Children seek improved welfare, protection

AS Nigerian children join their peers across the world yesterday to celebrate this year’s Children’s Day, a student of Agidingbi Senior High School, Ikeja, Diugwu Chinaza, has appealed to the Lagos State Government to draw awareness to the plight of children around the world suffer violence in the forms of abuse, exploitation and discrimination, among others.

Speaking on behalf of other children during the 2015 Children’s Day celebration in Lagos, Chinaza noted that Nigerian children have suffered so much neglect and dejection owing to lack of care and protection by both parents and government.

She urged the incoming administration to show affection for children by creating policies and programmes that would benefit them.

She noted: “Since the proclamation by the World Conference for the Well-being of Children in 1925, Children’s Day has since been celebrated yearly in order to celebrate and display affection and concern for children, their welfare, hope and aspirations and government’s determination at ensuring that the future of the nation is left in capable hands.”

Addressing them, Governor Babatunde Fashola listed the achievements of his government to include the provision of such notable infrastructure as child and maternal centres for safe delivery, good primary and secondary schools to enhance qualitative education and the provision of solar power in 172 schools for electricity.

These, among many others, were part of demonstration of government’s concern and affection for them and their future. Fashola, who received children at the Police College ground in Ikeja yesterday for the same event, urged them to stay away from drug and bad friends, who might want to introduce them to cultism.

“Stay away from violence and bad gangs. You can join social and voluntary clubs such as Boys Brigade, Girls Guide and Sheriff Guard, among others, that have been created to mould your future,” Fashola said.

Martins wants premium on development
For the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, His Grace, Dr. Alfred Adewale Martins, juvenile delinquency, poverty, social inequality, failed educational system, family problems and peer pressure are some of the challenges facing the Nigerian child.

Consequently, he enjoined the incoming government of Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) to urgently re-introduce moral and religious instructions in the nation’s educational curriculum to help curb the alarming rate of moral decay in the society and breed honest and God-fearing future leaders.

In his goodwill message to the Nigerian child, signed by the diocese’s Director of Social Communications, Monsignor Gabriel Osu, Martins, urged them also to always emulate the virtues of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who, as a child, was very submissive to his parents at all times.