The National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity) launches the “Save the Street Child Aba Initiative” in Aba, the Abia State commercial capital. Sunny Nwankwo reports
THEY are everywhere, on the major roads and the side streets. You find them at different parts of the city: Bata Junction, Azikiwe by Asa Road, Market Road by Asa, Brass Junction and beyond.
They are the street children of Aba.
They have no roof over their heads. Children huddle around their mothers, begging. Sometimes, the females receive male visitors who take them away for the night. The relationship sometimes produces more children on the streets.
A social welfare worker in one of the local governments in Aba, who spoke anonymously to our reporter, warned that if such sexual behaviour was not curbed, Aba might be overwhelmed by children without shelter.
The social worker disclosed that most of the children found on the streets of Aba are from broken homes where parents were divorced and parted ways without any of the parties agreeing to take ownership of the children born in such relationships.
Even the security community is worried, a source saying most of the crimes committed in the state are carried out by people who were once street children.
There is hope, as the Aba chapter of the National Association of Seadogs (Sancta Sacramento Deck) launched the “Save the Street Child, Aba Initiative” under the NAS Street Child Project.
The event attracted the crème de la crème in the society including federal and state lawmakers in the state, Abia State Commissioner of Education, Professor Ikechi Mgbeoji and Prince Ifeanyi Onochie, the CAPOON of NAS.
The event provided guests the opportunity to meet some of the children that have been taken off from the streets.
Members of the confraternity and public-spirited individuals also donated generously for the upkeep and the academic welfare of some of the children in some motherless babies homes in Aba.
Anyanwu Sandra Nwokoroku, Programme Officer at Children at Risk Development (CARD) Initiative, a non-profit child rights protection organisation, said that street children are alwways in tattered clothes, scavenge, beg for alms, peddle drugs, join armed robbery syndicates, move in colonies and do menial jobs, among other things just to survive.
Nwokoroku also said living on the streets exposes children to sexual abuse and rape and sexually transmitted infections.
In a paper, Abia State Commissioner of Education, Prof. Ikechi Mgbeoji described the street children syndrome in Aba as the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil war as well as increasing urbanisation and dislocation of extended family system.
Mgbeoji added that factors such as poverty, breakdown of homes, political unrest, acculturation, peer group influence, drug addiction amongst others and listed “Correctional model, Rehabilitative model, Outreach strategies and Preventive approach” as some of the measures to use in dealing with issues of street children.
The Education Commissioner who said that the state is planning to bring stakeholders in education to a roundtable for deliberation; Education Summit, added that the state on its part is planning to propose an Education Bill which is expected to be passed into law by the State House of Assembly before the end of this year, stressing that the bill when passed into law would make street hawking by children a crime in the state.
He said, “Under the proposed bill, the guardian or parent of any child caught hawking on the streets of the state will be tried and if found guilty, will be fined by a Mobile Education Court which is specially designed for education-related offences.”
And for the enactment of the Child Rights Act and Persons with Disability Bill into law by the state legislative arm, reintroduction of Free Education regime and the abolishment of street begging syndicates and gangs who specialize in using and displaying children on the streets for the primary purpose of begging, a practice he described as dehumanising.
Christopher Chijioke Joseph, CAPOON, Aba chapter (Sancta Sacramento Deck) and Ifeanyi Onochie, CAPOON, NAS in separate interviews expressed their happiness over the level of attendance and described the “Save the Street Child, Aba Initiative” event was geared towards eradicating and if impossible to reduce to the barest minimum the act of street begging and taking children of school age off the streets of Aba and the state at large, stressing that they have equally carried out several projects to better the lives of the citizenry.
They further disclosed that though they are partnering with some motherless babies homes at the moment, they intended to have a home of their own where children taken off from the streets will be kept, nurtured/rehabilitated and reintegrated back into the society.
They expressed hope that the initiative if embraced by all will reduce crime rate in the society and give the children the sense of belonging.
“It is a project in which the pilot scheme will run for four years. Within the first four years while this pilot phase of the project is running, we will make plans for the exit; it is just like a continuation of other years ahead. The campaign is continuous as the project is continuous too. So, we will keep doing it from time to time on social media, print media and other areas in order to reach out to as many people as possible that may be interested to join hands to see that the act of child street begging is sorted out.
“Apart from this, we equally have other projects that we have carried out in Aba community such as in the Aba Prisons, where we have equally built and handed over to the authorities of the prisons, psychiatric bed for the inmates. We have equally been consistence in the supply of drugs to the prisons till date. We equally engage in de-worming children in primary schools for over two years in the state during MNCHW (Maternal Newborn Child Health Week) and we intend to continue doing that. We engage in cleaning of streets and residential quarters in Aba and also join in the advocacy on HIV/AIDS and since 2006, we have been observing World AIDS Day till date; we do HIV screening, free HIV counseling and also support HIV/AIDS patients in the little way that we can,” the Aba Deck said.
