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Tag: Njideka Obi

Many dangers of unsafe schools

An incident happened last year which sent shock waves in Mafoluku,Oshodi Lagos state. A three year old child got down from a school bus, his water bottle fell down and rolled towards the back tyre of the bus, the boy went to the back of the bus to pick up the water bottle, just at that instance, the bus driver reversed and the boy was crushed to death on the spot. What a horrific tragedy!

That accident could have been avoided, if the school had better safety compliant policy. A few observers at the scene of the accident argued that it was the drivers fault and attempted to lynch him but for the quick intervention of some passersby.

One of the school safety requirements for schools is that there should be a crossing marshal, whose job it is to monitor drop off areas in school and pick up areas, to make sure that children alight safely from the bus and enter the school safely. Also, it is the job of the school bus attendant to monitor the children in and out of the school bus. Failure of the school to do these shows negligent on the part of the school management.

School safety is a very important factor that a parent must put into consideration before enrolling his/her child in a school. Before you enroll your children in a school, you must check if the school is complying with at least minimum safety standards. You take a tour of the school and watch out for evidence of safety infrastructure e.g. clean toilets, separate staff toilet, security measures in place, perimeter fencing, the sanitary condition of the school, fire exits, safety signs on the wall, good ventilation, good lighting etc. These are minimum required standards. If a school does not meet these requirements, do not enroll your child in such a school. Some parents are not particularly meticulous in finding schools with high safety standards, to them checking for unsafe conditions in a school are immaterial; they focus more on the academic performance of the school, forgetting that their child’s life is at high risk in a school with no safety standards.

Most parents don’t even know that they have a right to question any unsafe condition they find in a school and as a matter of fact they should demand for it to be fixed or they withdraw their children from such a school. A school that doesn’t put effort on the safety of children placed in their care should not be patronized or be allowed to function. Children that attend unsafe schools are prone to accidents, infection, abuse, serious injury and even death.

Before schools are registered shouldn’t they attain minimum safety standard? The truth is that majority of schools in Nigeria are below the school safety standard. Most classrooms in Nigerian schools are highly overcrowded, there are no safety policies in place, teachers are not trained on safety, no risk assessment is being carried out, no evidence of safe recruitment, no emergency evacuation plan, no fire exits or fire extinguishers, no smoke detector, no school crossing marshal, no school bus attendants, untrained school bus drivers, no hand washing facilities, no sick bay, fire drill has never been done in the school, no appropriate toilet facilities, no access control and surveillance, hazardous chemicals in the school environment, slippery floors, steep stair ways, stairways without hand rails, no safety signs on the wall, defective structures, no programs on safety for children and so many ignored best practices.

If you own a school, you must make safety a priority to avoid crisis in your school and parents should demand for safe condition and practices in their children’s school. Children spend a lot of time in school, so schools should offer a safe stimulating environment for children.

There is an ongoing Lagos state schools safety project by Lagos state safety commission. Safety inspectors are going to nursery, primary and secondary schools to conduct safety audits to ensure safety culture and compliance. This is highly commendable but should be scaled up and approached with greater aggression so that thousands of schools in our cities and communities can be forced to maintain the minimum required operational standards.

Njideka obi, a lawyer, Child Safety Advocate/ Child Safety Expert. 08060424282, safersmarterchildren@gmail.com

March 11, 2017
Child safety: Nightmare of house helps
The fear of physical, emotional and verbal abuse of children by their nannies can be a mother’s biggest nightmare. A friend of mine once noticed bruises on his son’s laps and when she confronted her nanny, she told her that the son fell while playing.

The story didn’t sound true. Her instinct told her something was wrong and she decided to install hidden camera in her house. Then she got the shock of her life.

As captured in the camera, the nanny was physically abusing her son; she was a jolly friendly fellow to the children while parents were at home, but a totally different person while no one but she and the children are at home. She would hit at the child at every slight provocation; she shook him violently a couple of times, called him all sorts of despicable names and was like a maniac towards the child. My friend took the child for medical check-up; fortunately the child didn’t sustain much injury. The case was reported to the police; the nanny was arrested, detained for a while and released.

The demand for nannies and house helps is rising every year, gone are the days when mothers sit at home and don’t go to work, both parents work these days to make ends meet and when work pressure increases, some parents rush into hiring home care assistances without getting enough background information, there by endangering the lives of their children.

We have seen many videos online where hidden camera caught nannies physically abusing children, even babies. I remember a horrific video that surfaced online sometime ago, where a mentally deranged nanny from Uganda meted out aggravated violence on an 18 month old child, just because she threw up after she had forced her meal on her. She had beat that poor child in a fit of rage, after hitting the child viciously, to my greatest horror, as if the hitting was not enough, she mercilessly stepped on the child’s back, even after stepping on her back, she still kicked her viciously and dragged the motionless body of the child to another room, that was where the video ended but only God knows what else she did to that child. I was horrified, my heart bled for that child. The video was very disturbing

Some weeks back another video surfaced, this time around it’s a white lady that was seen physically abusing a baby, she kept hitting the baby repeatedly on the head, I couldn’t watch that video because it was extremely horrific and disturbing as well. I am almost certain that the child sustained brain damage because the she kept hitting the little baby’s head viciously. It would be a miracle if that baby turns out normal.

After these shocking videos it is very important that working mothers protect their children from those they let into their homes to take care of their children. First of all make sure you run a background check on the nanny, make sure you know everything about her family history, ask for at least 3 references, get in touch with them and ask detailed questions. Never get a nanny online without any back ground check because it’s very risky, we have heard cases of children kidnapped by nannies gotten online. It is an act of negligence to employ someone that would take care of your children while you are away, without running a background check on the nanny.

What you can do to protect your children against child abusers
- If you can afford it install cameras in the house and make sure the nanny knows that you have a camera in the house.
Njideka Obi, lawyer and a child safety advocate.
08060424282. safersmarterchildren@gmail.com
February 4, 2017
Child safety: Policy against Tradition
Like many Nigerians, I believe our challenge as a nation is not the lack of requisite laws, regulations or policies. But most of these laws fail at the point of implementation. One of the reasons I believe this happens is the poor knowledge of the law by the implementing arm of government.

Have you ever wondered why the national assembly would refuse to openly disclose its spending? Sounds like a complex irony. It was the same national assembly that passed the freedom of information bill, yet they would not comply with the provision of a law they enacted. My focus is not the national assembly; I only wanted to buttress the fact that as a nation we are weak implementers of law.

The case in point is the child rights Acts. If you test this Act for instance with the Nigerian Police who are supposed to enforce the law, you will meet a brick wall. The average police desk officer sometimes ignorantly argues against the law. Again my focus is not the Police; my opinion is that the government must enforce a minimum degree qualification for entry into the police, because you cannot enforce a law you do not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend.

Now let’s hit home with the point. I was elated when the Ministry of Women affairs recently announced its readiness to work with development agencies to end child marriage. I felt happy as one who works with children across the country to empower themselves against sexual abuses, but sniffing through all the challenges that may confront that decision, I began to wonder how the ministry will confront and challenge all intractable traditions and cultural systems that may challenge that decision.

Child marriage is a very disturbing trend. It happens around us, we see it almost everywhere, it even resides in the national assembly. One lawmaker married a 13 year old Egyptian girl. When asked, he points to the privilege of his religion. So child marriage is real with us, it lives with us and so the ministry would have to do more than rhetoric to end it.

This is the 13th year of the enforcement of the Child Right Acts; there has really not been an enforcement of the law. Only 23 states have domesticated the law, none have tested the law, no arrest have been made, although there are glaring evidence of defaulters.

Section 21 defines a child as a person below the age of 18 and frowns at early marriage. This Acts goes further to provide for punishment in section 24 of the Act for violators of section 22 and 23. These questions the potency of our laws. Are laws just made and not implemented?, what is the use of the law anyway when it cannot be enforced? This where the ministry of women affairs must first address in the case of the child rights Acts.

The Acts provides too that there should be institutions created for children living in difficult conditions. I have not seen one institution addressing the needs of children living under difficult conditions. A few weeks ago, a United Nations agency raised a disturbing alarm over the devastation malnutrition is causing in the North-East, according to the report more than 270, 000 children could die of malnutrition.

Where the child rights Acts is enforced, there will be response from institutions created to address difficult conditions of children as provided by the acts itself, but this was not addressed at the level of enforcing the content of the child rights Acts. It’s up to you to judge if our laws are truly potent.

If the ministry pushes for the implementation of the full content of the child rights act, it must be ready to whip traditions aside. I do not know what strategies or actions the ministry of women affairs would implore, but am glad anyway for the courage to dive into the trouble water. I think there should be some seminar of sort to discuss how tradition affects temporary legislation and find a common ground. There are still a lot of traditions and culture that cuts at variance with existing laws. These traditions sometimes even affects health and well being.

For instance, female genital mutilation and the obstetric fistula, a condition caused by early marriage, these are traditions that society must review against its attendant damage to the health of children. Traditions like laws cannot be dogmatic; they have to be reviewed under prevailing advancement in knowledge.

As much as it is laudable for the ministry of women affairs to want to end child’s marriage, we must view this action beyond trying to score political points; it must thoroughly engage the traditional institutions in a bid to reviewing traditional or cultural knots that will make a rubbish of the lofty goal to end child marriage.

I think the minister should review her strategies. It is my opinion that she should call for a high stakeholders delegate to first discuss a plan of action for complete compliance of the child rights acts. At full compliance with the act, there will be no need to end child marriage, the act already took care of that in details.

Njideka Obi, lawyer and a child safety advocate.
1. safersmarterchildren@gmail.com
December 24, 2016
CHILD SAFETY: Watch those who pamper your child
Laura Odinka, not real name, is six years old. She is everything you can call a smart child, she is top in her class, she is bold, confident and outspoken. Ngozi her mother brags about her daughter to any listening ears. ‘My little girl is smart and brilliant’ she boasts.

Laura’s life took a twist when her uncle visited for a short stay. Uncle Timothy looked calm and unassuming. He looks lovable and you can take a bet that he will not hurt a fly. It turned out that Timothy had hidden in his gentle looks a debauching pedophilic savor that will one day change the life of the little girl forever. And it did in a just a little over a month. Laura’s most admired uncle who buys her gifts and ‘fights’ for her was the prey that molested her and stole her childhood.

Laura was abused. Her uncle warned her not to tell anyone and like most parents, Ngozi wasn’t paying enough attention to the changes in Laura’s mood. She became fearful, secretive and began to grow timid, and her packs of confidence began to drop too.

Although there are no consistent surveys on child molestation rate in Nigeria, but occasional polls suggest that one in every five children are molested or have had an experience of attempted sexual molestation. That is staggering but that is not our focus in this piece. It is how parents can recognize sexual predators. The first step is recognising dispassionately that anyone could molest, even the most trusted person in the family because a larger chunk of child molestation cases are committed by those familiar with the child.

Let me walk you through the mind of a potential pedophilia, one who has sexual desire for little girls or boys.
1. They work really hard to gain your trust: They put up the vibe that they are nice. They come at you with a nice smile, very friendly and before you know it, they have warmed their way into your life and your routine. They usually take their time to win your trust; it can take months or years to win you over. But they don’t ever give up.
2. They buy your child gifts/treats and favors: once a predator has gotten your trust, he takes it a step further by buying gifts and yummy treats for your child. They offer to do you favors. They try to be helpful as much as they can. In fact, they appear too good to be true. They are overly playful with your children but they try as much as possible not to be too attentive to them when you are around. Don’t forget that last punch liner – ‘they try as much as possible not to be too attentive to them when you are around.’
3. They try to gain more access and private time with your child: At this stage, the predator has won your trust 100%. Your child trusts him because she knows that you trust him as well. Now, at this point, the predator’s goal is to gain more privacy with your child. They might offer to babysit your child, give your child free extra lessons, offer to take your child out. They work really hard to gain a child’s trust and to develop a special bond with your child.
4. They desensitise your child: At this point you have gotten very comfortable with the predator and you don’t mind leaving your child with him/her. Your child is fond of them as well and always looks forward to seeing them; your child enjoys his or her company and is eager to go out with him or her. Your child might be experiencing some sort of defilement at this stage, it could be a tickling game, it usually begins from the tickling game, and where the predator accidentally touches the child’s private part and it will keep progressing till the act is done.
5. They compel the child to keep their activities secret: The trick that predators use on children is the secret trick. The children may not know they are sexually abused. The predator tells them that it is a secret game or that they love them so much and it’s their special secret. Some will tell them that no one will believe them if they speak and they will even punish them.
Follow this article next week, as I explore further on the preventive actions parents must arm themselves with in order to keep their children away from cougars and pedophilic predators.

Njideka Obi, lawyer and a child safety advocate.

08060424282,safersmarterchildren@gmail
December 10, 2016