As Nigerian pupils mark the Children’s Day tomorrow, Assistant Editor BOLA OLAJUWON writes on the challenges confronting the younger generation and the need to tackle them.
The United Nations set November 20 aside for Children’s Day celebration. The day was first established in 1954 as Universal Children’s Day to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children’s welfare. November 20th is also the date in 1959 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. In 1989, the UN General Assembly also adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the same date.
However, the day is celebrated on different dates in various countries. May 27 is officially Children’s Day in Nigeria. The day is set aside to honour the younger generation. It is not surprising that primary and secondary pupils are given a day off from school. The day is also designed to tell the nation that all children have rights to health, education and protection. It’s also to bring to the frontburner issues affecting the younger generation.
Pupils facing adverse prevailing circumstances
But, this is not the best of time to be a child and a pupil in the country. About 70 million Nigerians live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. The first people to suffer the pangs of poverty are women and children. Against the Child Rights Act, many children are still hawking goods and products for their parents and their guardians. Not all states have passed or assented to the Child Rights Act – the legal instrument that many believe would alleviate the challenges facing children.
The Country Representative of UNICEF in Nigeria, Mr. Peter Hawkins, said 25 states had domesticated the Child Rights Act and 11 states were yet to do so. According to him, there is a need for more commitment to fulfilling the obligations in the act to ensure its application is of top priority.
“We would much prefer that all states would have domesticated it by now but what we don’t want is a state domesticating the Child Rights Act, 2003, and not have the mechanisms in place or the commitment to fulfill the obligations in it because children’s rights are all about obligations; obligations of local governments, structures to ensure they protect the child’s rights at every stage. It is also about trying to give an environment for children to be able to express some of their concerns and where we can provide a solution to the problems,” he said.
Nigeria has a high number of out-of-school children, a situation worsened by the ongoing violence and instability in parts of the country. Coronavirus (COVID-19) has also erased the gain achieved in the educational sector and affected the economy.
For those who are still in schools, they are exposed to unsafe school environment as armed groups have over the years made schools their target of attacks. From the North to the South, thousands of children have been killed, kidnapped or put in harm’s way following invasion of their schools by armed terror groups. One such case was the April 14, 2014 kidnap of over 276 school girls of Government Girls College, Chibok, in Borno State, some of who are still being held captive by members of the Boko Haram Terrorist group. The insurgents also destroyed 20 primary, three junior and two senior secondary schools at Abadam Local Government Area of the state. The insurgents have also continued their reign of terror on schools in parts of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Kaduna, Niger and other states.
Kaduna State has recorded over 25 attacks on schools with 1,440 pupils abducted and 16 killed last year, said the United Nations Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) in a report.
Destruction, closure of schools
Between 2009 and 2020, reports indicated that terrorists destroyed 1,400 schools, forced more than a million children out of school and killed 2,295 teachers in Borno State.
Amnesty International (AI), in a statement to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the Chibok girls kidnap, said over 1,500 school children have been kidnapped by armed groups since that incident.
“Nigerian is failing to protect vulnerable children. By refusing to respond to alerts of impending attacks on schools across the north of the country, the Nigerian authorities have failed to prevent mass abductions of thousands of school children.
“In all cases, the Nigerian authorities have remained shockingly unwilling to investigate these attacks or to ensure that the perpetrators of these callous crimes face justice.
“Every fresh attack is followed by further abductions that deprive school children of their right to liberty- and leave victims’ families with no hope of accessing justice, truth, or reparations,” AI’s Country Director, Osai Ojigho, said in a statement.
The attacks on schools, it said, have triggered a shutdown of many learning institutions with affected regions witnessing a decline in school enrolment and attendance, as well as a rise in child marriage and pregnancies of school-age girls.
Another group, Save the Children International Nigeria, in a statement to celebrate the International Day to Protect Education from Attacks, said more than 1,000 students were abducted from Nigerian schools in 2021 alone, adding that education system in the country was worse than Syria and Yemen with extreme risks.
In March 2021 alone, no fewer than 618 schools were closed in six states-Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Niger, and Yobe, following fear of attacks and abduction of pupils and teachers.
Militants at a time abducted pupils of Babington Macaulay Seminary School in Ikorodu; Turkish International School, Isheri, a border community between Lagos and Ogun, as well as Lagos Model College, Igbonla, Epe.
In the Southeast, pupils have been subjected to various levels of dangers by members of the secessionist Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) enforcing the Monday sit-at-home order. One of such attacks happened at a school at Nkwume, where students were writing the West African Certificate Examination (WAEC). The gunmen not only disrupted the process, they beat up the pupils and set the school ablaze.
These incidents have no doubt made children scared of going to school and most parents unwilling to have their wards continue schooling in the affected areas, thereby increasing the country’s number of out-of-school children.
Questions over 10.5 million out-of-school children
Already, UNICEF in its 2021 report said Nigeria has 10.5 million out-of-school children within ages five and 14 years, the highest in the world. It said one in every five out-of-school children in the world was in Nigeria.
The international agency said: “Only 61 per cent of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 percent of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education.
“In the North of the country, the picture is even bleaker, with a net attendance rate of 53 percent. Getting out-of-school children back into education poses a massive challenge.
“In Northeastern Nigeria, 2.8 million children are in need of education-in-emergencies support in three conflict-affected states (Borno, Yobe and Adamawa). In these states, at least 802 schools remain closed and 497 classrooms are listed as destroyed, with another 1,392 damaged but repairable.”
But, Vice Chancellor of Buckingham University, United Kingdom, Prof. James Tooley, is set to prove or disprove his hypothesis that the figure of 10.5 million children out-of-school in Nigeria is over-estimated. He said he had secured funding to conduct studies in northern and eastern Nigeria on the matter.
Tooley said the figure is not likely accurate based on previous research he had conducted in Lagos.
The Professor of Education Policy and Research said many of the children not accounted for in public and recognised private primary schools could be found in low-cost private schools serving the poor.
According to him, he is set to prove or disprove his hypothesis in a study he said he had got funding to conduct in northern and eastern Nigeria.
Home-Grown Feeding Programme: N1b spent daily on 10b pupils
But, to tackle issues of out-of-school, the Federal Government said it had registered no fewer than 10 million pupils on its National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Farouq, gave the figure recently.
The government also claimed it is spending about N1 billion daily on the programme, which is under the supervision of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development (MHADMSD).
Hajia Farouq said the Federal Government planned to bring on board additional five million pupils.
The minister said the programme, which was designed to address poverty in all its forms, was a collaboration between the Federal and state governments.
She explained that while the Federal Government was responsible for the release of funds, guidelines, policies, and monitoring, the state carried out the day-to-day implementation, including the procurement of food items, selection of cooks and vendors, who prepared, cooked and served the meals to the pupils.
UNICEF: there is need for safer classrooms
To UNICEF’s country representative, Peter Hawkins, there was need for children to be safe when in school, adding “no child should be afraid to enter a classroom-afraid their school might be attacked or that they will be kidnapped- and no parent should fear sending their children to school”.
He advocated better funding for education that would enable schools put more efficient safety and security measures in place.
Battling with preventable and treatable diseases
Children under 5 are especially vulnerable to infectious diseases like malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, HIV and tuberculosis. For older children, non-communicable diseases, injuries and conflict pose significant threats, according to UNICEF.
It said despite being entirely preventable and treatable, common infectious diseases are still killing young children in large numbers. Pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria were responsible for approximately 29 per cent of global deaths among children under the age of 5 in 2018. Children in the world’s poorest regions are disproportionately affected, with infectious diseases particularly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria. These trends, UNICEF said, can be reversed.
However, polio control measures have been thoroughly implemented in Nigeria against wide-polio, polio cases have continued to occur mainly in the North.
Children advocates speak
Welfare and education of Nigerian children are ‘very important’ in the life of any country, according to Mother’s Love Initiative, a social change humanitarian organisation.
The organisation said there’s an urgent need for politicians, particularly aspirants for various political positions across the country, to specially plan for the education of children.
It called on all 2023 general elections aspirants to entrench issues of Nigerian children welfare and education in their overall plans for provision of democracy dividends to the citizens.
“AMLi hereby calls on all and sundry, and in particular the political stakeholders, to increase children-focused interventions as children are fast becoming endangered species in Nigeria with the spate of abductions in schools and all manner of vices children are exposed to in Nigeria,” it said.
Experts at the second edition of Boy Child Conversation Conference called for more attention to be paid to the boy child. According to them, a sound boy-child is pivotal to strengthening the society, families, leadership and institutions.
They insist that grooming the boy-child brings equality with the girl-child to improve the society, saying attention around the globe is female-centric but there is the need to mold the boy-child.
The convener, Damilola Chinedu, said over 150 boys from secondary schools across the state participated at the event and were impacted positively.
Eminent personalities on decline in education
A professor of Civil Engineering at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Prof. Danladi Matawal, has identified corruption, poor funding, insecurity and decline of the teaching profession as the major factors responsible for the decline in the educational standard in the country.
Matawal also identified cronyism, lack of adequate and qualified teachers/employees, incompetent planning, improper inspection or supervision and weak administration as other factors responsible for the decline in educational standard.
“Inadequate fund leads to all sorts of dilapidation, especially inadequate Infrastructure and poor remunerations and welfare, as well as the lack of innovations, especially for support services and cross-border disciplinary engagements,” he said.
Lagos State Governor’s wife Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu urged parents and guardians to pay close attention to their wards, in addition to creating a warm and friendly environment for them.
Dr. Sanwo-Olu said the step would go a long way to address societal ills and create a better future for children.
She cited the importance Jesus Christ attached to matters affecting children in Matthew 19: 13-15.
She stressed that Jesus loves children dearly, adding he always exhibited a loving heart for children, urging parents and guardians to emulate this virtue and create time to know everything that concerns their children and wards, and truly care for them.
Emir of Rano in Kano State, Alhaji kabiru Muhammad-Inuwa, urged parents, guardians and stakeholders to give attention to the education of children, to make them good citizens for meaningful contributions to the society and guarantee a better future.
“True greatness of man or woman depends genuinely on the right start early in life and early exposure to learning,” he said.
