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The House of Representatives has called on state governors to adopt at least five motherless children as part of efforts to end the menace of out-of-school children in the country.
Chairman of the House Committee on Women Affairs, Kafilat Ogbara (APC) gave the advice during the 4th day of the ongoing National Children Leadership Conference organized by Children of African Leadership and Values Development Initiative (CALDEV) founded by Hon. Bamidele Salam (PDP. Oyo).
The lawmaker observed that children have for long been excluded from various programmes organised by public institutions for women, youths, physically challenged and for all strata and all manner of people.
According to her, “The impact has been very wonderful, a lot of children have been able to express themselves in terms of acting, singing and doing a number of different things showcasing their talents and learning a lot of things that would naturally not learn in school. So, this is a very good initiative, it’s a very laudable programme.
“For government policy, I want to believe that the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is one a father, and a man that cares about the young people.
“This is why in his last national speech, he told us that he’s going to be organising a conference for young people across the nation. And this is one of the ideas that we think will be able to affect the lives of our young people generally positively”.
Continuing, Ogbara said “My Clarion call, first of all, is for all of us as individuals, you don’t have to be rich, all of us could do it, to adopt a child today. A child that is out of school today, because of the percentage of children that are out of school as we speak in Nigeria, is one child out of three children.
“For your information, we have about 60 per cent of this number of children that are girls. Apart from that this population constitutes about 15 per cent of the world population of children that are out of school. So, it means Nigeria is taking the large chunk of the world’s population of children that are out of school and this calls for an emergency; it calls for our proactiveness.
“So, we need to act as mothers, as parents and as policymakers. As a government, if our governors can adopt five children who are out of school, this will go a long way to remove the huge number of children and put them back to school.
“So, these are things we need to do as soon as possible because when we speak about children being out of school and we are speaking about a better Nigeria, the betterment of Nigeria is ahead and these our children that will become that future”.
On his part, Country Director of the Plan International Nigeria, Mr. Charles Usie underscored the need for young Nigerians, especially the participants to translate the knowledge acquired from their various schools into skills that will solve human problems.
He said: “We encouraged you to go to school, you’ve gone to school. What you get in school is knowledge and knowledge is what you know, how the world is, you get to learn new things but I want to leave this challenge with you.
“For you to become a very successful person in life, you need to translate that knowledge into skills, knowledge alone cannot make you progress in life”
Also speaking, Abdulsamad Dasuki (PDP, Sokoto), noted that the evolvement of social media has created a wide gap between the older and younger generations of Nigerians.
He said: “I strongly believe it’s high time we start having inter-generations coming together so that we can share knowledge.”
In his remarks, Executive Vice Chairman, of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Aminu Maida, who was represented by Nafisat Usman described participants as those who will shape the future of Nigeria, maintained that the younger generations have a better advantage than the older generations because of the advent of technology.
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