Nigeria Wakes Up to its AIDS Threat

LAGOS, Nigeria, Aug 4 2014 (IPS) - Tope Tayo’s marriage broke up 11 years ago after she tested positive for HIV. Her angry and embarrassed husband took away their only child. Three months later, when the one year old boy tested positive, the husband dumped him with Tayo and absconded.

“He abandoned us as if we had committed a crime but I told him HIV is not a crime,” Tayo told IPS.

She was jobless and the husband paid no maintenance. “I walked the streets crying, I was living on charity,” Tayo recalls.

The runaway man who abandons his HIV positive wife and children is a common feature in Nigeria, says Rosemary Hua, coordinator of the First Step Action for Children, an organisation that advocates for child rights.

“Fathers withdraw their support because they feel there is no need to invest in a child that is likely to die young,” Hua told IPS.

Nigeria’s HIV infection rate of 3.2 percent appears low in comparison to southern Africa’s, but with a population of 173 million, it translates into huge numbers – 3.4 million Nigerians lived with HIV in 2013.

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