to move from policy commitments to implementation.
“Those are limits we can pass, and we can begin this week,” the minister said.
'
'Do you want to share a story with us? Do you want to advertise with us? Do you need publicity for a product, service, or event? Contact us on WhatsApp +2348183319097 Email: platformtimes@gmail.com
We are committed to impactful investigative journalism for human interest and social justice. Your donation will help us tell more stories. Kindly donate any amount HERE
