By Joseph Erunke,Abuja

A member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Bamidele Salam, has called for a complete implementation of Child Rights Act.

Salam, who is the founder of Children of Africa Leadership and Values Development Initiative, CALDEV, said there was need for collaboration between government and relevant stakeholders to enforce the provisions of Child Rights Act across the country.

Speaking in Abuja ,during the flag-off of the 5-day National Children Leadership Conference, 2024, organised by CALDEV, Salam reiterated the organisation’s resolve towards the implementation of various programmes and projects aimed at improving the well-being of young Nigerians.

He said:”Like I do say always, the problem with Nigeria is not about lack of laws. That’s the plain truth. We have enough laws to take care of almost all the problems we have in Nigeria. The problem is with implementation.

“If you look at the Child Rights Act, very well, the Child Rights Act, which has been domesticated by almost 32 or more States of the Federation, has enough provisions to protect children and to provide them with all that they need to live a meaningful and productive life. But how many of the States of the Federation are actually implementing the tenet of the Child’s Act?

“The Child Rights Act criminalises children hawking in the street. It criminalises children begging in the street, it prohibits children from being out of school during school hours, and parents and guardians of such children have liabilities under the Child Rights Act. But how many parents have you seen taken to court and charged with not putting their children in school and being made to face the consequences?

“So when you talk about the intervention, it gives an impression that maybe there are something we need to do in our law. Yes, laws are meant to be improved upon as we go on, but the real problem is the implementation of the law.

“I was watching a news item a few days ago, and the National Commission for out of school children said that they had picked about 23,000 children from the FCT and handed them over to the FCT Basic Education Commission to enroll in schools, 23,000 yet yesterday, night I was out in Abuja.

“I still saw a lot of these children in Wuse, in Garki, everywhere around, you know, running after cars, washing windscreen of cars, begging for money, selling groundnuts and what have you, in the wee hours of the day.

“Now, this not the internment of the law. So, I think the area where we need to work more collaboratively with individuals, Organisations and government is implementation of the tenets and the spirit of the Child Rights Act.”

While reeling out some of the successes achieved so far, he disclosed that “CALDEV has been organizing series of other programmes to mentor children, to empower them, to also provide them with opportunities for leadership education, provide them also with support in terms of scholarships and other welfare programmes for children in orphanages, in terms of advocacy for children, Out-of-School Children, children in prisons, children without access to basic health care and so many other advocacies that we do.

“We have partnerships that we have entered into with the National Human Rights Commission on children advocacy, we have partnership with the National Commission for out of school children, National Commission for Almajiri education, the Universal Basic Education Commission partnering with us in making books published under the African Children Leadership Series available to schools all over the Federation.

“We had almost 50,000 copies that the Universal Basic Education Commission bought to distribute to schools all across the country. These are some of the initiatives.

“In terms of the success story of the National Children Leadership Conference, it’s been phenomenal, It’s been very, very impacting. Listening to the testimonies of participants, previous editions will show that indeed the conference has provided opportunities for children to discover themselves, really reinvent themselves. It’s giving them opportunity of what true education is all about. True education is not about reading and writing. It’s about ability to think deep, creative thinking, collaboration with other children for the purpose of solving problems.

“In most of the schools where they come from, they go back to those schools and also become trainers like training other persons that couldn’t attend this programme.

“We have members of the Nigerian Children Leadership, Parliament who have come to attend this programme.

You remember there was one video that went viral in the last edition, the Deputy Speaker of the Nigerian Children Parliament, who came and made very phenomenal speech about why our government should deepen its engagement with children and initiate more programmes and activities and projects that will impact on the well-being of Nigerian children. So it’s been a very impacting session all previous editions, and we know that this one will not be an exception.

“To start with why did we choose children as focal point of our activities, is because of their prime place in the development of every society. A society that ignores its children, ignores its future, a society that ignores its children, also ignores its present, because they are both the present and the future of any society.

“And we discover, unfortunately that due to so many factors, including modernisation, most of the attention that parents and schools and society used to give children 20, 30 years ago are no longer there. People hardly even have time for their children now, in most homes, they just want the children to go to school. That’s why they place children in school as two years old, children are already in school.

“So this huge gap will eventually or is now, affecting the kind of adolescent, young adult and even adult that we have in the present world. And if we are not careful, we will lead to a situation where, you know, we raise adults who do not understand values, who do not understand the essence of service, the essence of leadership, the essence of communal living.

“And this is what we want to prevent, to ensure that when children are still young and at this stage of their life, they are not only exposed to books, the chemistry, the physics they learn in school, no but the soft skills, which are also very, very important, are imparted into them so that they can have a very meaningful life. They can live a meaningful life. They can live impactful, impacting life, and then they can contribute more to the growth of the nation and society as a whole.

“And talking about how we intend to upscale, well, it’s getting better every year. Last year, the number we had was not up to this. We are hoping in years to come that we’ll be able to involve more children. Of course, it requires more funding. This we are doing today is by the mercy of God, and a few of our corporate sponsors, we still look forward to a time when more corporate organisations will see this as a programme for them to buy into and support massively so that we can have more children, thousands of them coming around in the conference like this is not something that is too much.

“Apart from that, by next year, also, we’ll be having delegates from some West African countries. We are starting from West Africa. If you look at the name of our organisation, it’s an African initiative. But by next year, we have had commitment from children from Ghana, from Gambia, from Sierra Leone who will be coming to join us, and may be a few other countries.

“That’s part of the agenda for upscaling the work that we do, and especially the children national conference, in a manner that will make the activities and the impact more felt beyond the shores of Nigeria.”

In his remarks, Chairman, House Committee on Youth Development, Hon. Martins Etim, who commended the Visioner – Hon. Salam noted that the initiative which has been in existence since 2015.

“Basically what this initiative does is to help young children between the ages of 13 and 17 to maximize their potentials, to realize themselves. You know that self discovery is an important part of the leadership journey, you must first have to discover yourself and I think that is what CALDEV aims to achieve in the national leadership conference.

“What we are doing basically is to catch them young. Like I said the major word there is self discovery, we want these children to realize whom they are. We want them to know themselves so that they can become the leaders that this country is looking for. We are talking to them about self discovery, what are their strengths, what are their weaknesses , what values can they pick up at this tender age and what do they believe in. These are the pillars that form effective leadership that we are talking about.

“Once we can identify them young in this country, I’m very sure we will get it right, because within that demography of 13 and 17, we have a lot of very intelligent Nigerians. What we are doing now is beyond the doctor, nurse and lawyers they want to be, we also want to focus them on leadership, after identifying that leadership is part of us, because you must first lead your family and other areas of socialisation,” he noted.