THE Christmas and New Year festivities are never complete without crowds of children, led by their parents or guardians, visiting amusement parks and other playgrounds in search of fun to which they are entitled.

It is heartbreaking, however, to observe that while a few of these children move about in their parents’ private cars, others who are less-fortunate trek or struggle for seats inside rickety commercial buses which ply the dilapidated roads that serve the suburbs where they live.

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While this disparity may be due to inequality in socio-economic status, but giving the less-privileged a minimum standard of living is both a moral and constitutional obligation of the government. 

It is understandable that every parent cannot have private vehicles to take their children out, or live in Ikoyi, Victoria Island or other highbrow places where the roads and transport facilities are better.

Nonetheless, we have a duty as government and society to make life a bit comfortable for kids from struggling homes who constitute a larger percentage of the population. 

That can be done through regular fixing of the roads in remote parts of the country where these poor families live, and by providing decent means of public transportation for them. Nigeria is blessed with abundant resources which, if well-managed, can provide the citizens, both the rich and the poor, with social amenities that will afford everyone a reasonable standard of living. It is unfair to concentrate the commonwealth of any country in the hands of a few privileged citizens and in places where the rich live, while neglecting roads and public transport facilities in poor suburbs. Good roads and decent public transport facilities are the least of what government can do for poor families and their children.

It beats the imagination how we manage to feel comfortable watching poor children trekking on bad roads or struggling to enter into battered public buses, while we ride with our children in our decent private cars and on the good roads in highbrow areas. By so doing, we have completely disregarded the warning of renowned Nigerian economist, Sam Aluko, who said “the rich cannot sleep because the poor are awake and hungry”. Sam Aluko’s statement does not only apply to food, it extends to sharp disparities in government’s distribution of social amenities in poor and in rich enclaves.

The insecurity being experienced in Nigeria today and most conflicts around the world are largely rooted in the neglect of the poor in the society. No government or system can appropriate the commonwealth of the masses to make few rich people comfortable and expect peace to reign in that society. 

Even if we cannot do anything else for the poor, let us provide them with good roads and decent public transportation to ameliorate their sufferings. It is both godly and constitutional.