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By Esther Onyegbula

Stakeholders at the Early Years Children Conference recently, unanimously called for adequate attention to children from 0-5 years for cognitive teaching, care, training and development.

The Early Children Conference organised by Alpha Global a bespoke Children Service was held at Lekki Coliseum, Lekki and had over 350 participants in attendance.

Some of the topics discussed by the panellists include Safeguarding Children: What it means and why it’s important’ by Fela Durotoye. The journey so far: vision sharing, future plans, `creating a sustainable early learning and children system for Nigeria and Africa.

Speaking on the role of government in the early years of education (regulations, law, curriculum, the Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Mrs Folasade Adefisayo said that Lagos State was experiencing population explosion which had a lot of impact on the adequate supervision of schools on the part of the government, hence all hands must be on deck to arrest declining standard of education.

“The population of Lagos is growing is an expandable rate and the growth is as a result of migration, mostly unmarried people.

For this reason, there are many schools springing up with poor standards. For us a government, we want the children of the poor to have the equivalent of what the children of the rich get in terms of quality education. We are also training the next generation of teachers for the state,” she said.

Also the Special Adviser to Ogun State Governor on Education (Primary and Secondary), Ronke Soyombo stated that parents needed to care for the future generations by starting early with them.

We need to adequately care for the future of these children now because today is the Future and we need to start early,” she said.

The convener of the conference and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alpha Global, Mrs Caroline Popoola said that the age between 0-5 was unique to the cognitive development of any child and must be well taken care of. The age between 0-5 is unique for education because this is when the children are moulded, so we need to be careful of what we pass around. We want to partner with all the stakeholders in the education sector to encourage good practices and ensure that we are doing it right for the future of our country,” she said.