About 36 million Nigerian children navigate the internet every day, left entirely to the mercy of opaque algorithms to shield them from predators. When they do encounter abuse and gather the courage to report it, they are met with generic, automated responses. The abusive content remains online, spreading across platforms and bleeding into their real-world friendships.

According to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), nine out of ten Nigerian children have come across sexual content online, and over 60 per cent have experienced unwanted sexual approaches on online platforms. The implications of this are chilling. We are raising a generation of children desensitised to harm, conditioned to see digital exploitation as a normal part of life, unworthy of outrage or intervention. This is a systemic failure that corrodes the innocence of the very children who are supposed to be the future pillars of our society.

This crisis is not an accident of technology; it is a failure of platform governance. Platforms operating in Nigeria routinely escape accountability, hiding behind foreign headquarters while shaping what millions of Nigerian children see, learn and internalise.

Research by Gatefield reveals exactly how these platforms operate without regulation in Nigeria and how complicit they are in sustaining that lawlessness. Platforms have deliberately understaffed their trust and safety teams, gutted their content moderation infrastructure and optimised their algorithms for engagement over child welfare. At the same time, they lobby aggressively against any regulation that might cut into their profit margins. The result is a corporate facade designed to look responsive while remaining structurally indifferent to harm.

It is no wonder that only 33 per cent of Nigerians trust tech platforms to keep users safe, according to NCC data. The majority sit in a sceptical ‘middle ground’, perceiving these companies as opaque and profit-driven. But public scepticism is not enough to protect a child.

Nigeria boasts Africa’s largest internet population and its most significant technology ecosystem. This should represent secure national infrastructure. Instead, it represents a digital colony of 140 million users governed by foreign corporate terms of service, where children are exposed to harms that Nigerian authorities currently lack the jurisdiction to address.

Digital platforms are not exempt from state authority simply because their headquarters sit in Silicon Valley. When the United Kingdom passed its Online Safety Act in 2023, big tech companies adapted; they did not flee. Australia implemented mandatory child protection standards in 2015, and the companies stayed and adapted. Both nations reclaimed regulatory authority over the digital infrastructure within their borders, proving that a sovereign state can impose accountability without triggering economic collapse. When harm occurs within Nigeria’s borders, Nigerian law must apply.

The legislative tool to achieve this, the Child Online Access Protection Bill (HB 244), is already waiting in the Senate. Once passed, it will become the definitive law that governs digital spaces for minors and holds platforms strictly accountable.

The Senate has a constitutional mandate to protect Nigerian citizens, and inaction carries compounding, devastating costs: productivity losses as families manage digital trauma reactively, healthcare systems burdened by mental health crises linked to online abuse, and the erosion of our human capital as children’s digital development occurs in systematically unsafe conditions.

Child online safety is not a secondary issue; it is a critical national infrastructure policy. Every day without legislative action is another day children are exposed to systemic harm under laws the Nigerian state has no power to enforce. The Senate must pass the Child Online Access Protection Bill without delay. Every second counts.

• Esther Udoh is chief operations officer at the Cece Yara Child Advocacy Centre. A public health and child protection professional, she has expertise in global health, programme management, fundraising and organisational operations.