Stakeholders restate need for domestication of Child Rights Act

Stakeholders have restated the need for the domestication of the Child Rights Act 2003 by all states in the country, as a major way towards ending discrimination which the girl-child is subjected to.

The stakeholders stressed this need on Tuesday at the Year 2016 “July 24 Dialogue Series” tagged: “The Nigerian Girl Child: The reality of an abused absurdity”, organised by the Grace Pastures International Foundation, held at Eruwon, Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State.

In his welcome address, the Chairman of the Foundation, Mr Abayomi Olomolaiye, maintained that more attention must be placed on the developmental process of the girl child.

He admitted that there are so many factors that have made the girl child an endangered specie, appealing to well-meaning Nigerians to start putting up structures that could rescue them from perilous and intimidating forces.

“Our centre; as parts of our strategy to achieve desired result in this direction and to walk the talk, has started to develop a girl-child vanguard, who are teenagers that will work on the morale and psyche of their peers in secondary schools,” he said.

The Chairman of the event, Professor Olufemi Oludimu, enjoined governments at all levels to discourage child marriage by enforcing free and compulsory education for all children up to junior secondary school.

He said, “Government must remove all barriers that make it difficult for young girls to go to school, including the costs associated with school attendance such as uniforms, extra-school imposed levies and transportation cost.”

In his lecture, Dr Adebayo Aina of the Olabisi Onabanjo University disclosed that the dramatic rise of abusive absurdity of the girl-child is prominent in the Nigerian metropolitan setting.

Dr Aina posited that poverty, which is very prevalent in the country, had also contributed greatly to the abuse being experienced by the girl-child.

According to him, “government needs to vigorously pursue poverty alleviation measures to ameliorate the general socio-economic status of majority of her citizens.”