The Nigerian Child and the Right to Participation: A Peep through the Window of “The Best Interest” Clause of the Child’s Rights Act

Abstract

Prior to the Nigerian Child’s Rights Act 2003 (the first holistic enactment on the rights of the child), it was not conceivable (as in several countries of the world before the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) that a child has participatory rights. The Nigerian Child’s Rights Act created participatory rights, but in some of the rights, they did not employ words showing that such rights were participatory, which thereby creating doubts in respect of their enforcement. This paper critically appraises the various sections of the Act on the subject and makes a comparative analysis of the sections on the participatory rights of the child with their equivalent in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 1989 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990. It recommends that although, the Act did not expressly provide for the right of the child to participate in certain rights, these rights must be interpreted to implicitly included participatory rights in view of the omnibus provision of the Act that provides for “the best interest of the child”. The paper concludes that the legislature undoubtedly did not intend to exclude participatory rights of the child because non-participation of children no longer represents the global state of the law on the rights of children.