With a population of 170 million people, Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa and accounts for 50% of West Africa’s population. Although Nigeria has made incredible progress, but millions of children are still being left behind.
The country is home to 10% of the world’s out-of-school children (4.7 million in total), and over 60% of the population is living in extreme poverty. Many children are not attending school, with 27% of school-aged children out of school. For the children that are in school, they are failing to learn basic skills like reading and writing.
Children continue to die from preventable diseases like pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, and malnutrition which contribute to half of deaths of children under five.
Children across Nigeria experience a series of violence, Girls in particular are experiencing gender-based violence, and many girls are being forced to marry as children. In the northern part of Nigeria, 48% of girls are married by the age of 15 and 78% are married by the age of 18. As a result, millions of girls end up dropping out of school.
The humanitarian crisis in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states in Nigeria’s north-east, that has spilled over into the Lake Chad region, remains among the most severe humanitarian crises in the world today. The number of people in need of urgent assistance in north-east Nigeria rose from 7.9 million at the beginning of 2020 to 10.6 million since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Children’s lives are being impacted by conflict, violence and exploitation. Conflict has led to a collapse of public services like health, nutrition and education. 45% of health facilities and nearly half of schools in the state of Borno and Yobe have been destroyed by the conflict.
C3HD, UN and other partner NGOs are aiming to provide life-saving assistance to 7.8 million people amongst the most vulnerable.
Since 2017, C3HD has been working in Nigeria to ensure all children survive, learn and are protected. We are contributing to the protection of children from all forms of violence, exploitation, neglect and abuse, especially to girls, UASC, CAAFAG, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), at risk children and those affected by conflict. Our programmes work from the community to the state and national level to promote women and children’s rights, and protection. We also advocate and campaign to ensure that girls have equal access to education and protected from any form of sexual exploitation and abuse, and including child marriage.
We are committed to addressing the root causes that is preventing girls from enrolling and staying in schools by removing social and structural barriers, inequality in education, and increasing access to quality education, including early childhood care and development education (ECDE). We organize back to school programs and enrolment drives to give children a second chance to be in school, we target school out of school-children including adolescent girls, girls that are pregnant and young mothers and those affected by conflict.
We provide early recovery interventions to communities adversely affected by conflict while addressing the causes of poverty and mitigating their impact on children, by strengthening the livelihoods and resilience of households.
We have built the capacity of teachers and health workers to respond to Sexual and Reproductive Health needs of both in school and out of school adolescent boys and girls. We establish community structures to as part of our sustainability approach for projects even beyond donor funds to tackle the root causes of GBV, Inequality, HIV, TB, Malaria, Malnutrition and Conflict, and promoting Peace building and Social cohesion among communities.