CHILD SERVICES IN NIGERIA: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
Child service is not prominent in the part of the world I come from, and I will say I have not really heard about their exploits as a result of the fact that they are not all that active. I have seen only in foreign movies how child services operates. With the way children are handled in most parts of the country, where people, especially in the northern part of the country, give birth to children and are unable to take care of them, giving them up to the streets to beg for alms, if there was an active child care service in Nigeria, this practice would not be a norm in the north.
I have seen firsthand parents not deserving of their kids. Imagine a parent who will give birth to kids and will refuse to provide their basic needs to them. A child who is not yet a teenager is already facing trauma like an adult would as a result of total negligence by a parent. Having a parent that will provide food for themselves and will tell the kids to go look for what to eat, even when those children are not of age to do so. I have seen cases of children dropping out of school because the parents could not afford to pay their fees, sometimes due to lack, but mostly as a result of negligence from the side of the parent. Some might be rendered the support with the fee money but will still not pay and will use the money which was supposed to be used as a fee for a different thing entirely.
What I understand as the responsibilities of child service in the developed countries, as I have seen in movies, is that the child services protect the child the best way that they can, even if it means taking this child or ward from the care of his parents and putting this child or ward in the system in the process of looking for a better and loving family for the child or ward that will take good care of the kid.
This is important as it reduces the possibilities of grooming future criminals in the society. A child that does not feel loved or was not properly brought up most times becomes a nuisance to the society, which will further result in a future full of nuisances in the society since all that a nuisance will reproduce, if not with the grace of God, is a nuisance like themselves.
There is no system in Nigeria that was created purposely to act as child service, to my own knowledge. We only have a department under the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development known as the Child Development Department, the child protection area of responsibility of UNICEF, and some other NGOs that usually play or serve the functions of a child service, which to me is not as strong as what I know of some top foreign countries. And what they do here is not close to enough help for these suffering kids, being the fact that a lot of these groups don’t know half of the problems children are going through in the country.
Thank you for reading. My name is @rishagamo, and this is my response to the Hive Learners Weekly Featured Content Week 165 Episode 02: CHILD SERVICE.
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