Nigeria is home to some 75 million children under the age of 18 with 41 million of them living in poverty, despite Nigeria potentially being one of the world's richest nations due to its oil reserves. Its a sobering thought that these dire statistics would be even worse if one in five Nigerian children didn't die before their fifth birthday and few will see past their 47th birthday.

The reason in part for this is that only around 1% of Nigerian children are immunised against basic childhood illness, and, due to corruption and incompetence, the Nigerian government spends less per capita than virtually any other country in Africa on healthcare. Such lack of healthcare education and resources means that of all Nigerian children 1.2 million have been orphaned by AIDS with a further 220,000 are infected themselves.

Malnutrition affects just under a third of all Nigerian children, mainly because outside of the oil industry and urban areas 90% of the population of Nigeria relies on subsistence farming with almost half striving to make a living on smallholdings barely one hectare in size and agriculture has been in decline for many years particularly around the Niger Delta where much of the land has been contaminated by oil spills.

It is a disturbing fact that many Nigerian children are now being accused of witchcraft to explain family misfortunes and illnesses such as AIDS. Over 15000 have been accused of this practice in the last decade and a horrifying 1000 children murdered as a result. This video documentary explores how some families cope by sending their children to schools that rather than provide education (of which 40% of all children have no or poor access) force the children into begging and other forms of exploitation.