The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has urged the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to strengthen early legal intervention and institutional mechanisms to guarantee justice and protection for children in conflict with the law.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim made the call while delivering a keynote address at the 66th Annual General Conference of the NBA in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, themed “Justice Beyond Limits: For Every Child, Justice.”
The Minister said Nigeria had established legal frameworks for protecting children but gaps in implementation continued to deny many children the protection guaranteed by existing legislation.
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“The honest question this Conference must answer is not whether the law exists. It is why a child in many parts of this country still cannot feel its protection,” she said.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim said the justice chain often broke long before a child reached the courtroom and within the first 48 hours after arrest.
She identified inadequate birth registration, school exclusion, family breakdown, child marriage and weak social welfare systems as factors that could push children into conflict with the law.
The Minister said only about half of Nigerian children under five had their births registered, stressing that the inability to establish a child’s age could expose children to adult justice processes and deprive them of child-specific protections.
She disclosed that about 26,000 children entered custodial and remand facilities annually, with nearly 74 per cent awaiting trial and 68 per cent having no lawyer from their first contact with the justice system.
According to her, the figures highlighted systemic weaknesses in diversion, early legal assistance and child-sensitive justice.
“Our difficulty is not the absence of a statutory hook. It is the absence of a framework around it,” she said, referring to Section 209 of the Child Rights Act, which provides a statutory basis for diversion.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim also called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from seven years, describing the current threshold as “indefensible in 2026.”
She urged the NBA to operationalise Duty Solicitor Schemes across its branches to ensure that every apprehended child had access to a lawyer within 24 hours.
The Minister further advocated substantive Family Courts, a presumption of minority where age was uncertain, and stronger training for lawyers, prosecutors and police prosecutors on diversion, trauma-informed child interviewing and restorative justice.
She proposed a formal Child Justice Compact between the Ministry and NBA, supported by a joint technical committee, quarterly reporting and measurable indicators covering legal representation, diversion and functional Family Court sittings.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim also called for mobile Family and Children’s Courts in underserved communities and strategic litigation to clarify unresolved issues concerning children’s minority status, detention in adult facilities and fair-hearing rights.
“Only the Bar can put a lawyer beside a child in a police station tonight,” she said.
She assured the NBA that the Ministry would provide policy architecture, data and welfare infrastructure to support the proposed partnership across Nigeria.
“Those are limits we can pass, and we can begin this week,” Sulaiman-Ibrahim added.
