Children’s Day: A clarion call

THIS year’s Children’s Day event is without certainty. It coincides or strikes a narrow gap with COVID-19’s onslaught all over the world. If the children could not understand the full effect of COVID-19, they might be able to know the reason for the early closure of schools in the country ahead of the normal academic calendar schedule. Besides, they might feel the pang of the time from the economic hardships in many homes.

The day usually features march pass and speeches at different levels of government with emphasis on the future leadership of the children and the roles of stakeholders towards their general welfare and development. Children are equally urged to exercise discipline in growing up as responsible citizens.

But little do these children fathom the bleak atmosphere they are growing in and the little opportunity it offers them for survival.  Ignorantly, they march on under the synchronised revel of a police band.

Children are faced with problems that have been filling their hearts with venom against the society. Education is the right of every child but how available is the qualitative education to them? In public schools, strike actions by labour unions are the order of the day and acute shortage of facilities is obvious, which is adversely telling on the quality of education they receive.

At their innocent stages, some heartless parents turn them into commodities for sale. Amidst all these thorns, their day is ignorantly not seen as the day to protest their insecurity as children. Children in motherless homes are not necessarily lacking mothers; they are deliberately denied parental grace not for reasons of their own misdeeds.

In this civilized era, child labour is rampant. Children of school age are rented out for labour on contractual terms while proceeds belong to the human hawkers. In the process, the children are subjected to all sorts of fatal treatment which often lead to disabilities or death.

The society isn’t kind to children either. It exposes them to hazardous films, music and alien culture that are pitching them against their own background. With various stocks of anomalies, Children’s Day can hardly be called a good or happy day for them.

This is age of technology. How would these children fit into the global technology drive? From elementary schools, computer studies are theory based. There isn’t stable electricity supply to assist and the world is not resting on its oars on discoveries and innovations. When will there be stable power supply to support technology for the children to cut their own edge in the exploration?

The celebration of the day is not bad, but the future of these children should be guaranteed. They should be capable of lifting this nation higher among other nations of the world. They need to be equipped adequately because the future tends to demand much from them.

Muyideen Mosobalaje,

Ibadan.

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