Today is Children’s Day, a day set aside to celebrate the Nigerian child. This day was chosen by Nigeria in response to a call from the United Nations General Assembly to member states, in 1954, to set aside a day to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children, initiate action to benefit and promote world’s children and celebrate childhood.
The day is observed as a holiday for primary and secondary school children across the country. Ironically, while children in many parts of the country will be in a celebratory mood, millions of their peers will not be part of the celebration for situations that are no fault of theirs.
In the insurgency-ravaged north-east, for instance, over 56 percent of the 1.62 million internally displaced persons in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe Sates are children, according to UNICEF, and the number of children in need of humanitarian assistance as at 2017 was put at 4.4 million.
To say that the Nigerian child has not had a fair deal in virtually every aspect of life is to state the obvious. Despite some progress made, issues of child abuse, child labour, child marriage, child prostitution, lack of access to basic education, lack of access to proper health care, malnutrition, extreme poverty, dangers arising from female genital mutilation, among others, still persist in the country. The statistics are sobering.
According to UNICEF, about 1 million Nigerian children die each year before their fifth birthday, representing a shocking 10 percent of the global total. In Nigeria, 43 percent of girls are married off before their 18th birthday, and 17 percent are married before they turn 15, according to a report, in spite of the fact that the Child Rights Act of 2003 sets the national legal minimum age of marriage at 18. The prevalence of child marriage varies widely from one region to another, reaching an alarming 76 percent in the North West region.
The plight of the Nigerian child has, however, worsened since the Islamic terrorist sect Boko Haram started its deadly campaign. Since 2010, Boko Haram has targeted schools, killing hundreds of students. It has also been known to kidnap children, giving the very young ones over to Islamic schools, using the girls as cooks, sex slaves or suicide bombers, while the male ones are conscripted and indoctrinated as supply channels for their horrible missions.
In February 2014, 59 boys were reportedly killed by Boko Haram in a Federal Government College in the north-east. In March 2015, BBC reported that about 500 children aged 11 and under were missing from Damasak, a north-eastern town recaptured from Boko Haram militants. Of the 276 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from a boarding school in Chibok town, Borno State in the middle of the night of April 14, 2014, several of them are still missing with the sect’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, once saying in a video message that the girls had been married off.
On the night of February 19, 2018, the terrorists struck again, kidnapping 111 girls from Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Yobe State. 105 girls were released on March 21, 2017; the whereabouts of five is unknown while one, Leah Sharibu, is still being held captive by Boko Haram.
According to an April 2018 UNICEF report, over 1,000 children have been abducted by the insurgents since 2013 and more than 1,400 schools destroyed by the insurgents since the conflict started in 2009. A conservative estimate puts the number of children that have been unable to attend school as a result of Boko Haram activities at 10,000.
UNICEF puts the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria at 10.5 million, which is the world’s highest, and 60 percent of those children are in northern Nigeria.
In Nigeria, the number of child street hawkers is on the rise. Children from poor households face the greatest disadvantages as most of them begin working as early as five years old, which interferes with their basic education and development. Research has shown that child workers display poor educational achievements. The child suffers from fatigue, irregular attendance at school, lack of comprehension and motivation, and improper socialisation.
International Labour Organization estimates the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria at 15 million. Child workers engage in tedious and highly dangerous tasks, such as bus conductors, street vendors, domestic servants and other menial jobs. These jobs expose the child to risk of being kidnapped or used for rituals, sexual abuse and high likelihood of being involved in crime.
Lack of access to good healthcare is one of the major concerns for the Nigerian child. Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five-year-olds daily, making the country the second-largest contributor to the under-five and maternal mortality rate in the world, according to UNICEF.
Figures from UNICEF also put the number of stunted children under the age five at about 11 million, with more than half of children under five years in northern Nigeria stunted and one in every three severely stunted.
Also worrisome is the spate of child sexual exploitation in Nigeria which, unfortunately, has suffered a considerable neglect.
According to a 2014 survey by the National Population Commission, UNICEF and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, six out of 10 Nigerian children experience some form of physical, emotional and sexual violence before they reach the age of 18.
Another survey conducted by the Child Protection Hub (CPHub) shows that only 27 percent of all respondents who admitted to have witnessed child abuse confirmed to having reported the case to the authorities, mostly the police.
Findings from a 2014 National Survey on Violence Against Children in Nigeria show that one in four females reported experiencing sexual violence in childhood, with about 70 percent reporting more than one incident of sexual violence. The same study revealed that 24.8 percent of females aged 18 to 24 years experienced sexual abuse prior to age 18, of which 5 percent sought help, with only 3.5 percent receiving any services.
Sadly, there seems to be no reprieve in sight for the victims as children’s right advocates complain of weak child protection structures in Nigeria.
Statistics of child trafficking, female genital mutilation and malnutrition in Nigeria are alarming.
According to Women at Risk International Foundation (WARIF), 60 percent of children involved in child trafficking from Africa to Europe as at 2004 were Nigerians.
UNICEF estimated that 17 million or 43.6 percent of children in Nigeria under the age of five have their bodies and minds limited by stunting.
About half of all deaths in children under five are attributable to under-nutrition, translating into the loss of about 3 million young lives a year. Under-nutrition puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections, and delays recovery.
According to WHO, more than 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM in 30 countries, including Nigeria, where the practice is prevalent, while about 3 million girls are at risk annually.
Data from the Nigeria Demographics and Health Survey show that 24.8 percent of Nigerian girls and women aged 15 to 49 have been circumcised, with 82 percent of women in Nigeria getting circumcised before the age of five.
In the face of all this, there is an urgent need to negotiate a new and better deal for the Nigerian child. That children are the future of any nation is a bare fact. Without them, no nation can hope to build any meaningful future. It is the child of today that will grow into the adult of tomorrow, supplying the direly needed productive workforce, providing leadership, and moving the economy forward. But without quality education and training, proper health care and other basic necessities, the child of today will grow into an irresponsible adult, constituting both a nuisance and a burden on the country.
This is why the government must go beyond mere populist sloganeering and such half-hearted expressions as “children are the leaders of tomorrow” to really look into the plight of the Nigerian child and begin afresh to build a successful generation of Nigerians that will move this nation to the desired destination. In a country where children in the 0-14 years age bracket make up 43.8 percent of the entire population (CIA World Factbook 2013 estimate), and where some adults in leadership positions have openly declared the older generations as total failures, this is imperative.
As we mark this year’s Children Day, let the emphasis shift from raising awareness on children’s rights and wellbeing to making efforts to better their lives.
CHUKS OLUIGBO & CHINWE AGBEZE
