Child Marriage not a Question of Legality, but of Social and Psychological Wellbeing

Abstract

The paper tries to digress from the conventional understanding of child marriage in Nigeria's socio-legal sphere to the reason why laws were enacted in pursuant to prohibiting it, studying the phenomenon of child marriage from the stand view of social and psychological wellbeing of the child, rather than the socio-cultural sentiment that predominantly obtains in Nigeria, and which by a cursory examination of it, seem more of laws that abet the practice than condemning it as against the condemnable approach obtainable in the international laws. The paper also takes a strident outlook to the suggestive, but verifiable implication of the practice on the lives of the victims, and also to the society by recommending a societal transformation through the amendment of the basic laws in Nigeria such as the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria and other laws operating in various states in Nigeria in order to accommodate the approved international standards for the age of consent, which varies among the states.