The “Best Interest of the Child” Principle and the Pluralistic Realities of Post Separation Custody in Nigeria (Published)
The statutory codification of the “best interest of the child” principle under Section 1 of the Nigerian Child’s Right Act (CRA) 2003 was intended to establish a supreme, uniform standard for child justice. However, within Nigeria’s plural legal system, child custody determinations following parental separation remains deeply fractured. This article examines the ideological clash that occurs when the statutory welfare principle meets the deeply entrenched, competing norms of Southern Customary law and Islamic law (sharia) utilizing a doctrinal and socio-legal analysis of chapter 4 empirical data, the paper demonstrates that lower customary and religious courts routinely bypass individualized welfare evaluations. Instead, they default to rigid, systemic presuppositions: patrilineal property-based custody structures in the South and rigid, age –and –gender-asymmetrical rules (Hadanah) in sharia jurisdictions. While superior appellate courts have made strides in emphasizing child welfare, this paper exposes the structural and cultural gaps that prevents these reforms from trickling down to grass roots courts. Ultimately, it proposes an integrated, pluralistic judicial framework that operationalizes “the best interest” standard without entirely discarding customary and religious identity.
Keywords: Child Rights, Nigeria, Pluralism, Post separation parenting, best interest of the child, child custody, family law, parental separation, shared parenting