1. Introduction
Part of the core objectives of the Nollywood film industry is to promote cultural values and morals as well as expose social ills that affect the image of the country. Child abuse is a social menace that is on the front burner of global discourse. However, despite global and national attempts at mitigating this crime, the scourge is on the increase in developing countries due to high levels of poverty. Child abuse takes different forms. Amiriheobu, George, Owunari and Osah note that child abuse can occur “through acts of rape, bullying, child trafficking, early marriage, child labour, total negligence of children and other forms of violence against children...”
. Fortunately, Nollywood film practitioners have not overlooked this important problem in their exposition of societal issues. Onwe and Ihiaeme affirm that Nollywood “films present for Nigeria a veritable tool for realization of the rights of the child” and that “the ideological frames within which Nigerian films represent issues of the rights of the girl child are that of the inalienability of the human dignity of the girl child, the wrongness of undermining this dignity through rights abuses and the imperative of justice for the abused girl child”
. Therefore, the Nollywood film has remained a medium of addressing the issue of children’s rights and abuse perpetuated in Nigeria.
Although the representation of child abuse and other related offences against children remains poorly addressed in most Nollywood films where children are featured prominently in the narrative, some practitioners have also paid detailed attention to the needs and plights of children in society in relation to the issues of child rights. Some of the few Nollywood films that have represented child-centred issues include Moses Inwang’sItoro (2013) and Alter Ego (2017) Niyi Akinmolyan’s Make a Move (2014), Stephanie Okeke-Linus’s Dry (2015) and Adams Umar’s Emotional and Physical Neglect (2017), African Creator’s My Home Teacher (2020), andEdith Chiewuzie’s Elina (2021) among others.
While some of these films have been critically looked at by scholars from the perspective of the abuses children go through in society, not much has been done to examine the rights of children and how these rights are violated as a result of cultural and social factors that condition the wellbeing of children. This study examines the representation of child rights and abuse, as well as the mitigating options provided in Omoni Oboli’s Wives on Strike (2016) and Precious Awoyemi’s Itoro (2017) to look at the interplay of Rights and abuses of children in Nigeria as represented in the films.
2. Literature
Children are regarded as heritages from God that should be nurtured properly for the benefit of society. Every child is important and deserves the right environment, protection, and training to enhance his or her development. Beyond their personal development, Sunandamma opines that “the child is a natural resource for an economy” and because of this, it is “the responsibility of society to provide the necessary atmosphere and opportunities to transform children into potential human resources”
. Child rights are those privileges that create the necessary conditions for children to develop. In Nigeria, the Child Rights Act of 2003 outlines the basic rights of children
. These rights include but are not limited to the right to survival and development, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to dignity of the child, the right to health and health services, the right to parental care, protection, and maintenance
. Through these rights, children are allowed to develop to become the leaders of tomorrow. Consequently, Olusegun and Idowu assert that the way children are treated reflects the level of development of a particular country
. Unfortunately, the tender nature of children makes them vulnerable and exposes them to different forms of abuse that have deleterious impacts on their wellbeing.
Child abuse “is an age-old problem and it is perceived as a social evil”
, which jeopardises the safety and security of children and the future of society. Bott and Azaryeva define child abuse as all “forms of interpersonal violence (physical, sexual and emotional) against girls, boys, and adolescents that occur in the home, in and on the way to school, in the community, in workplaces and through information and communication technologies such as mobile phones and the Internet”
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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. In the view of Olusegun and Idowu, it is “any act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, and sexual abuse or exploitation”
. Garbarino argues that “child abuse (and neglect) is merely parts of a more general phenomenon: the maltreatment of children”
, which to Robinson and Breaux is “considered an umbrella term that encompasses both child abuse and neglect”
.
There are different types of child abuse. Olusegun and Idowu observe that child abuse can either be sexual or non-sexual. These scholars explain that sexual abuse consists of abuse that can either be child marriage, molestation, or female genital mutilation while non-sexual abuse includes child labour, kidnapping, and neglect
. In the taxonomy done by Kewalramani, child abuse is broadly classified into three types: physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional (that is, neglect or maltreatment) abuse
and manifests in different forms like “injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse”
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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. Child labour is another form of child abuse that affects the development of children
. Bott and Valente argue that harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and child marriage and child labour are “heightened risk of violence”
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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against children, while Younas and Leslie Morrison identify neglect and witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV)
as other types of child abuse that have an adverse effect on the development of the child.
Child abuse is a crime perpetrated by parents, caregivers, relatives “or another person in a custodial role”
. Kewalramani notes that the crime is committed by “mostly females, and poor, middle-aged, illiterate and low-status job-holder males”
. In his empirical study of child abuse in India, he notes that:
In 93 percent of the physical abuse cases the perpetrators were found to be the members of victims' own families (parents and/or siblings), while in 7 percent of cases, they were kin with whom the children were living (for example, father's father, father's brother, mother's father and mother's brother, and so on). Of the 93 percent of cases in which the victim's family member was the abuser, the mother was the abuser in 17 percent of cases; the father in 16 percent of cases; both parents in 29 percent of cases, siblings in 7 percent cases; and in 24 percent cases both parents and siblings were the abusers. It was further found that more women (59 percent) than men (41 percent) were involved in physically abusing children.
In some other cases, child abuse is committed by strangers who may not have any relationship or link to their victims.
The effects of abuse on children, especially in their formative years are many. These effects range from physical, psychological, social, economic, and developmental. Del Vecchio, Erlanger and Slep note that the effects of maltreatment can be substantially broader than the emotional, behavioural, and social effects that were initially the focus of research to include its influence on the physical health of the child
[12] | Del Vecchio T, Erlanger ACE, Slep AMS. Theories of child abuse. In: Fine MA, Fincham FD, editors. Handbook of Family Theories: A Content-based Approach. New York: Taylor and Francis; 2012. |
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. Bott and Valente note that in general:
All forms of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse against girls and boys may have serious negative short-term and long-term physical, mental and reproductive health consequences. These include physical injury, sexually transmitted infections, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, unplanned pregnancy and in some cases death... toxic stress associated with exposure to violence in childhood can impair brain development and damage other parts of the nervous system, with lifelong consequences... Violence may also have serious social and economic consequences for individuals and society, including reduced school performance and long-term economic costs.
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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In addition, Sunandamma observes that abuse on children restricts them from developing academically while Olusegun and Idowu opine that beyond the immediate and direct effect of abuse on children, it also negatively affects the future of children and destroys the image of a nation
.
Pathology, role malfunctioning, system failure, and social problems are four causes of child abuse identified by scholars on children’s development. Explaining these causes Chamberlin states that:
Pathology includes substance abuse (drugs and alcohol), mental health (low self-esteem, mental illness, mental disability) and lack of morality (lack of morals, and lack of religious beliefs, and anger management). Role malfunction included stress, single parents, intergenerational abuse, parenting issues (lack of knowledge about children, lack of responsibility), ignorance, and parental immaturity (young parents). Social problems were socioeconomic issues (low-income families, job loss) and county issues (lack of jobs, lack of education, community violence, lack of community involvement with families). System failure included not responding to reports, returning children to abusive homes, and too many cases.
Chamberlin’s assertion above is supported by Sunandamma who notes that economic, social, and psychological constraints affect the way parents treat their children
. Furthermore, Bott and Valente observe that male attitudes that support male entitlement to sex correlate with a higher risk of perpetrating sexual violence against girls and women
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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. In addition, children’s exposure to partner violence against women may also increase the risk of violent discipline as well as children’s risk of perpetrating or experiencing other types of violence during adolescence and adulthood
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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. Most times, “the role of cultural support for the use of physical force against children, and the inadequacy and inadequate use of family support systems are two factors identified as necessary conditions for child maltreatment”
. Kewalramani adds that “the major cause of child abuse may be described as an adaptational failure or maladjustment in an environment (both in the family and work-place) mostly on the part of perpetrators (parents, employers, and so on) and to some extent on the part of adults responsible for socialisation in the family”
. Olusegun and Idowu also underscore the lack of implementation of laws of child protection as one of the reasons why abuse of children persists in many societies
.
The rate of child abuse in both the male and female in society is alarming. Del Vecchio, Erlanger, and Slep note that generally in the world “large numbers of children are maltreated”
[12] | Del Vecchio T, Erlanger ACE, Slep AMS. Theories of child abuse. In: Fine MA, Fincham FD, editors. Handbook of Family Theories: A Content-based Approach. New York: Taylor and Francis; 2012. |
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while in Nigeria, in particular, many children suffer from various forms of child abuse
. Based on frequency and situation, “girls face heightened vulnerability to certain types of violence (abuse), and are uniquely disadvantaged during armed conflict, forced displacement and other crises
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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. Implicitly, girls are more prone to abuse because of their sexuality. The enormity and rate of child abuse in society make it a problem that should not only be addressed but mitigated to ensure a just and free society where the rights of every child are respected. The Child’s Rights Act of 2003 provides the framework for “protecting and promoting the wellbeing of all children, improving the quality of relationships between children, families, and communities, and establishing the use of facilities to improve the quality of children’s lives”
in Nigeria. Unfortunately, ineffective implementation of the Act to serve its purpose remains the bane of children in Nigeria who are abused daily though the awareness of the problem of child abuse is profuse in both the print and electronic media.
3. Theoretical Framework
The study adopts the Social Habitability Theory as propounded by James Garbarino in 1977. Garbarino observes that ecological factors like family, environment, and society are responsible for child abuse. He argues that parents, children, and their immediate environment tend to complement each other in cases of child abuse
. Hence, the theory “attempts to explicate a model of child maltreatment as a problem of the family asynchrony-i.e., as a mismatch of parent to child and of the family to neighbourhood and community”
. The core of the social habitability theory is that “destructive organism-environment adaptations are "permitted" by ideological support for the use of physical force and by naturally occurring and socially engineered support systems which inadequately monitor deviance and fail to encourage effective parenting”
. Implicitly, “the nature of child maltreatment depends upon the quality of the environment (in which the person and family develop), or the level of family support in the environment” where “the less the family support, the greater the risk of maltreatment of children”
.
Garbarino notes that there are two necessary conditions for child abuse. He identifies the first condition as culturally motivated while the second is “isolation from potent support systems”
. Explaining the first condition, he notes that “for child abuse to occur within family microsystems, there must be cultural justification for the use of force against children”
. This is because most cultures accept different measures of violence as a method of training children. Therefore “a culturally defined concept of children as the "property" of caregivers and of caregivers as legitimate users of physical force appears to be an essential component of child abuse”
. The second condition is the isolation of abusive children from supportive social systems. Garbarino notes that the “failure to use social supports is common among abusive and neglectful families”
because of multiple issues like: the developmental history of parents, social stresses which cut families off from potential and actual supports, mobility patterns which disrupt social networks, characteristics of the families which alienate others, the inclination and ability of neighbourhoods to provide the observation and resources essential to the feedback function, and social service systems inadequate to the task of identifying and "monitoring" high-risk families
. Mitigating the abuse of children requires confronting the root cause of it, which Garbarino has identified to be environmental. Therefore, Garbarino’s theory provides the framework for examining the representation of child abuse in the selected Nollywood films.
5. Child Rights, Abuse and Mitigating Options in Wives on Strike and Itoro
Wives on Strike revolves around four women; Mama Ngozi (Omoni Oboli), Gemima (Uche Jumbo), Christy (Peggy Ovire), and Iya Bola (Kehinde Bankole) who rally around their friend, Mama Amina to stop the marriage of her thirteen years old daughter to Alhaji. Amina (Oyindamola Lampeju) is betrothed to Alhaji according to Muslim tradition. Mama Amina’s (Ufoma Ejenobor McDermot) plea to her husband to stop the marriage to enable Amina to attain the age of eighteen before handing her over to Alhaji is met with resistance. However, the four women headed by Mama Ngozi disrupt the wedding process. Their action draws the attention of local and international media, with Vera Isong (Chioma Chukwuka) offering them her media platform to campaign against the inadequacies of the Child Rights Act and to advocate for the implementation of an amended Child Rights Act across the states in Nigeria.
Child marriage is a major type of abuse against female children in Africa in general, and Nigeria, in particular. It is an ecological problem that has deleterious effects on a female child. Though international and national laws criminalise the act, it is accepted as a norm in many cultures and ethnic lines. The director, Oboli portrays this crime from the point of view of the lax legislative framework that underpins this obnoxious cultural practice in the Northern part of Nigeria. This cultural situation affirms Garbarino’s theory that emphasises the role of the environment in child abuse. Amina’s betrothal and imminent marriage to Alhaji at thirteen situates the dramatic conflict that Oboli explores to represent the nature and implication of child marriage in Northern Nigeria.
Although it is a crime against a girl child, early marriage in the Northern part of Nigeria is culturally seen as a leeway to economic prosperity. Papa Amina betroths his daughter to a wealthy man because of his low economic status. As a driver whose income is hardly sufficient to cater to the needs of his family, he is adamant about not letting her wife take up a job to support him in raising their children because of the erroneous cultural belief that the place of a woman is at home. Ironically, he sees Amina as a cash cow to alleviate his incompetence as a breadwinner and argues with his wife that “He (Alhaji) is a very rich man who can solve all our problems”
[14] | Wives on Strike. Directed by: Omoni Oboli. Nigeria: Dioni Visions; 2016. |
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. Mama Amina sees the situation differently. She is worried that Amina is too tender to be married at her age and thus proposes that they delay the process till Amina reaches eighteen years, which is the rightful age of consent. Her concern as a mother also stems from the fact that Amina fears that she might die just like her mate Zainab who died shortly after she got married as a child. More so, the physical, psychological, and health implications of child marriage are many, one of which is Vesico-Vaginal fistula (VVF). Gemima in her dialogue with Mama Ngozi notes that this health condition affects the female child, especially if you marry them when
dey never form, e go dey make them if dem dey waka for road, dem go dey piss dey smell like say they done die (when you marry them before they are fully developed it causes them to have urine incontinence and smell like they are dead when they walk on the road)
[14] | Wives on Strike. Directed by: Omoni Oboli. Nigeria: Dioni Visions; 2016. |
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. VVF comes with stigmatisation, abandonment, and neglect that further affect the general well-being of the victim and when untreated can lead to death. All these aggregate to Mama Amina’s dilemma.
However, Gemima and her friends are not only perturbed about Mama Amina’s unfortunate situation. Instead, they are concerned about the level of silence on the problem that has institutionalised the crime, especially with Christy’s report to the women that the senate is concluding plans to pass into law the infamous bill that will allow these old men to marry small children below the legal age of consent. While the women widely condemn the legislative rascality of the men, they also resolve to show their impedance against the men by embarking on a sex strike with their husbands, disrupting the wedding ceremony between Anima and Alhaji, and finally leveraging the opportunity given to them by Vera to further push for the amendment and implementation of the Child Rights Act across all the states of the federation. Their heroic actions offer Mama Amina a support system that ended Amina’s marriage even before it started.
Child abuse is a national problem that concerns every citizen. Mitigating its scourge is the responsibility of everybody in society. The unwillingness of the men to join their wives, in the beginning, to address Amina’s imminent marriage to Alhaji leads to strike action by the women, who use sex as a tool to revolt against the abuse of girl children. The action taken by the women further reveals the power they have in the decision-making process of the nation even though they are grossly underrepresented both in elective and appointive positions. However, with the undaunted actions taken by the women to challenge the anomaly of child marriage, both the national and international community intensify their campaign against child marriage and other forms of abuse, which the local news reporter relays as a great injustice against the girl child. The women’s affront against the men inadvertently inspired them to condemn the act and most importantly, join their voices in the struggle to manumit the girl child from a cultural practice that infringes her fundamental human rights.
Moreover, the role of the media in the fight against child abuse is underscored in the film. Both print and electronic media are employed as tools for the awareness of the crime and consequent protests with global backing to end child abuse in the world. Beyond the use of mass media in campaigning against child marriage and other forms of child abuse, the film highlights the importance of effective legislation and implementation of the Child Rights Act for the protection of the girl child. Vera in an altercation with her husband, a Senator of the Federal Republic, emphasises this point while highlighting the weakness of the existing Act that gives room for anyone to interpret it to suit them and the silence of the legislators in implementing the Child Rights Act across the states. Vera’s conviction is that widespread implementation of the Child Rights Act can help to curb the crime in society. She questions the essence of upholding a cultural practice that is antithetical to the rights and privileges of a child and ethics of morality by decrying the failure of the senate, parents, and citizens in protecting the girl child from child marriage.
Vera: Tell that to the girl child who will not be able to get the well-needed education to grow as a person, or better still get out of the relationship she has been forced into... tell that to the girl child who is expected to perform a sexual act with a man, an act the law forbids her to watch in movies. Tell that to the girl who is being violated by the same people she expects to protect her, the same people who taught her to refrain from those acts she has been asked to perform.
[14] | Wives on Strike. Directed by: Omoni Oboli. Nigeria: Dioni Visions; 2016. |
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Vera’s responsive call above is a re-examination of the negative dynamic of child marriage which comes with attendant consequences. Her gallant action towards the amendment and implementation of the Child Rights Act eventually pays off, even though Aniete’s political associate believes that there may not be a long-lasting solution to child marriage and other abuses.
On the other hand, Itoro narrates the tragic abuse of the eponymous fourteen-year-old protagonist Itoro (Barakat Alao) who is forced to leave home and her education to become a domestic staff in the city. Her parents Mr. and Mrs. Mbong entrust her under the care of Mr. Gbenga (Olitan Rasheed) who lives in Lagos to have a better education and life. However, Gbenga and her wife renege on their promise to enroll her in school and turn her into a house help, allowing Gbenga the opportunity to constantly abuse her physically and sexually. Providentially, her display of intelligence before Oga Victor (Omoh Kings Odutola) endears him to secretly sign her up for a scholarship programme that she passes with national recognition.
Adeyemi’s Itoro centres on child labour, its effects, and consequences for the victim and their family. The protagonist Itoro is a brilliant girl with great potential for academic excellence. However, due to poverty and the inability of her parents to continue funding her education, Mr. Gbenga agrees with her parents to take her to Lagos to complete her education. At first, she refused the offer because her examination was around the corner, but eventually bowed to pressure from her parents, who claimed they could not afford to take care of her education. Unfortunately, poverty is one of the root causes of child abuse in Nigeria. Parents who cannot afford to provide their children with basic needs often entrust them to the hands of relatives, friends, or acquaintances whom they think have the wherewithal to take care of them. Sadly for Itoro and her family, Gbenga is a wolf in sheep’s clothing pretending to have her interests and needs at heart. Gbenga begins to verbally abuse Itoro immediately after she enters his car and also makes it clear that his promise to enrol her in a good school is a sham. Instead, he threatens her to brace up for the worst experience under his care.
Itoro’s nightmare begins in front of Gbenga’s house when they arrive in Lagos. Gbenga’s wife not only verbally abuses her but also slaps her on arrival, ordering her to head straight to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Against the promised plan of a better life, Itoro becomes a full-time house-help, experiencing abuse that undermines her dignity as a human being and sexuality as a girl. Life became a living hell with torrents of physical, sexual, and mental abuse from Gbenga, which did not go unnoticed by Oga Victor. Victor owns a provision store where Itoro shops for the house while other children her age are in school, raising awareness of one of the many effects of child labour in society.
Victor: Itoro, wetin be this for your body? When Sunbu’s children dey go school, I no dey see you dey go school.
Itoro: I am not in school here. I was in school in my village
[15] | Itoro. Directed by: Precious Awoyemi. Nigeria: Dept. of Film Production and Photography KSU, 2017. |
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.
Itoro’s tacit responses and evasive demeanour towards letting Victor in on her predicament even when he shows genuine concern towards her education supports Garbarino’s assertion that the reason why children are abused is because of their isolation from a support system, leading to the culture of silence on the crime, and further exacerbating the abuse they experience in the hands of their aggressors. However, Victor is unrelenting in his desire to mitigate the crime committed against Itoro by helping her maximise her academic potential. Hence, he secretly signs her on a scholarship programme to help her achieve her dream of completing her education.
Neglect and intimidation are examples of child abuse. Adeyemi buttresses these factors in the narrative by blaming Mr. Mbong’s neglect towards Itoro as the reason for her horrific abuse at the hands of Gbenga and his wife who used subtle intimidation to conceal their atrocities from Mr. Mbong when he visited the city to check on her daughter, at the instance of his wife who was traumatised by the bad dream she had about their daughter. However, the film does not show any clear punitive measures taken against Gbenga. Instead, Itoro believes in divine retribution for her justice. Rather than expose Gbenga’s crime to her father she assures him that God will repay him for all he did to her. The effect of silence on child abuse is that it conceals the evil and also opens up opportunities for perpetrators to continue in their actions. Itoro’s failure to speak out makes her father think that Itoro’s scholarship came as a result of Gbenga’s effort, hence, his desire to see Gbenga take Itoro’s younger sister to the city to nurture her for him. However, Victor’s timely intervention provides Itoro with the opportunity to become aware of the danger of her condition and the need to forestall further occurrences by maximising her innate potential for success.
6. Conclusion
The abuse of children’s rights is a global problem that has not been given due attention in Nigeria. Despite global interventions from international organisations like the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Child Rights International Network (CRIN), Defense for Children International (DCI), Save the Children, International Bureau for Children’s Rights (IBCR), and others, as well as Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) programmes put in place for the development of children to ensure the eradication of all forms of abuse against them, children’s rights are constantly abused across rural and urban centres. Abuse against children is further supported by sociocultural and political conditions that weaken the fight against the abuse of children. Hence, in the streets in the metropolises, social institutions like schools and churches/mosques, as well as family settings, children undergo different forms of abuse that negate their rights in society, thus making the Child Rights Act and other laws advocating for the rights of children grossly ineffective in mitigating the problem.
Although the media play a major role in exposing and demystifying the culture of silence that underpins the abuse of children in society, the awareness campaign is inadequate compared to the rate of the crime in society. Film as a potent medium of exposing societal ills provides the platform through which child abuse can be addressed to have the desired effect in society. The analyses of the two films portray child marriage and labour as popular forms of abuse of children in Nigeria. These practices as revealed in the films are ecologically and culturally undergirded, and motivated by social and economic factors like poverty and hunger. However, girls are mostly the victims of these crimes that further expose them to physical and non-physical abuse and neglect that affect their overall development as seen through the characters of Amina in Wives on Strike and Itoro in Itoro.
However, these films offer different approaches to mitigating child abuse. Wives on Strike advocates for the use of the media, amendment, and full implementation of the Child Rights Act across the states in Nigeria. Itoro advocates for the use of divine retribution and a response and support system approach in mitigating the rate of child abuse. These approaches are germane in the fight against child abuse, though not adequate due to the nature of child marriage and labour. The campaign against these crimes requires a total approach that addresses the root causes, which are poverty and hunger, in addition to the strategies outlined by UNICEF in 2016 to end violence against children. These strategies are:
1. implementation and enforcement of laws
2. norms and values
3. safe environment
4. parent and caregiver support
5. Income and economic strengthening
6. response and support services
7. education and life skills
[7] | Bott S, Valente A A. Preventing and responding to violence against children and adolescents: theory of change. New York: UNICEF, 2017. |
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.
Undoubtedly, it falls upon filmmakers to ensure that instances of child abuse are treated with utmost seriousness, thereby exposing other forms of maltreatment that may be conveniently overlooked. Additionally, social institutions such as the family unit, churches and schools must spearhead efforts in combating these insidious crimes against children by promoting awareness and sensitisation campaigns at the forefront.