What is the age of consent for adolescents access to sexual and reproductive health services in Nigeria?

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What is the age of consent for adolescents access to sexual and reproductive health services in Nigeria?

Isaac Eranga




This is the question in the mind of twenty six individuals from different organizations for whom the age of consent for adolescents access to sexual and reproductive health services, including HIV prevention and treatment services, when they met at Grand Cabana Hotel, Abuja on the 22nd of June, 2019. The single concern drawing these organisations together was their concern about how the age of consent limits access of adolescents to HIV prevention services.

The report which was made available to Social Reporters News Service, by the New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society, based in Lagos had it that those who expressed concerns include representative of the office of the Country Coordinating Mechanism for the GFATM in Nigeria, Mr Taju Ibrahim. He expressed extreme concerns about how the GFATM have been limited in scaling up adolescents and young women sexual and reproductive health programs in Nigeria since 2014 when the body had prioritized programing for this identified population vulnerable to HIV in Nigeria. Of concern for him was the rising prevalence of HIV among the different subpopulation of adolescents, and how restricted access of adolescents to HIV prevention and treatment services was a great stumbling block to reducing HIV incidence in the population. This is a human right issue and we need to push the reduction in the age of consent for sexual and reproductive health services as a matter of right, he noted.

Participants identified the need for all concerned to develop a common language of communicating concerns. The phrase – age of consent – seems to generate misgivings as there is an assumption that the call to reduce the age of consent for HIV prevention and treatment service access connotes legalizing early onset of sexual debuts. For this reason, participants asked that the focus is to champion the case for reduction of the age of access to services.

Otibho Obianwu of Population Council noted: age of majority should not be mixed up with the age of consent for services. In other parts of the world where significant strides had been made to improve adolescents access to services, the age of majority still remains 18 years but the age of access to difference services is lower than the age of majority. For example, the age of access to HIV testing in South Africa is 12 years. These age of access to different services are defined in their national policies.  

A second strategic approach is to promote access to HIV services as part of a comprehensive sexual and reproductive health service package. Dividing sexual and reproductive health services into silos is reducing the ability to promote integrated service delivery. This is a major problem for adolescents.
Participants agreed to develop a joint roadmap to tackle this common concern. The process is being led by Education against Vaccine through its PITCH project, in collaboration with lead partners – Association of young persons living with HIV in Nigeria, Association of Women living with HIV and AIDS in Nigeria and the New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society.

Florita Durueke, the Program Manager for the New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society noted: I am glad with the progress made at this one day meeting. I am surprised at the large number of organisations that noted the mix-up between age of majority and age of consent is a huge barrier for their work. For NHVMAS, this has been a huge central theme for our advocacy work trying to promote adolescents’ access to PrEP. We have an AVAC fellow working with our organization who is focused on tackling this issue because of how huge a problem it is for us. 

Bukky Williams of EVA was truly excited with the outcome of the meeting. She said: this is the beginning of a new thing. Collectively, we can start to gain traction on the work we have all been doing independently in the field. Hopefully, we shall be able to address the many challenges on our path to success we have jointly identified. The developed roadmap will be most useful.


Morenike Oluwatoyin Folayan is of the New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society based in Lagos, Nigeria

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