A behavioral, developmental and child/young persons care professional, Kemi Olokode-Ayelabola has called on governments at different levels as well as all relevant stakeholders to adopt the Child Rights Act in Nigeria.
Kemi who is the Chairperson and Convener of Asiwaju Renewed Hope (ARH’23) that mobilised and campaigned for President Bola Tinubu during the February 2023 presidential poll, also appealed to parents to place premium on formal education for their children and ensure good moral upbringing for the greater good of the society.
She further urged Nigerians to continue encouraging and supporting women in the onerous task of parenting. According to her, support is needed because women provide children with useful guidance and watch them grow into the age of responsibility and become accomplished.
Kemi’s recent call was contained in a statement personally signed by her on Friday and made available to newsmen through her official email address from the Republic of Ireland where she’s currently based.
The statement reads in part, “The Child Rights Act is an all-important law that essentially helps to protect children such that they can be shaped into becoming productive assets to the nation in future. We have a lot of extremely brilliant Nigerian children who should be protected and kept away from any form of defilement and all kinds of sexual abuses, therefore no stone should be left unturned to preserve them as valuable jewels. What also interests me most in the Child Rights Act is that it criminalises children hawking in the street, it criminalises children begging in the street, it prohibits children from being out of school during school hours, and parents and guardians of such children have liabilities under the Child Rights Act.
“I have also observed that the biggest challenges in the implementation of the act are tradition and religion. Tradition in the sense that a lot of communities still don’t understand the basic rights of the child. So it requires a more vigorous education particularly of the rural populace to understand the basic needs of the child within the context of the Nigerian Constitution as well as the Child Rights Act. Religion, on the other hand, plays a major role at the centre, being that some people still hold the belief that children are being possessed by some wild or evil spirits. A lot of children are still being put through very heinous process of torture and trials in the name of trying to remove such spirits from them and often times they are abused and violated.
“Beyond government, I think the media and other relevant non-governmental organisations need to deepen the call for the implementation and enforcement of the Child Rights Act. Arrest needs to be made where necessary especially in situations where subtle advocacy are noticed to have failed and that is why law enforcement agents are required to come to the equation to make the law effective and implementable. With our collective efforts, Nigeria will surely be great again,” she noted.
