On Thursday, August 14, 2025, the state unveiled the Child Sexual Abuse Investigative and Interview Protocol, a playbook meant to do one thing well: protect a child’s truth from being lost between trauma and the courtroom. It’s not just another document; it’s a shift in posture—from ad-hoc reactions to a disciplined, trauma-informed system that can stand up in court and stand by a child.
Here is the latest, and why it matters. With this launch, Lagos becomes the first state in Nigeria to formally adopt a unified forensic interview and investigative protocol tailored to children. That first matters because “firsts” change norms: what starts in Lagos often becomes an expectation everywhere else. The protocol sets standards for who interviews a child, how questions are asked, how evidence is preserved, and how agencies move in lockstep, reducing the re-traumatization that happens when a child must retell the same horror to a carousel of adults.
Behind the policy are numbers that don’t blink. In 2024 alone, Lagos sought justice for 3,215 abused children, a crowd of lost birthdays and interrupted sleep. Nationwide, the scale is harsher: six in ten Nigerian children experience some form of violence; one in four girls and one in ten boys suffer sexual violence. Fewer than five in a hundred report ever receiving support. Protocols are not poetry, but these figures are why Lagos needed one.
Related article - Uphorial Podcast
But a protocol is only as good as the people who carry it. This is where the story widens. Think of the police officer learning to ask fewer, better questions. The nurse who knows how to collect forensic evidence without smudging a child’s memory. The social worker who sees beyond the file to the trembling hand holding a schoolbag. Lagos has been building those muscles, training clinicians on sexual assault care and standardizing the response pathway, so that when a child speaks, the state listens once, records well, and protects always.
Then there are the bridges around government that make the pathway real. The Mirabel Centre, Nigeria’s first Sexual Assault Referral Centre, has long offered free forensic medical and psychosocial services, quiet rooms where a child can breathe while science does its work. The new state protocol doesn’t replace such hubs; it knits them into a common rhythm so cases don’t stall between compassion and conviction. This is how justice becomes both technical and human.
If you zoom in closer, the protocol is also a promise about time. Trauma scatters memory; good interviewing gathers it without leading it. That’s the art and discipline of forensic interviewing: pacing, neutrality, developmentally appropriate language, and an evidentiary chain that can survive cross-examination. Lagos is betting that when you center the child and standardize the process, you reduce “system-made harm”, those invisible bruises caused by delays, disbelief, and duplication. It’s a humble kind of innovation: fewer steps, stronger cases, less pain. There’s a moral economy at play, too. Justice in these cases isn’t only a verdict; it’s the knowledge that a child didn’t walk alone from clinic to station to court. It’s the phone call returned, the counselor present, the parent guided, and the file that doesn’t vanish in a cabinet. Policies are often drafted in nouns; children live in verbs. The Lagos upgrade is an attempt to move from “policy exists” to “help arrived”, on time, in order, and with care.
If you need a window into how this works in practice, watch this short report on the launch and the partnership scaffolding it: Curbing Child Sexual Abuse: Lagos Govt. Partner Launch Investigative & Interview Protocol. It’s not sensational; that’s the point. It shows a state trying to move from outrage to architecture. The work ahead is clear: fund the training, protect the chain of custody, expand survivor support, and publish case-flow data so citizens can see where justice accelerates or stalls. For every statistic is a child waiting to be believed once and protected always. Lagos has tightened the compass. Now the journey is to follow it.
