INVESTIGATION: Inside Nigerian communities where children are forced into marriage (1)

There was no sign of excitement on Christiana Ebonyi’s face on her wedding day in 2015. At just 16, she was being married off to a man nearly three times her age. For her family, the union represented hope — hope that their new son-in-law would help lift them out of poverty.

For Christiana, now 26, it marked the beginning of a life she never wanted.

Seated in front of her thatched hut on a Wednesday evening last July, Mrs Ebonyi remembers with sadness how her life went from hope to despair.

Growing up, she had desired to become a nurse and serve her community, Abofia-Mgbo Agbaja in Ndiachi, Izzi Local Government Area (LGA) of Ebonyi State.

But when her parents pressured her to marry at 16, her dream crumbled.

“My parents insisted I should marry to help the family,” she told PREMIUM TIMES in her local dialect; her voice a mixture of regret and anger.

Mrs Ebonyi’s poor parents had hoped that her marriage would enable them to get support from their son-in-law. She reluctantly left school in primary four to begin her marital journey. The hope later faded.

Her husband repeatedly battled different ailments, which not only drained him financially but also made him unable to provide for his family.

Hard-pressed by poverty, the mother of five took up farming jobs to feed her children and husband. She now shoulders the family’s burden, making her “look older” than her age.

But her looks are the least of her worries. “The greatest thing I need now is assistance to train my children in school so we can overcome poverty,” she said, gesturing with her hands.

Child Marriage in Nigeria

Child marriage in Nigeria is defined as the union between two people in which one or both are below the age of 18.

In some states in Southern Nigeria, child marriage has grown from a cultural tradition to a poverty survival strategy, especially in rural communities.

Poor families who cannot cater for their daughters now resort to child marriage as a strategy to reduce economic burden and as an escape route from poverty, thereby putting the education of their children and their future in jeopardy.

A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that girls without formal education and from poorer households are much more likely to be married early.

In Nigeria, child marriage remains high, with nearly 25 million (44 per cent) girls married before the age of 18, according to a 2024 report by UNICEF.

Nigeria ranks third globally in child marriage prevalence, with four out of 10 girls in the country married before the age of 18, the report said.

According to the 2021 Nigeria Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), 13.1 per cent of girls in Ebonyi were married before the age of 18, emerging as the second state, after Anambra (13.4 per cent), with the highest child marriage incidence in South-east Nigeria.

The 2021 MICS Survey was jointly conducted by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and UNICEF.

Like girls, like boys

Like Mrs Ebonyi, Njideka Nwankwo, another young mother, got married at age 16 in 2013. “I was forced to marry by my parents because things were very difficult for us,” 28-year-old Mrs Nwankwo said in between sobs.

Like Mrs Ebonyi, she also dropped out of school in primary six to get married.

“My parents could not pay my fees. So they asked me to marry,” she said.

While girls remain the major victims, boys are not left out in the cruel child marriage practice in the council area.

Friday Uguru was only 15 when his parents began to pressure him to get married. He was shocked that his parents considered such an idea despite the family’s obvious poverty.

Mr Uguru was a JSS III student at the time. “I didn’t marry at the time because I had nothing to care for a woman, not to talk of children that would come afterwards,” he recalled.

But to avoid a dispute with his parents, he pretended to have accepted their demand that he marry.

“Each time they brought up the marriage conversation, I feigned sickness or picked up a non-existent issue to distract the conversation. I did so until months before I fled the village for Abakaliki, dropping out of school as a result,” he recounted.

Mr Uguru, now a commercial motorcyclist in Abakaliki, eventually got married at 36.

“Now that I am married as a full-fledged man, I am ready to face any challenges,” he said.

For the 38-year-old father of two, child marriage in the community cannot cease unless poverty is addressed. He believes that polygamy is the major driver of poverty in the community.

“Another issue is our mindset. Some parents force their sons – even underage – to marry because their proposed partner is perceived as a hardworking girl,” he said.

Christopher Chidiebere, the second-in-command to the head of Abofia-Mgbo Agbaja in Ndiachi, Mrs Ebonyi’s community, told PREMIUM TIMES that due to the high incidence of child marriage in the area, the village leadership, in early 2025, banned the practice and placed a penalty of N50,000 and a goat for defaulters. “It is now domiciled in our (village) constitution. Since then, we have not had anybody violate the law,” he said.

When contacted in February, Mr Chidiebere claimed the committee had yet to record any violation of the rule. But Mr Uguru, another indigene of the Abofia-Mgbo Agbaja in Ndiachi, disagreed. “As far as I am concerned, child marriage is still being practised in my area,” he said.

He argued that Mr Chidiebere’s claim was understandable because, as a community leader, he was expected “to cover up” for the community.

Land sharing custom fuels practice

Egonna Mbam was only 12 and in JSS III when she got married. Her father forced her to marry because she got pregnant out of wedlock. Mrs Mbam had no one to support her. Her mother, who would’ve assisted her, passed away while she was barely 10. “But here, we normally marry very early, usually at age 15 or 16 latest,” she said, suggesting that her early marriage was not essentially because of the pregnancy.

The 28-year-old, however, is sad that her marriage forced her to drop out of school. She is now a food vendor in her community, Ndiebor in Ezza Inyimagu, Izzi LGA.

Like Mrs Mbam, Chinwendu Nwanchi, another young mother in the community, dropped out of school after she got married at 15. She was in JSS III at the time. Months later, she gave birth to her first child at 16.

“My parents pressured me to marry because we are very poor and there was no support from anyone,” Mrs Nwanchi said, adjusting her baby tied on her back.

She feels helpless because her husband, an artisan, has been unable to assist her family, as he, too, struggles financially.

The traditional ruler of the Ndiebor Community in Izzi LGA, Augustine Mbam, admitted that child marriage had been an age-long practice in his community. Mr Mbam, however, said that, in January 2025, he banned the practice and set up a committee to stop it.

“If anybody happens to do it (marry a child), we will seize his land. We no longer condone it,” he said.

The traditional ruler acknowledged that the rule was violated in early 2025, but the couple subsequently separated after the committee members informed them of the consequent sanction.

Multiple residents told PREMIUM TIMES that many men engage in child marriage in the community because of a cultural practice in which only married men, including underage men, are qualified to share village lands.

“In line with our culture, unmarried males cannot be given land in the village,” Mr Mbam, a former councillor in the community, admitted.

“But in my time now, I encourage the young ones to enrol in secondary school, and I will give them land. This is to encourage others to shun child marriage and go to school because their interest in education has been low.”

However, PREMIUM TIMES reliably gathered that a man from Ezza-Ofu village within the community married a 16-year-old girl in December 2025, indicating that the practice has persisted in the area.

“Both of them travelled to Owerri after their marriage. The girl is from another village in our community,” a source familiar with the couple told this newspaper in February 2026.

Meanwhile, based on interactions with elders and leaders across communities in the Izzi and Ebonyi LGAs, this newspaper established that child marriage had been practised for decades in the council areas.

The practice is also largely being driven by poverty. In many cases, poor parents whose teenage girls got pregnant often hand over their girls to their abusers and insist that they get married.

The implication is that they drop out of school.

A total of 18.2 million Nigerian school-age children are out of school, according to data from UNESCO’s 2024-2025 Global Education Monitoring Report. The figure includes 8.58 million (primary level), 4.06 million (junior secondary level) and 5.54 million (senior secondary level).

The situation is worse in Ebonyi, which has the highest number of out-of-school children (aged 6-15) in the South-east, according to data from the 2022 Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index.

As of the time of the report, the state had 1.17 million (16.7 per cent) children aged 6 to 15 years who were not in school.

‘We will follow up’

When confronted with findings of this investigation, the Commissioner of Women Affairs and Social Development in Ebonyi State, Felicia Nwamkpuma, referred our reporter to the Department of Child Development in the ministry.

Emmanuel Nkwuba, head of the department, told PREMIUM TIMES that the ministry had been campaigning “aggressively” against child marriage, but the practice has persisted in the state.

Mr Nkwuba recalled a similar case handled by the ministry in Ohaozara LGA in February, in which a girl was forced to marry against her will.

“We invited the parents, and as I speak with you, the girl is not with the family because she ran to the church, and we told the church, ‘Keep custody of this girl. Let’s find out why they want to force her into a marriage she doesn’t want,” he narrated.

The official then vowed to liaise with the commissioner to follow up on the PREMIUM TIMES’ investigation to stop the practice.

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“I want to assure you that we will do a follow-up because if we don’t do that, it means we are encouraging that practice,” he assured, saying the fact that the governor hails from the Izzi council area will be helpful.

What does Nigerian law say?

The Child Rights Act 2003 remains the major law against child or underage marriage in Nigeria.

A person who marries a child or to whom a child is betrothed, or who promotes such marriage or betroths a child, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N500,000 or five years imprisonment or both, according to Section 23 (a-d) of the Act.

Section 22 of the Act stipulates that no parent or guardian or other person shall betroth a child to anyone. Ebonyi is among the states in Nigeria that have domesticated the Act, which makes the legislation enforceable in those states.

Even under international laws, child marriage is considered a violation of human rights. According to Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance, a child cannot legally give full, informed consent to marriage.

Several organisations, such as Girls Not Brides and UNICEF, maintain that child marriage is a form of gender-based violence because the practice often puts girls and women at increased risk of sexual, physical, and psychological violence.

If child marriage in Ebonyi communities is bad, the situation is arguably worse in a community in Cross River.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Watch out for the second part.