Care vs. Culture in the African Context
If I were on a bus in Lagos and said, "Culture has done more harm than good for children in Nigeria," I am confident that I would have more voices in agreement than those who disagree. Before you pick a side, I need to let you know that I am not trying to "decentre" culture. I am only writing to let you see how we can strike a balance so we do not lose our children to a set of customs whose negatives outweigh the positives. For instance, a culture that believes in witchcraft and concludes that children with mental health issues as a result of exposure to or involvement in armed conflicts have been possessed or are involved in sorcery.
Edward Tylor, in Primitive Culture (1871), defines culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” In essence, man and culture cannot be separated. However, when the culture that provides a shared identity, support and meaning begins to cause harm to man, whether physical (like female genital mutilation) or psychological (like the stigma surrounding mental illness), this should compel us to come together as a community and make necessary alterations to these harmful beliefs and practices, especially where they affect children.
Now, when I talk about care, I am referring to child welfare and protection: the systems and structures that ensure that children whose rights have been violated are offered psychosocial, financial, and educational support, among other forms of assistance. UNICEF defines child protection as “the prevention of and response to violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect and harmful practices against children.” Somehow, these systems and structures have come to be attributed to the West, so child protection and culture in Africa seem to be on opposing ends. This ought not to be so. The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990), an African instrument, requires states to eliminate harmful social and cultural practices affecting the welfare, dignity and normal growth of the child (Article 21), and provides that any custom or tradition inconsistent with the Charter shall be discouraged to the extent of that inconsistency (Article 1(3)). Child protection, then, is not an import; it is also part of Africa’s own normative framework.
NGOs, INGOs and civil society organisations have intervened to implement child protection and recovery programmes; however, these programmes sometimes hit roadblocks. For instance, in the UNICEF Rapid Needs Assessment on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, standardised Western test questions failed to capture what children in northern Nigeria were feeling, because their culture associated depression and mental instability with simply thinking too much. As a result, these children were unable to access the appropriate care they needed. It is not that standardised tools should be discarded, but that they must be contextualised and validated locally before use.
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The question, therefore, is how we can ensure that children are protected while also preserving culture. As I mentioned earlier, it would take communities coming together to filter out beliefs and traditions that have consistently harmed children’s bodies, health, minds and education. I also believe we can maximise existing positive beliefs and values, for instance by prioritising restorative forms of discipline, such as counselling and community service, rather than focusing solely on physical discipline or corporal punishments.
Legally, frameworks must be aligned by the government through legislation that prohibits all forms of violence against children. Customary and religious laws should not be used to justify abuse. In northern Nigeria, the Native Courts (Protectorate) Ordinance №44 of 1933 became a significant turning point:
the Native Courts (Protectorate) Ordinance Number Forty-Four of 1933 equally empowered native courts to administer the native law and customs prevailing in the areas of their jurisdiction. Hence, Sharia remained operative in northern Nigeria as a class of customary law and was recognized under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as an existing law.- Iyabode Ogunniran.
This is problematic for children in the North because, on the matter of marriage, for instance, Sharia as commonly applied contradicts the Child’s Rights Act 2003, which sets 18 as the minimum age of marriage (sections 21 and 277). The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the Act only becomes enforceable in a state once that state’s House of Assembly domesticates it, and by section 29(4)(b) of the 1999 Constitution, which provides that a married woman is deemed to be of full age.
So, is culture to blame?
I would say that culture is not the villain, but neither is it innocent. The same culture that stigmatises a child for “thinking too much” also holds the community ties, the shared responsibility and the sense of belonging that can help that child heal. Care and culture are not opposing ends; they only appear so when child protection arrives as an outsider’s script and not as something a community recognises as its own. If we want to keep our children, we must be willing to keep what protects them and let go of what harms them. That means aligning our laws, contextualising our tools and, above all, trusting communities, traditional and religious leaders to lead the filtering. Only then can the conflict between care and culture give way to a partnership in which the child comes first.
