Group decries alarming rate of child abuse in Nigeria

A group, Child Protection Network (CPN) has decried the increasing rate of child abuse in Nigeria and called for concerted efforts against the menace.

The Alimosho Local Government, Lagos chapter of CPN at a symposium in Lagos on Thursday with the title, ‘Challenges of Child Protection in Nigeria and the way forward’, hammered on the need for, parents, victims of child abuse and other well meaning Nigerians to always report cases of child abuse

According to the group, response of every well meaning Nigeria on the matter should be “see something, say something and do something.”

The symposium was to mark the 60th year birthday of the chapter coordinator and founder of Compassionate Orphanage Home and Compassionate Outreach, Rev. Dr. Gabriel Oyedeji.

In her keynote address at the event on the Challenges of Child Protection in Nigeria and the way forward, Associate Professor, Coordinator, Social Work, Department of Sociology, University of Lagos, Dr. Chinwe Nwanna, lamented the increasing stories of children being killed, maimed, raped, and subjugated to all forms of abuses.

Quoting UNICEF 2006 definition of child protection to refer to preventing and responding to violence, exploitation and abuse against children, she listed the abuse Nigerian children suffer to include commercial sexual exploitation, rape, trafficking, child labour and harmful traditional practices, such as female geni-tal mutilation/cutting and child marriage.

According to Nwanna, poverty, lack of political and economic will, poor administrative records, fear of stigmatisation, corrupt practices of law enforcement agencies, resistant to change, as well as ignorance and lack of understanding of Child Rights Act, have remained some of the challenge to child protection in Nigeria.

She noted that child trafficking is very lucrative in Nigeria coming as the third highest crime in the country after economic fraud and drug related offences.

On the way forward, she said among other things that there was need for capacity building for law enforcement agencies, adequate training on child protection, strong institutions to stem the increasing menace, and stringent penalties on abusers.

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Some of the discussants while decrying rising cases of fathers raping their own daughters, other sexual abuses, drummed the need for early sex education.

Earlier in his remarks, Oyedeji said that as a half orphan, who death never allowed to know a father, he grew up with a burden to put smiles on indigent children and orphans as way to give back to the society.

“Today I have become a father figure for orphans, I live with about 60 of them, have given out over 180 of them to legal adoptions to many families in Nigeria and outside the country and currently about 20 has gone on guardianship and we are doing all we can do to make sure they have a better home than keeping them in the orphanage,” Oyedeji said.

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