OUR children are assuming less importance daily. We are not ashamed to lament the growing poverty among children – apparently forgetting that poor parents will raise poorer children.

When we reduce matters affecting children, matters that affect our future, to mere speeches, we postpone the doomsday, a postponement that cannot be forever.

May 27, Children’s Day, is one of the few days when we are meant to celebrate our children. The importance of that day has been drowned in the past 12 years by its closeness to May 29, the anniversary of the end of military rule in 1999.

Beyond the speeches governments remember to make on that day, there are hardly other instances that they speak about the children with certainty. We are busy running governments into private estates that the future – the children – is of little relevance to the programme for a great nation in 2020.

Speeches do not do much for anyone if they do not result in changes. What have we done for our children lately? How have we run the country to protect the children? Will we have great children with policies that cut the cords that bind families?

In the past four years, Children’s Day has passed with the speeches made saying nothing. They were mostly rehashes of past speeches. Nigerian children remain endangered. The ones who survive have a bleak future, unsure of being educated, living a healthy life or having the abilities to participate in a globally competitive environment that will leave the unprepared on the fringes.

Our governments toy with these demands on our children. The biggest challenge our children face are programmes that aim at tackling poverty which the promoters see as shows, opportunities to make news headlines. What did the countless programmes governors and their wives launch in the past 12 years achieved?

Minister of State for Education, Hajiya A’ishatu Jubril Dukku, in February last year, announced Madrasah, which she said was targeted at seven million street children called almajiri.  The last that was heard about the programme was at the launching.

The programme predictably failed because it refused to recognise that almajiri has cultural and religious components that affect how parents and guardians appreciate formal education. Again, when we talk about poverty among children, all its national complications should be considered.

Nigerian governments do not respect the Constitution, or laws like the Child Rights Act, which provide for education, health care of the child and abolish child labour and child marriages.

After the National Assembly passed the Child Rights Act, many States are reluctant to adopt it. The law, contrary to the constitutional provisions that federal laws apply in all the States, is being passed through different State Houses of Assembly, some of which have rejected it, pleading interference with their religion and culture.

Every State should implement the provisions of the Child Rights Act. The new National Assembly should ensure implementation of the Child Rights Act – it will be the best gift to the Nigerian child.

Happy Children’s Day to our children as they look forward to May 29.