Children’s Day in the shadow of Chibok schoolgirls

But those that were in class only less than two months ago are not among their peers to mark today either.  Their forced absence underscores the fragility that the rights of children have become and are being trampled upon in some communities in this country. It is 43 days today, Children’s Day, since the abduction […]

But those that were in class only less than two months ago are not among their peers to mark today either.  Their forced absence underscores the fragility that the rights of children have become and are being trampled upon in some communities in this country.
It is 43 days today, Children’s Day, since the abduction of nearly 300 girls from their dormitories at Government Secondary School, Chobok, in Borno State, by the extremist group Boko Haram. The fact that they are still in captivity surely casts a pall on this year’s celebrations.  
Children’s Day is a special events-filled occasion held to call attention to needs of children around the world. It was initiated in 1954 by the United Nations General Assembly to protect children from dangerous conditions as well as guarantee that every child has access to education. Although November 20, when the UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, was chosen as the date for observing Children and Youth Day every year, member countries are at liberty to mark the day on different dates as may be convenient for them.  In Nigeria, May 27 every year is marked as Children and Youth Day.
The Nigerian Children’s Day should be one on which to reflect on the state of children, millions of who are disadvantaged. Education, health, and their protection against all forms of discrimination, violence and other crimes including abuse, exploitation, neglect, trafficking, rape and, in this case, abductions, are critical areas in which Nigerian children have endured inexcusable predicaments. In a technology-driven universe, millions of school-age children in Nigeria are not in formal school, exacerbating the high illiteracy level in the country. The Universal Basic Education programme launched in 1999 has so far not satisfactorily achieved the two main objectives of making education free and compulsory at the basic level, spanning the first nine years of the child’s education at the primary and junior secondary schools.
In some parts of the country, particularly in the north, the so-called almajiri syndrome is symptomatic of the sickening denial of access to education for vulnerable children that it represents. Such children, lacking direction, become willing and ready tools in the hands of unscrupulous persons to foment civil unrest. These should not be happening in Nigeria that should consider it a priority to invest optimally in its children and their future. The serial failures to adequately address the needs of children have grave repercussions for the nation.
The government, as well as the school and the home, must collectively work out synergies that would aid the building of a culture of security for the Nigerian child in order to halt the unrelenting abuses that shake the foundation and growth pattern of his life. The Nigerian child should enjoy the right of growing in a friendly environment that is free from discrimination and violence of whatever form.
The government has additional (constitutional) responsibility of protecting Nigerian children, especially in these times that educational institutional institutions have become targets of attacks.
As children march to the rhythms of their individual school bands, and the politicians mouth the inevitable platitudes, to mark this day, a thought should be spared for the horrors that captivity imposes on the 276 children that today are somewhere under the charge of their dangerous and possibly deranged abductors.  Government officials, particularly at the federal level, should ponder on the long-term implication of endorsing a counter-movement that seems to foster the notion, prevalent in government circles that the girls’ abduction-and the trauma that their parents are going through-is a charade. The nation-and the entire world, literally-is watching.