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The Women and Children’s Rights Programme of the Institute
of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (IHRHL) wishes to
join millions of Children world over in celebration of
this year’s Children’s Day. It is a day earmarked by the
United Nations General Assembly, in keeping with the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, to take stock of
progress, difficulties and challenges of the CHILD, which
the Convention recognized as imbued with rights and
dignity, that must be promoted, respected and protected.
The IHRHL commend the ratification of the Child’s
Convention by the Federal Government of Nigeria, and the
steps that few State Houses Assembly has taken to
legislate on the same. But far from ratification is the
subject of implementation by state entities, and the
creation of veritable environment that is conducive for
the development of the Nigerian Child in dignity and
rights.
In the Niger Delta Region of Rivers State, Bayelsa,
Akwa-Ibom, Delta, Edo, and Cross River, corruption
committed with impunity by public officials, which has
engendered bad governance, has rendered the socio-economic
welfare that could have resulted from good governance
comatose. Niger Delta Children therefore, has borne the
deep scares of hunger, misery, poverty, unemployment,
inflation and squalor as souvenir from governments
‘elected’ to give them a life of dignity and rights.
Brazen corruption at the levels of such agencies as the
Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC, put in place to
right the wrongs of under development, offer no hope for
the region’s ‘oil cursed’ child.
As governors, their wives and their local government
counterparts, draw up corrupt budgets today in the name of
gathering unsuspecting children at government houses and
stadiums etc, for another public relation drama, using the
media to the maximum, the IHRHL calls on the Governments
of the Niger Delta Region, to have a rethink and
appreciate the destruction and retardation that corruption
by public officials bring to our body politic. IHRHL,
further calls on all public officials to prosecute public
policies that would urgently begin to structure legacies
for all the children, not just for their own children.
The millions of street and unsheltered children, child
prostitution, child slavery and indeed examination
malpractices, result directly from the abuse of power that
has made it impossible for those entrusted with power, at
state and local government level, to invest judiciously in
educational infrastructures, human and material resources
that touch the lives of Children. Children who have not
been given the skills and capacity to write and pass an
examination, in an environment which demand results and
certificates, will continue to cheat, and teachers and
invigilators who like politicians expect their rewards
here and not in heaven, will continue to demand bribe to
enable such evil practices.
Let Governments pay more than lip service to the plights
of all Children of the region today. We urge Governments
to take their obligations under the UN Declaration of
Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child, the
African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, seriously, if
we must continue to build a society and foundations that
will eventually and untimely consume and destroy us all,
like the building that collapsed recently on Abacha Road
in Port Harcourt, by reason of sheer incompetence of
government in Rivers State. Our collective sustainable
development and human security begins and depends on them
– Our Children.
Chisa Akaniwo,
Programme Office, Women’s Human Rights Program
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