Health
Inside Gombe community child sexual abuse crisis
A silent but devastating child sexual abuse crisis is unfolding in Lawanti community, Akko Local Government Area of Gombe State, leaving victims traumatised, fearful, and unable to speak out, while perpetrators evade justice amid stigma and a culture of silence. CHIMA AZUBUIKE reports
It was a quiet morning during the festive holiday in January 2026 when Mrs Halima Adamu sent her 10-year-old daughter, Amina, to fetch firewood, a routine chore in Lawanti, a community in Akko Local Government Area of Gombe State.
Amina knew the path to the nearby bush, and there was nothing to suggest that the task would be different from any other.
But five hours later, Mrs Adamu became worried as her daughter had still not returned.
Unable to bear the uncertainty any longer, the worried mother of four set out to look for Amina herself.
What she found was not the cheerful little girl she had sent out earlier but a child who had been defiled and too weak to walk home.
“I sent her to fetch firewood for us to cook in the house, but it took five hours, and my daughter did not come back.
“I went to the bush in search of her, only to find my daughter tired and sleepy. I had to seek assistance to move her home.
“After she regained consciousness, she narrated that a middle-aged man promised her firewood only to start touching her. She tried resisting but couldn’t, and he had his way,” the full housewife narrated to PUNCH Healthwise.
Ambushed on errand
What began as a simple errand on one evening in March 2026 ended in a nightmare that has continued to haunt 15-year-old Fatima.
She had almost reached home while returning from delivering a message in one of the settlements around Lawanti when she heard hurried footsteps behind her.
As Fatima walked faster, the stranger closed in, overpowered her, and covered her mouth.
“On my way back, she said she heard someone walking fast to catch up with her. As she looked back, she noticed that the man was coming in her direction. As she tried to hurry up, he paced faster.
“As she tried to scream, a big hand covered her mouth, and the man forced himself on her,” Fatima’s mother, Mrs Salamatu Rabi, told our correspondent.
While the physical wounds may have begun to heal, Rabi said the emotional scars remain for Fatimah.
“Her life turned into an ugly one; everything came to a halt literally. She couldn’t even discuss it for fear of stigmatisation. Unfortunately, because it was in the dark, she couldn’t recognise him, so who would I hold?” she asked.
The stories of Amina and Fatima are not isolated incidents; they paint the picture of a quietly but rising crisis of child sexual abuse in the Lawanti community, leaving survivors struggling with trauma and shame, while some find it difficult to trust people or feel safe around male adults.
Experts say sexual violation of children has a lasting effect on victims, including withdrawal, loss of interest in school, difficulty concentrating, and behavioural changes.
A Clinical Psychologist with the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Olawunmi Oluwatosin, said that failure to manage the sexual violation of a child properly could have a lasting effect.
The mental health expert stated that even when it is well treated, sexual violation in children sometimes has a way of playing out in adulthood in a passive way, noting that it could be worse when not treated.
“Children who are sexually abused tend to display some forms of anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, and even shock,” she told PUNCH Healthwise in an earlier interview.
Oluwatosin urged parents and guardians to ensure cases of sexual violence against children are properly and professionally managed to avoid future medical and mental health issues.
Developed yet backward
At first glance, Lawanti does not look like a community grappling with a hidden crisis of child sexual abuse.
The community hosts the Gombe International Airport and lies along a major route linking the state to other parts of northern Nigeria.
Travellers from Bauchi, Jos, Kaduna, and Abuja pass through the area, making it one of the entry points into Gombe.
But PUNCH Healthwise findings show that beyond the airport and roads is a troubling sexual abuse involving children and adolescent girls, with many cases going unreported or remaining hidden within the community.
The victims are children who should be in school, playing with friends, and growing up in safety, but the reverse is the case.
Instead, our correspondent gathered that these victims have been left dealing with the effects of the abuse, often in silence, as families struggle with stigma, fear, and the difficulty of seeking justice.
The development in Lawanti is a broader symptom of child molestation in the country, albeit underreported.
Abuse in all its forms is a daily reality for many Nigerian children, and only a fraction of victims ever receive help, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
The UN agency added that six out of every 10 children experience some form of violence.
“One in four girls and 10 per cent of boys have been victims of sexual violence. Of the children who reported violence, fewer than five out of 100 received any form of support,” UNICEF said.
Also, the UN agency says Nigeria has the largest number of child brides in Africa, with more than 23 million girls and women who were married as children, most of them from poor and rural communities.
“While data suggests a decline of 9 per cent in the prevalence of child marriage since 2003, and a projected further decrease of 6 per cent by 2030, Nigeria’s rapid population growth means that the number of child brides will in fact increase by more than one million by 2030 and double by 2050,” UNICEF added.
Violated by farm owner
For 11-year-old Zainab, going to the farm in Lawanti was not simply a day’s work; it was a way of making a little money to help fend for herself.
Each trip to the farm for Zainab meant hours spent weeding under the watch of her employer, away from the familiar surroundings of home.
That routine changed on one particular day in December 2025 when the owner of the farm began behaving differently.
What started as another day of work soon became an experience that left the young girl afraid to return to the farm.
“She usually goes to the farm to weed, just to make money to fend for herself. On this certain day, the owner of the farm started behaving funny, saying no one would see them.
“She tried to resist, but she couldn’t as he overpowered her,” Zainab’s mother, Mrs Nana Kumo, told our correspondent.
Kumo lamented that a place where her daughter went to earn a living became a place of danger.
“That was how she stopped weeding on farms to start hawking. She felt it was safer hawking instead of working on lonely farms here,” Kumo, a widowed mother-of-four, added.
She explained that the incident disrupted Zainab’s life, and she had been afraid of lonely settings after her experience.
The names and identities of the mothers, including victims, have been changed to prevent victimisation and stigma.
Lawanti: Why sexual abuse thrives
Findings by PUNCH Healthwise show that sexual abuse thrives in the Lawanti community due to several factors, including the gaps in child protection laws and their implementation at the state level.
Although Nigeria has laws designed to protect children from abuse, exploitation, and violence, many families and children remain unaware of their rights and the protections available to them.
Despite the implementation of the Child Rights Act and Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, 2015, which ensures the safety, rights, and well-being of every Nigerian child, children are still facing cases of abuse across the country.
While the 36 states have domesticated the CRA, implementation strength in some states, including Gombe, varies widely 23 years after the law was passed.
Though some states have made progress through functional family courts and child protection units, others, particularly northern states, continue to struggle with cultural and religious resistance and low awareness.
These gaps, including religious and cultural considerations, impact how effectively children are protected across the country.
In states like Gombe, where effective implementation of child protection laws is not strong, perpetrators are exploiting the gaps, while victims and their families struggle with trauma from abuse, without any hope of getting justice.
Further fueling thriving child abuse in Lawanti, our correspondent gathered, is that in many homes, deciding whether to report sexual abuse of children is another painful struggle entirely.
It was learnt that many victims have withdrawn from friends, abandoned education altogether after classmates began whispering about their experiences.
“Parents fear the stigma that may follow their daughters, and some just hesitate because the alleged perpetrator is a relative, a neighbour, or someone whose influence makes confrontation difficult,” a community leader, who doesn’t want to be named, told PUNCH Healthwise.
Those fears, our correspondent gathered, have allowed silence to thrive after every incident of child molestation in the community.
Residents, traditional leaders want change
For years, that silence defined the community’s response to sexual violence against children, but people in the community now say they want change from the status quo.
The residents, who gathered at the palace of the District Head, Alhaji Bello Hassan, during a recent gender-based violence sensitisation programme, vowed to stop sweeping sexual abuse of children under the carpet.
The gathering drew traditional rulers, village and ward heads, youth groups, women leaders, hunters, vigilantes, religious leaders, and residents.
The sensitisation was designed to explain the provisions of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Law and the legal protections available to survivors of abuse in Gombe.
Speaking at the gathering, a resident admitted that those accused of abusing children were often familiar faces.
“The people doing these things are not spirits. We know them,” a resident, who simply identified himself as Buba, said, urging members of the community to report cases of sexual abuse.
Also speaking, another resident, Mr Bala Sale, noted that it was time for people in the community to shun silence, name and shame perpetrators.
“Everybody knows what is happening,” Sale said.
Another resident, Gambo Shehu, said that the problem was not always that perpetrators remain unknown.
“Our problem is not that we don’t know. Our problem is that people are not punished. If somebody commits this kind of crime and nothing happens. Others become bold enough to do the same,” Shehu said.
‘50 cases in short period’
Speaking, the District Head, Alhaji Bello Hassan, admitted that the rising cases of sexual abuse of children, saying several cases have been recorded recently.
While acknowledging that the community was confronting a serious problem, Bello put it as “over fifty cases within a short period”.
He added that the figure represents incidents brought to the attention of the palace, which underscored the scale of cases within the community.
He lamented that every adult, particularly men in the community entrusted with the protection of children, has failed them.
“We must tell ourselves the truth. Men have failed in many ways in their responsibilities,” the district head said.
He acknowledged that social influence, family ties and other competing interests can complicate efforts to pursue accountability and justice for victims.
“There are vested interests beyond my official capacity,” he said.
At the same time, Bello admitted that traditional institutions could not confront the problem alone.
“I cannot do it alone. We need cooperation from everyone if we are to overcome this problem,” he said.
Bello disclosed that a committee of women had been established to take the campaign into homes across the community.
The district head also called for dedicated engagements with women, arguing that survivors are often more willing to speak openly in environments where they feel safe and understood.
Bello also directed ward heads to carry the campaign beyond the palace, insisting that the fight against sexual and gender-based violence should not be left to the government alone.
He urged religious leaders, parents, women, and men to become active participants in protecting children and encouraging families to report abuse rather than conceal it.
Don’t settle child molestation quietly – Govt
Meanwhile, the Gombe State Government has urged parents and residents of the Lawanti community not to keep silent when children are sexually abused.
The government, through the Ministry of Justice, warned that concealing such cases allows perpetrators to continue harming children and denies victims timely protection and support.
It stressed that silence can deepen the emotional and psychological impact of abuse and allow offenders to evade accountability.
Speaking at the sensitisation, the Gender-Based Violence Desk Officer in the Gombe State Ministry of Justice, Barrister Mwalin Abdu, reminded participants that sexual violence is not a dispute to be settled quietly within families.
While sharing some of the cases she had encountered while carrying out her duties, Abdu said sexual abuse of children remains a criminal offence that demands investigation and accountability.
“I have come across cases where fathers had sexual relations with their underage children,” she said.
She recounted another case in which a father allegedly demanded that his daughter have sexual intercourse with him before he would pay her WAEC examination fees.
Abdu stressed that Gombe has enacted the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Law, 2022, alongside the Gombe State Child Protection Law, 2020, intended to safeguard minors from abuse.
She called for prompt reporting of suspected or confirmed cases to the appropriate authorities.
The GBV desk officer urged stronger community involvement in protecting children, adding that families, schools, religious institutions, and communities must work together to create safer environments where children can speak up and receive appropriate support.
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