Child Sponsor Nigeria

Nigeria shares land borders with Benin to its west, Chad and Cameroon to its east and Niger to the north and gained its independence from the British on the 1st October 1960. It then came under military rule until democracy emerged in 1999 although the country is still marred by ethic and religious tensions not least because most Nigerians see themselves as belonging to the Yoruba (westerners), Igbo (easterners) and Hausa (northerners) rather than Nigeria itself. Nigeria is in 161st place out of 191 countries and territories in 2021 when ranked in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a country with a life expectancy of just 52.68 years (2021). While Nigeria should be one of the richest countries in the world with vast oil reserves and a plentiful workforce, over 65% of the country's population live under the poverty line.

Twenty million children suffer from malnutrition, one in five of all children die before their fifth birthday, HIV/AIDS affects three out of every hundred citizens and there are nearly ten million orphans in the country out of a total population of some 218.5 million (2022). Only around 1% of Nigerian children are immunised against basic childhood illness due to perceived corruption and incompetence with the Nigerian government spending less on healthcare per capita than virtually any other country in Africa. Child sponsor programs in Nigeria focus on providing care for orphaned and abandoned children, increasing educational access particularly for girls, alleviating poverty, promoting children's rights as well as developing AIDs awareness and promoting health care programs for the country's poorest children. You can help when your sponsor a child in Nigeria.