What Future For Our Children? —Sola Ogunmosunle

On Sunday, 27 May, Nigerian children celebrated Children’s Day with the theme: “Let’s build a culture of peace and security for the Nigerian child’’.

Children’s day is celebrated every year in accordance with the United Nation’s recommendation that all countries should set aside a day to be observed as a day to celebrate children and draw attention to their plight.

The celebrations are usually marked with fanfare and pomp where government functionaries read long speeches. There must really be nothing wrong in celebrating our children because of what they represent. The great American Leader, John Fitzgerald Kennedy described “children as the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future”.

In all societies of the world, the very old saying that children are the leaders of tomorrow has formed the bedrock on which the philosophy that not only a proper development and protection of children is necessary but that all framework for harnessing the creative potentials towards national integration and development must be ensured.

In most climes, children are regarded as precious gifts from God, their arrival in the world is usually celebrated with joy. It is rather curious and unfortunate the level of abuse, neglect and deprivations these same children are subjected to. Since childhood is universally recognised as a period of vulnerability requiring special care, attention, protection and provision, it is disheartening to see our children go through many harrowing experience. Apart from the privileged few, how many of our children really knew and felt last Sunday was Children’s Day?

UNICEF reports that nearly half the population of the world’s 49 least developed countries is under the age of 18. In that sense, these countries are the richest in children. But they are the poorest in terms of child survival and development. They have the highest rates of child mortality and out-of-school children and the lowest rates of access to basic health care, maternity services, safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

The recent report by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) state that Nigeria has more children out of school than any other country in the world. The report claims that an astounding 8.2 million children are not provided with adequate education in Africa’s most populous country, comparing the nation’s wealth with the apparent low standard of education. Do these over eight million kids know it is Children’s Day?

It is sad that our dear country remains one of the countries that are not making substantial progress in the Millennium Development Goals. According to the Executive Director, UNICEF: “it is increasingly evident that our progress is uneven in many key areas. In fact, compelling data suggest that in the global push to achieve the MDGs, we are leaving behind millions of the world’s most disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalised children: the children who are facing the longest odds”.

Nigeria has only made insufficient progress of between 0.6% and 2.5% in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. These hungry children, do they know it was Children’s Day?

In terms of public security and safety, these are really not the best of times for our dear country. The general feeling of insecurity among the populace is at its lowest ebb and the fear of bombs, armed robbers and kidnappers have become the beginning of wisdom as nobody knows when and where the next catastrophe will occur. As the menace of militancy in the Niger Delta began to simmer down, gradually, the spate of bombings in the capital city of Abuja and other parts of Northern Nigeria heightened the level of insecurity that has pervaded the nation in the last decades or two. The once peaceful city of Jos has continued to be a volatile place and nobody knows when the fire on the Plateau will be doused. The untold genocide going on in the once serene city of Jos is scary.

Many of our children that have been maimed, killed or orphaned in this orgy of violence never knew it was children’s day!

Before we can, therefore, celebrate our children in all sincerity, we must begin to give adequate attention to issues affecting their survival and development. Despite the promulgation of the Child Right Act in the country for close to ten years now, we are yet to see a considerable reduction in the rate at which Nigerian children are subjected to serious physical, sexual or emotional ill-treatment or neglect, especially by those who should ordinarily be responsible for their welfare.

The Child Right Law with regard to the right to life, education, survival, protection against abuse and exploitation amongst others is not meant to be just a mere statue but rather to be placed at the public domain for all stakeholders and the general public to uphold.

The law must stop being a toothless bulldog if we intend to build a virile nation and not lag behind in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. We can take a cue from the developed world where issues relating to children, are viewed with all seriousness. Our children are simply our future! Their survival and development must be paramount in our hearts.

To achieve this, governments at all levels must embrace good governance, put in place policies and programmes that will ensure that our children harness their potentials of becoming worthy future leaders. This we can start by ensuring free qualitative education at all levels, access to qualitative health care delivery, among others.

If, indeed, our children represent our future, the time to invest in that future is now.

•Ogunmosunle is of the Features Unit, Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.