FG Launches 2025–2030 Strategy to End Child Marriage as Focus Shifts to Funding, School Retention
The Federal Government has launched a national strategy aimed at ending child marriage, with officials saying its success will depend on whether states fund the plan, keep girls in school and deliver measurable protection at community level.
The National Strategy and Costed Action Plan on Ending Child Marriage in Nigeria (2025–2030) was formally launched in Kano as part of activities marking the 2026 International Day of the Girl Child.
The current regional launch focuses on the North-West and North-East, while the strategy itself is national in scope.
Government says plan must move beyond declarations
Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim said the strategy is designed to provide an operational and budgetary roadmap for federal and state governments, development partners and community institutions.
The plan assigns implementation responsibilities, identifies resource needs and provides a basis for monitoring spending and results.
Traditional rulers, religious leaders, fathers, male allies, civil society groups and adolescent girls are also expected to have roles in implementation.
School retention becomes a key test
Government officials said implementation should be judged by outcomes including how many girls remain in school or return to education, how communities adopt protective practices and whether promised resources are actually released.
The strategy is also linked to efforts to strengthen access to quality and compulsory education for girls.
Child marriage can disrupt schooling, increase exposure to early pregnancy and related health risks, and deepen economic dependence.
But publication of a strategy does not itself prove that those harms have been reduced.
North-West and North-East remain central to implementation
UNICEF, citing the 2024 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, said about one in three young women nationally and nearly one in two in the North-West and North-East had married before turning 18.
Those are survey findings from 2024, not fresh 2026 prevalence measurements.
The figures help explain why implementation in the two northern zones will be an important test of the national strategy.
States will need to translate the framework into funded programmes, stronger child-protection services, school-retention measures and measurable local outcomes.
A costed plan raises a funding question
The inclusion of a costed action plan gives governments a clearer basis for identifying financial and human-resource needs.
It also creates an accountability test.
A costed strategy is not the same as money being appropriated, released or spent.
The next questions are how much each level of government will contribute, which budget lines will fund implementation and whether states will publicly report expenditure and results.
Legal and institutional enforcement still matter
The Federal Government says the strategy is also intended to strengthen existing child-protection frameworks, including implementation of the Child Rights Act.
Legal protections, however, depend on consistent enforcement and support from schools, social services, families and community institutions.
The accountability test
The strategy establishes a timetable running to 2030.
That creates clear benchmarks for follow-up: which states adopt and fund implementation plans, how much money is actually released, whether school retention improves and whether communities with high rates of child marriage record measurable change.
For girls and families, the test will not be the launch itself.
It will be whether the strategy produces funded protection, sustained schooling and measurable results in the places where the risks are highest.
