The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111, has said that a working child protection system is a prerequisite for any nation aspiring for growth and development.
He noted that planning for development without enforceable set of laws, policies, regulations and services across social sectors could only amount to a futile exercise.
The monarch stated this in his message to commemorate this year’s World Children’s Day celebration.
Alaafin stated that children represent the future and ensuring their healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern of all, adding that it is a fact that nations that experience prosperity are where family stability is jealously guided.
‘’To achieve global development goals, Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for the protection of children in and out of the home. Similarly, Nigeria’s Child Rights Act 2003 provides for children’s rights. But the sad reality is that child right protection policy in most states and at the federal level is adequate only on paper. This explains why, in spite of being regarded as precious gifts from God and best hope for the future, children are still subjected to abuses and neglect’’.
In Nigeria today, Oba Adeyemi submitted that fundamental rights of children are being encroached upon on a daily basis without appropriate sanction, pointing out that, this is so, not because we do not have laws and policies on child protection but due to lack of social consensus and political will to successfully implement laws and policies.
‘’Nigeria is rated one of the worst countries in the world for children or for a child to be born. It could be heartbreaking reading about inhuman and degrading treatment being meted out to Nigerian children both at home and institutional level. In some schools, it is still usual to see children being subjected to all forms of corporal punishments. Child abuse also occurs at homes when parents unduly yell, threaten, reject or ignore the child. It could be shocking seeing the extent at which some parents rain curses on their children. Some even fail to provide basic needs, adequate food, clothing, hygiene and medical care or support for their children. All these can lead to interference with the child’s normal social or psychological development leaving the child with lifelong psychological scars’’.
He went further, ‘’also, sexual abuses, which include but not limited to child marriage is a form of child abuse that has become a scourge in our society. Cases abound where fathers, uncles, guardians, male teachers, clerics, among others, have sexually molested under-age girls. Some engage in child violation for ritual purposes and most time this leads to mental disorder on the part of abused child with perpetrators escaping sanction’’.
The royal father argued that there is an extreme weakness of child protection systems in Nigeria, pointing out that, more worrisome is that there seems to be no reprieve in sight for the victims as children’s right advocates complain of weak child protection structures in the country.
Lamenting on the spate of child abuse in Nigeria, he posited that there are not enough children’s rights organisations providing support to children who are abused, and that there is a general lack of knowledge of organisation that promotes and defend children’s right.
‘’In Nigeria, the twin concepts of Children’s Rights; and Child Abuse are in most cases grossly misplaced and ‘selectively’ handled by governmental agencies charged with such mandates, largely as a result of political interferences. This is so, because, we have it on good authority that there are reported and unreported cases of children’s rights violations which are not investigated; and sometimes when they are reported to security agencies, they are mishandled or compromise; sometimes, when they are thoroughly investigated, at the stage of filling the cases in court, powerful economic and political figures steps-in to obstruct the cause of justice’’.
‘’Even those that are charged to court are not given the full bite of the laws; unless those that enjoys the steady coverage of the press, in terms of nuisances that are given administrative bites of law. Most often than not, the most victimized set of children are the orphans, who live at the mercy of their adopted-parents or orphanage homes’’.
Alaafin submitted that the orphanage home as practiced in Nigeria does not subscribe to the internationally acceptable principles in their treatment or management of orphans placed by concerned members of the public and governmental institutions in their custody.
“It could be concluded that child abuse in Nigeria is stoked by an overall poor public knowledge on the dangers of child abuse to the society”.
