Dr Olufemi-Kayode

While I was growing up, I loved the city of Lagos. It was safe. The streets had lights. Children had a state that cared for them. Child abuse was not tolerated.

As parents, you could not discipline a child to the point of exerting any harm. The Social Welfare would be at your doorstep. Children displaying behavioral disorders were sent to the Juvenile Homes and indeed they came back well behaved? Yes, they did!

Yet, we received the hardest beating from our parents, which would be translated today to child abuse as we were physically abused. You may ask, how did the child welfare system miss the beating of our parents? I am left to defend myself…no … the society contributes a lot more under the disguise that they are protecting me from disgrace that is theirs for not protecting me enough and at the same time, covering their shame.

Abuse, as I remember was a continuous activity that defied neighborly warnings and with severe harm to child both physically, emotionally.

According to the State of World’s Children Report 2011 “Acts of violence take place within the home, at school, and in the community; they can be physical, sexual or psychological.

The full scale of violence against adolescents is impossible to measure, given that most abuses occur in secret and remain unreported.

Data from 11 countries with available estimates show a wide variation in levels of violence against adolescent females aged 15–19; in every country assessed. However, it remains an important problem.”

Today, the challenges facing children have tripled in dimension and we are nowhere close to addressing them as a nation, state or community. Eleven year old Victor from Mexico stated in the State of World’s Children Report 2011, “Children should not be afraid or in danger at home or in school.”

I profoundly concur with him. Why should I be born into a world that is not safe for me? Why be born into a world that has no budget for my wellbeing?

A world where life begins with fathers who deny their fatherhood, fling me against an iron bed that breaks my spinal cord and renders me neck less, fathers that sexually abuse, violate and put me in the family way – pregnant! Senators who marry me at 13 and before I am 14 years old, I am a mother.

That is what the world I am in offers me! How about the judicial system that claims my parent do not show up in court therefore let go of my molesters! I do not have a say, but everyone pretends the decisions they are making are for my good!

I live within a system that has denied me in their yearly budgets and allows those who torture, violate and abuse me to get away with their crime against me! They even claim that I was not violated in their state or by students of their school!

The incessant cases of sexual violence rippling the nation have begun to display fresh patterns as the Apathy of the society continues to Fuel abuse. Though we are quick to point accusing fingers and blame one sector/person or the other. It is our collective responsibility what we make of our society. I wait to see that Nigeria and Africa with the fiber of my being.

After 51 years of independence, my heart bleeds at our collective irresponsibility today. It displays what we expect of our posterity, se?