Ending Child Marriage in Nigeria: Exploring the Actions of Social Work Practitioners

Social workers have long been at the vanguard of combating child marriage in Nigeria, yet little is known of their response in this regard. Social constructive theory was applied to inform the theoretic model of this research, taking into account the previous submission as well as the exploratory aspect of the investigation. Drawing on a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a cohort of five social workers in Nigeria who were working in a mid-scale advocacy organization committed to ending child marriage in northern Nigeria and the results were subjected to thematic analysis. The rigour of qualitative research categories was applied to guarantee the credibility of the data collected. The findings of the study point direction to the roles of practitioners in working to minimize the obnoxious practice but also show that social workers undergo numerous challenges in their quest for combating child marriage. Although combating child marriage requires a multi-sectoral approach and collaboration across key stakeholders as a result of its deep-seated nature, it is highly probable that, with social workers taking the lead role in view of their unparalleled commitment to combating this problem, child marriage will become a phenomenon of the past. Keywords: Child marriage, Nigeria, person-in-environment, policy advocacy, social work