By UJU MBANUSI

LAGOS — Executive producer, Crime Fighters- ‘the Police and You,’  Mrs. Aisha Tosan Agberebi, yesterday, in Lagos, stressed the need to inculcate positive values in school children to keep them away from the criminality and self-destruction.

At a pre-event briefing on Crime Fighters Security Awareness Day, Agberebi explained that the event billed for May 27, with the theme: ‘Security Awareness Among Children,‘ was aimed at ensuring  that children got and received proper education on security and crime to prevent them from being misled into criminal activities.

According to her: “You all will agree with me that when we were growing up, the environment we had was different from what it is now, these gadgets that we have today were not available then; so our temptations were limited.

“But the children of today are facing peculiar challenges and we really need to talk to them; some of them get into these crimes unknowingly.

“From our investigations and having been in this profession for two decades I think it is high time we began to talk to our children, rather than castigate them when they got into trouble.”

The reason for targeting young people, she said, was borne out of the alarming rate of juvenile involvement in criminal activities across the globe, sighting the ‘Cynthia Osokogwu’ murder and the use of children in detonating bombs in Pakistan as instances.

“If you look at the trend of crime, adults don’t really get involved, they may be involved in the planning, but they use the younger ones to hatch it, because their minds are easily carried away.

“This is because at this stage, their minds are vulnerable and can easily be lured into criminal activities. Hence the need to create security awareness in them.”