From the North to the South, East to the West, the incidence of violence against children is on the increase. This, experts say, pose danger to the country.Newsmen writes on this cancer that debilitates wealth builders of the future.
THE United Nations (UN), in accordance with article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, described violence against children as “all forms of physical or mental violence, injury and abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention in 1999 also states of violence against children that “child abuse or maltreatment constitutes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, s*xual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power.”
Violence is categorised as exploitation: trafficking, s*x tourism, slavery, pornography; physical and psychological violence: bullying, abduction, kidnapping, physical abuse and punishment, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; neglect: abandonment, dangerous, harmful or hazardous work; deprivation and state neglect, according to the UNICEF and the UN.
Parents across the globe see their children as gifts that should be handled with care.
The parents try their best to give their children all that is required to face adulthood. But in some instances, the guardians of these children turn into monsters, devouring their otherwise innocent wards. Fathers are arraigned in courts for sexually molesting their children, while blaming the acts on the devil. Others sell their children for ridiculously low prices, as if sales of humans, let alone that of children, at ridiculously low prices illegal.
Case in point: Markurdi, where parents sell children for a paltry N4, 000.00. Twenty-something-year-old teachers r*pe seven-year-olds in schools, while some of them turn around to say “she seduced me.” How does a seven-year-old seduce an adult? What does such child even know as seduction?
Still in Benue State, a “wiser” single mother decided to sell off her eight-month old baby for N200, 000.00 at the alleged persuasion of a neighbour. The neighbour allegedly persuaded a 19-year-old Aladi Abbah to sell off her baby to better her lot.
It was reported that the baby, which was taken to Kano to be auctioned off, was re-sold to another buyer, a female pastor, who resided in Kano. In March this year, the police arraigned a 25-year-old man before an Igbosere Magistrate’s Court, Lagos, for allegedly raping a nine-year-old girl. Another 11-year-old was not only raped earlier in the year, but she was infected with HIV by her four assailants.
A commercial motorcyclist and tenant in the house where the victim resided with her father and stepmother reportedly led the gang that allegedly raped the young girl. In the course of interrogation by the Special Lagos State Task Force, the suspect named his accomplices as his own brother-in-law, cousin of the raped girl and another man simply referred to as Yellow.
Violence against children, experts say is the bane of national development. They add that violence is targeted at children at home, schools and the society.
Children experience worse of violence, they said, through child labour and abuse. According to the UNICEF’s 2011 estimates, around 150 million children aged between five and 14 in developing countries, about 16 per cent of all children in this age group, are involved in child labour, while the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that throughout the world, around 215 million children under the age of 18 are engaged in full-time work.
ILO 2010’s Facts on Child Labour suggested that more boys are involved in child labour, while the UNICEF 2011 State of the World’s Children estimates that roughly 90 per cent of children involved in domestic labour are girls.
The UNICEF expresses concern that the prevalence of child labour in Sub Saharan Africa is on the increase with regard to children between the ages of five and 14.
Africa is considered by the world as the poorest continent. Due to this peculiar nature, it is often considered the most affected by child labour. Over 70 per cent of the continent’s population is said to live and work in extremely poor conditions, while 32 per cent of the 250 million children work in Africa. Child labour has continued to remain a major source of concern in spite of Nigeria’s legislative measures.
According to the ILO, the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is estimated at 15 million, with a majority of them engaging in diverse and tedious jobs such as street vending begging, car washing, shoe shining, street hawking, among others. The older children work as apprentice mechanics, hairdressers and bus conductors, domestic servants and what not.
Child labour continues to harm the physical and mental development of children and adolescents and interfere with their education, the UNICEF says.
In some parts of Northern Nigeria, formal education is akin to a taboo. Majority of those who engage in any form of education are those who go to Islamic schools while others roam the streets naked or are engaged in one form of trade or the other. In the North alone, an estimate of 9.5 million indigent children walks the streets, begging for alms. But with the advent of the Almajiri Education Programme, there could be a hope of the Federal Government removing them off the streets.
Nigerian Tribune’s investigation in some South-Western Nigeria, especially the interiors, revealed that children are subjected to the act of misuse, which the national president of a non-government organisation, Child Growth Concern Initiative, Mr Kehinde Akinyemi, described as lack of “much needed necessities of life.” Akinyemi described children who are abandoned on the streets as being maltreated physically, emotionally, and or s*xually.
This, he said is detrimental to the future growth and development of such a child.
To make ends meet, children help out in their respective families by hawking. Some of the children in Ibadan, Ife and Osogbo, who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune, said if they had other choices, they would gladly go for them. A 13-year-old Seun Abegunde, while speaking with the Nigerian Tribune, said she preferred staying in school to hawking, but she had to help her parents out as she was from a poor home.
“My mother is a trader and my father is a famer. We are eight my family. Because our parents don’t have much money, we, the children, sell things. My big sister sells pepper and I sell vegetables. My big brother goes to the farm with our father. The rest are too young to go about selling things so they stay with our mother in the shop,” she said. Commenting on her education, she said “I am in Primary 5 and I like to go to school.
I am in primary five because my parents don’t have money for our school fees.” She said when she grew older; she would not have as much children as her parents.
In a chat with another child hawker who identified himself as Zito, he disclosed that his mother sold food in a secondary school, while his father was a carpenter. At the age of 13, Zito said he had been hawking kerosene for seven years.
Zito mentioned that without hawking kerosene, his family would not be able to afford a good meal. Speaking with two female hawkers who pleaded anonymity, the first said she lived with her aunt after the demise of her parents in a motor accident when she was 10. She disclosed that her aunt would threaten her, saying “the day I stop hawking, she will stop my schooling.”
The second one said she was not proud of hawking on the streets, adding that “I dodge when I see my classmates on the road. I don’t like my friends seeing me hawk plantain.”
In some extreme cases, young children in the East and some parts of the North are forced to work off debts their parents owed on their creditors’ farms or homes for several years. Some female children have reported cases of starvation, s*xual harassment and beatings.
Then there is the case of forced early marriages, child prostitution and trafficking. A recent scandal arose after nearly half the chocolate purchased in the United States was linked to children producing it in cocoa fields in Africa, with the researcher for the Human Rights Watch, Jonathan Cohen, saying “the cocoa farms are just the tip of the iceberg. Trafficking in child labour occurs along numerous routes in West Africa, and governments aren’t doing enough to stop it.”
Social workers and NGOs in the country are of the opinion that poverty is the major cause of child labour in the country; while some say parents’ lack of job security forces them to make their children work instead, because job owners give them jobs easily for the sake of exploitation.
A micro enomonist in Abuja, Dr Wahab Haruna, explaining why the Nigerian government and the society at large should stand against child labour, said negligence to do so would cripple the country’s economy in the years to come.
He agreed with the UNICEF that by the year 2020, 730 million new workers would have joined the adult workforce, with 90 per cent coming from developing countries, where child labour is most common. Some of these new workers, who will be the new builders of the world’s society, he said, would have previously been child labourers.
This would most likely render them crippled, unhealthy, and most importantly, uneducated, according to the UN projections, just as “many child labourers will have died before reaching the age of 18, and not even have made any impact on the world’s future. These new former child labourers who are now formal workers will almost certainly affect the world’s economy – in a bad way – because job positions that require an education may go unfilled, and manual labour jobs may also see vacancies due to the fact the new workers are already crippled.”
The Nigerian Child Right Act states that children are meant to be protected, fed and educated. A Professor of Psychology, Professor Bamidele Peters, in Ibadan corroborated that children are meant to be provided for, not abused either psychologically, s*xually, exploited for commercial purposes or neglected. Child abuse, he said, would encourage them to lie and act out, as against of loving, trusting, and listening to authorities.
WHO added that child abuse would “alienate your child from you and the rest of your family and would make him a recluse; it will lower your child's self-esteem, and affect your child's psychological development and ability to behave normally outside his home. When your child grows up, your child could probably carry on the family tradition, and abuse your grandchildren.” Violence against children humiliates, shames, or frightens the children, Professor Peters said.
He said major causes of this violence are widespread poverty, rapid urbanisation, breakdown in extended family affiliations, high school dropout rates, and lack of enforcement of legal instruments meant to protect children. Over time, these children suffer from fatigue, irregular attendance at school, lack of comprehension and motivation, improper socialisation, exposure to risk of s*xual abuse, high likelihood of being involved in crime.
Many countries, including Nigeria, have sought to better the lives for their children by passing legislations to protect them. In spite of these laudable actions, violence against children has deep tentacles in human society and cannot easily be eradicated by mere legislation, some observers stated. Therefore, parents, guardians and adults in charge of children need to do so much more to protect them.
Without the UN saying so, parents know that their children have the right to life and to be allowed to survive and develop.
According to the UN conventions, children have the right to express opinions and to freely communicate them on any issues subject to restriction under the law, they are entitled to protection from any act that interferes with their privacy, honour and reputation; they are entitled to adequate rest and recreation according to their age and culture and more importantly, they are entitled to receive compulsory basic education and equal opportunity for higher education depending on individual ability.
They are also entitled to good health, protection from illness and proper medical attention for survival, personal growth and development and they are must be protected from indecent and inhuman treatment through s*xual exploitation, drug abuse, child labour, torture, maltreatment and neglect.
Parents, step parents, guardians and care givers should express their love for the child and provide a secure environment for the child; communicate with your child; adopt discipline to the needs of each child.
A guidance counsellor, Dr Kate Awe, while cautioning that such discipline should be balanced and should include teaching children about boundaries and limits in ways other than by physical chastisement or in an abusive manner, while Professor Peters enjoined the parents to teach their children on how they should react in they are s*xually threatened, while they (the parents) should always in the best interests of a child.
While child labourers may not have much of an effect now on the world’s economy, they will play a role in shaping the world when they grow up. This is a key reason why we should try to solve child labour now. Entrusting the world to uneducated and crippled people has never been desirable. In order to have educated, healthy, contributing members to the world’s economy later, it is necessary to eliminate child labour now, before the economic effects start to show up, the UN concluded.
