The ruling elites in Nigeria have remained the same since 1960 that the nation was said to have received political independence from the colonial British masters. Just do a sample historical investigation about the compositions of political leadership in Nigeria since independence you will be astounded to discover that apart from Dr Goodluck Jonathan who emerged from obscurity to become President after a stint as deputy governor and governor, no other President or military Heads of State in the past or present doesn’t have his political umbilical chord deeply entrenched in the past political oligarchy. Muhammadu Buhari is a recurring decimal in the political history of Nigeria right from inception. Olusegun Obasanjo who ruled Nigeria for a combined period of twelve or more years is a political heavyweight with entrenched antecedent. Could this explain why the plight of children have remained the same? Your guess is as good as mine.
One segment of the society that has suffered monumental neglects that border on criminality is the Nigerian children. On all fronts, the typical Nigerian child is an endangered species.
As I drove today Tuesday May 17th 2016 from Garki District to the Central Business District in Abuja, the nation’s capital of all places, the reality that dawned on me on sighting two mentally challenged nursing mothers by the road side was that Nigeria no longer has strong enough institutional framework and child welfare infrastructure to protect the human rights of these type of less fortunate Babies.
As I stood looking with trepidation the way one of the mentally deranged nursing mothers cuddled her baby who looked malnourished, tears poured down from my eyes.
This is why I think Nigeria needs to do more for her children than this lips service that we have consistently paid to child rights.
Think about the irrational cases of parents in Akwa Ibom State who abandon their babies on the streets over certain superstitious apprehensions that these children are witches.
The case in point of baby Hope on the street of Uyo, Akwa Ibom who was fortunate enough to have been rescued by a European lady is shocking. A British tabloid Independent ran a report on Baby Hope thus; ‘Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we’ve both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children’
Harrowing pictures show how a starving two-year-old Nigerian boy was rescued after being discovered naked and wandering the streets because his family thought he was a witch.
The boy, who has been named Hope, was found emaciated and riddled with worms after being forced to live off scraps of food thrown to him by passersby for eight months.
He was rescued by Anja Ringgren Loven, a Danish woman living in Africa who bent down and began feeding the boy and giving him water.
She then wrapped the boy in a blanket and took him to the nearest hospital.
Ms Loven is the founder of African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation, which she created to help children which have been labelled as witches and therefore neglected and even killed by members of their community.
She runs a children’s centre where the children she saves receive medical care, food and schooling.
“Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we’ve both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children,” she wrote in Danish on Facebook, making an appeal for donations to help pay the young boy’s medical fees.
Hope was given medication to remove the worms from his belly and daily blood transfusions to give him more red blood cells, Ms Loven wrote.
“Hope’s condition is stable now. He’s taking food for himself and he responds to the medicine he gets.”
She said the “strong little boy” even plays with her own son.
Two days after asking for help with Hope’s medical fees, she received $1 million in donations from around the world.
“With all the money, we can, besides giving Hope the very best treatment, now also build a doctor clinic on the new land and save many more children out of torture!” she wrote.’
As I write, I am told that Satanic practice of throwing babies away in the guise of being witches still goes on and the state government headed by a man who bears the special name of Emmanuel is yet to stop this primitive practices. My last attempt to speak with the state commissioner in a strategic beat in Akwa Ibom was rebuffed.
But the lack of vibrant institutional framework to care for the disadvantaged Nigerian babies is not borne out of a lack of legal frameworks because far from it, Nigeria has a national legislation known as Child Rights Act of 2003.
Added to the above fact is the realization that Nigeria is a signatory to several international conventions and agreements on the rights of the child.
Maryam Uwais, a human rights campaigner, stated thus:
“When the various human rights documents are considered, even though they are applicable to all human beings, they are not necessarily child specific and fail to address the peculiar needs of children. For the rights of the child, an International law or “International Convention” was required. Hence the convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). And in addition, the OAU Assembly of Heads of States and Governments adopted the African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (CRCW) in July 1990.”
“Nigeria She maintained has signed both International Instruments and had ratified them in 1991 and 2003 respectively.
Both international instruments in her estimation contain a universal set of standards and principles for survival, development, protection and participation of children.
“It reflects children as human beings and as subjects of their own rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) outlines the human rights to be respected and protected for every child under the age of 18 years and requires that these rights are implemented.”
In our local parlance, it is stated that action speaks louder than words. In that vein, it is sad that even when we claim to have signed on to the laws promoting respect for the fundamental rights of children, the country has become one of the riskiest places to bring up a child, according to a recent report by some international rating agencies.
Even the United Nation Children’s Fund has rated Nigeria as a highly unsafe place for babies to grow.
Nigeria scores poorly on all the indices of child development just as it is doing so badly in the area of education to such a dismal extent that it is rated same as Afghanistan- a failed state.
Forty per cent of Nigerian children aged 6-11 according to UNICEF do not attend any primary school with the Northern region recording the lowest school attendance rate in the country, particularly for girls. Despite a significant increase in net enrollment rates in recent years, it is estimated that about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.
Increased enrollment rates have also created challenges in ensuring quality education and satisfactory learning achievement as resources are spread more thinly across a growing number of students. It is not rare to see cases of 100 pupils per teacher or students sitting under trees outside the school building because of the lack of classrooms.
This reminds me of my Imo State in South East of Nigeria whereby governor Rochas Okorocha rolled out his so called free education for children but my recent tour of rural schools shows that the more you look the less you see because I witness firsthand the pathetically dilapidated state of school infrastructures all over the state and teachers are owed backlogs of salaries even as children from poor homes aren’t given nutritious meals by the government to enable them concentrate and learn. But the UNICEF sounded a bit diplomatic in the face of these institutional collapse of child educational development in Nigeria.
This situation UNICEF said is being addressed by current efforts of the Nigerian Government with the implementation of the Basic Education scheme. The compulsory, free Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act was passed into law in 2004 and represents the Government’s strategy to fight illiteracy and extend basic education opportunities to all children in the country.
However UNICEF was quick to observe that the number of schools, facilities and teachers available for basic education remain inadequate for the eligible number of children and youths. This is more so in urban areas where there is population pressure. Under these conditions, teaching and learning cannot be effective; hence the outcomes are usually below expectation.
Why should Nigeria so criminally neglect her children and still expect to have good breed of leaders in the future? Why is government at both the national and state levels not thinking out of the box to create the necessary institutional frameworks to effectively care for our children who are vulnerable to too many social factors? Even the Nigerian constitution supports my advocacy for a creation of a cabinet level office for Babies affairs by collapsing the current redundant ministry of Women Affairs into it.
The Nigerian constitution in Section 17 (3) (f) (g) and (h) provides thus: “Children; young persons and the aged are protected against any exploitation whatsoever, and against moral and material neglect.” “Provision is made for public assistance in deserving cases or other conditions of need; and the evolution and promotion of family life is encouraged”.
It is Stated that radical problems deserves radical solution, so the perennial issues of criminal neglect of our babies should be solved by creating a full fledge ministry of children’s affairs. I so moved. Who seconds my motion?
*Emmanuel Onwubiko is Head of Human rights Writers association of Nigeria and blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com, www.emmanuelonwubiko.com.
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