The Menace of Child Abuse in Nigeria
BY: Abdullahi Bamalli, Kaduna
The menace of child abuse has been a serious challenge in Nigeria. It occurs in different locations and it happens to tear apart the lives of so many innocent children, but it has been taken for granted or considered something less important to tackle and that’s why it has received little attention in some of our communities.
In Nigeria, children are experiencing the menace of abuse ranging from physical injuries, abandonment, sexual abuse and child labour. In fact, child abuse is becoming alarming in the country. The government’s efforts to combat the problem have yielded little or no result. It recommended that serious measures should be taken against children who engage in hawking as well as their parents.
Moreso, it’s so heart-touching that a lot of children nowadays are going through hardship due to some barbaric ways of African cultures that exposed children to many difficulties and temptations while growing up in difficult conditions. Another possible reason is the general assumption that children obviously lack proper love, care and protection from their parents or guardians and the absence of the latter may result in emotional abuse of the child.
There’s a need for the government and non-governmental organizations to have serious intervention against Child Abuse in Nigeria so that the right and interests of underage children will be fully protected.
It is quite annoying and uncomfortable to see children of a minor age being molested by some heartless people and nobody is there to raise an alarm for justice for these children. Most of these children are only out there in the streets seeking a way to survive at any cost.
Furthermore, there are African traditional child-rearing practices which unfavourably affect some children, such as purposeful neglect or abandonment of severely handicapped children and twins or triplets in some rural areas. Such children being abandoned are picked up in the streets by other people while growing up may experience child abuse, because some of them might not necessarily receive proper care and good moral upbringing.
Moreover, these may be considered the outcome of abnormal interactions between the child, parents/guardians and society. They include abandonment of normal infants by unmarried or very poor mothers in cities, this must increase child labour and exploitation of children from rural areas in urban elite families and abuse of children in urban nuclear families by childminders.
There is a need for more effective legal protection for handicapped children who can be easily abused, and there must be greater awareness of the existence of child abuse in the communities by health and social workers.
The basic fact is that one of the major causes of child abuse is illiteracy. These children and their parents lacked formal education which obviously makes them ignorant of the effects of child abuse. Illiteracy can easily deprive them of the knowledge of the consequences of taking their children for granted or showing less care, love and protection. In line with that, most of the children committing suicide, victims of rape, drug abuse and other inhuman acts are those children being abused and who lack formal education.
Likewise, the number of children being harassed and abused is always increasing rather than decreasing. Therefore, Government, Non-governmental Organisations, and Human Rights Activists should show more efforts to mobilise and sensitise people on the harmful consequences of this inhuman act. Parents, on the other hand, should excessively show love, and care and try to do anything humanly possible and in their power to protect their children from falling victims to rape, child molestation and the likes.
“There’s a need for the government and non-governmental organizations to have serious intervention against Child Abuse in Nigeria so that the right and interests of underage children will be fully protected. But if the government and non-governmental organizations fail to take decisive and serious measures, some evil men out there will be using them for sexual purposes; use them to carry out criminal activities or give them heavy work that’s beyond their power, and situations like that would negatively affect those children to grow up and become mentally and physically imbalanced.
“Sequal to the above assertion, just like the way UNICEF is taking good care of children around the world, most especially those under natural and social disasters and those suffering from broken homes by protecting them from being abused in this crowdy world, the Nigerian government both federal and state, non-governmental organizations, as well as community elites, are expected to play a vital role against Child Abuse locally and nationally by protecting and serving the interest of the under-age children, particularly when children are being abused and found in the streets and also by bringing those predators who abused the children to justice.
In a situation like this, the government and non-governmental organizations should form a group of social workers who will be going around the streets in order to pick those kinds of children and interrogate them to know their real stories and the kind of help they need. The essence is to help transform and protect the children so that they could have a brighter future ahead.
There is a need for certain preventive measures to protect children from the menace of child abuse.
Government alone cannot rescue these children without help from non-governmental organizations as well as the general public. All must join hands together to wipe the menace of child abuse so that the children in every given community will not suffer any social pressure. And children would not also have a phobia to live in the midst of every society with full protection from the predators that are willing to abuse them so that they will have a better life to live like any other children out there.
In conclusion, there is a need for certain preventive measures to protect children from the menace of child abuse. Such measures may include government intervention and empowerment for the less privileged parents to be independent so that they will have some business or work to do to cater for the basic needs of their children. This will help the parents to avoid sending their children to far urban places for hawking in order to get money for them. Such empowerment to parents will prevent children from being abused.
Government should also make provision for infrastructural facilities, employment opportunities and provision of basic education accessible to children in the rural areas in order to prevent a movement that may harm the young population to the cities. There’s also a need for educating children about the sexual threats, advances and differentiating between a good touch and bad touch. Parents should also communicate regularly with children. Communication must be constant and in a friendly manner so that what is going on with them would be obvious and eradicated.
In line with that, donating money to the NGOs, as they are working endlessly to prevent every form of child abuse also would be helpful as they are always busy conducting programmes to create awareness and educate children, parents and communities about sexual abuse and other physical abuse that may be harmful to children.
In addition, there is a need to promptly report incidents of child abuse either to the police, community leaders and any other related authorities that will protect children. Legal authorities like lawyers and police should be strict and provide a serious penalty for whoever violates or abuses children and bring them to justice without any hesitation.
Creating awareness about child’s rights in society would also be helpful and should be conducted from time to time. When a child is sexually abused, doctors are expected to be well trained in order to understand the complexity and help to collect evidence while examining the child. Creating a safe space for children in the community – and this refers to the place where a child feels protected, secured and free from any harm.
