United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has said that with a figure of 3.5 million, Nigeria has the third-highest absolute number of child brides in the world and the 11th highest prevalence rate of child marriage globally. Tribune Online reports that only Bangladesh with 4.4 million and India with 15.5 million child brides are worse than Nigeria on the index. This is as a new global study on the menace of child marriage has warned that the novel coronavirus could put an estimated four million girls in danger of enforced marriage. It quoted a 2017 World Bank study, which estimated that child marriage costs Nigeria $7.6 billion in lost earnings and productivity every year. “When you have any crisis like a conflict, disaster or pandemic rates of child marriage go up,” the charity’s child marriage expert, Erica Hall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Source: Nigerian Tribune June 11, 2020 21:00 UTC