OpinionOPINION: IN DEFENCE OF VULNERABLE NIGERIANS

OPINION: IN DEFENCE OF VULNERABLE NIGERIANS

THEWILL APP ADS 2

The latest report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund, which claims that the population of children involved in child labour has risen to 160 million worldwide, is not by any standard a palatable one. The report titled, ‘Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, Trends and the Road Forward’ was released recently on the sidelines of the 109th Session of the International Labour Conference holding in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The new estimates are a wake-up call. We cannot stand by while a new generation of children is put at risk,” the report concluded.

While we mull over this disturbing news, it is important to remember that there is a particular sin that we all commit in the name of culture which cuts across ethnic and religious borders. This sin predates Nigeria’s independence from colonial rule and remains nourished till the present day. It has to do with the violation of women and children’s fundamental human rights.

In spite of the existence of the Child Rights Act and the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law, it persists.

The VAPP law, among other provisions, prohibits female circumcision or genital mutilation, forceful ejection from home and harmful widowhood practices. It prohibits abandonment of spouse, children and other dependents without sustenance, as well as battery and harmful traditional practices.

It provides a legislative and legal framework for the prevention of all forms of violence against vulnerable persons, especially women and girls. This is a happy ending for a 14-year advocacy and passed through the three regimes of the National Assembly.

The law also prohibits economic abuse, forced isolation and separation from family and friends. It disallows substance attack, incest, indecent exposure and actions depriving other people of liberty, among others. It also intends to eliminate violence in private and public life and provide maximum protection and effective remedies for victims of violence, as well as punishment for offenders.

Looking at these spiraling provisions, the question that is as important as the law itself is; How far have we fared as a nation, in keeping to these laws and its provisions?

It is obvious that Nigeria urgently needs a higher level of initiative and creativity to address the ethnicity-driven challenges currently facing it, confront the forces behind human rights violations in the country and protect the masses while revitalising the nation’s economy.

The above revelation becomes more meaningful when one remembers that justice is more of external actions than interior emotions or passions, that it is rendering to each person what properly belongs to him or hers and what is equal, fair and balanced in any relationship.

Without minding what others may say if this change of heart is adopted in our society, it will not only herald something new that will help to check inhuman acts against vulnerable people, but announce a civil society where justice and love reign supreme.

The tendency to ignore this call is always high because while many will view it as a dangerous fiction without merit, others may see nothing wrong in those acts, which they are likely wave aside as mere cultural practices.

Ironically, from what sociologists are saying, culture is that realm of ends expressed in art, literature, religion, and morals for which, at best, we live. This definition, no doubt, places the denial of women’s rights to inheritance of late husband’s property as a direct opposite of culture.

One point that most people, who are hooked on this act, particularly the violations of widows’ rights, fail to remember is that there is an amazing democracy about death. Indeed, it is always easy to observe that something is seriously wrong with our social system and human tragedies do not occur by accident, but by a programme of planned inequality. Regrettably, it is difficult to admit that we are all involved in this alliance for injustice. At different times and places, we have seen widows experience these social pangs in silence.

Curiously, media practitioners have seen culture lately gone the wrong way, but they assumed it was the right thing. They have watched traditional rulers redefine culture in the image of their actions, but viewed it as normal. The have overtly become more cautious than courageous in their reportage of wicked cultural practices.

This failure of the media to study the cultural failures and inform the masses has, in recent years, resulted in situations where traditional rulers persuaded their subjects to endorse and applaud cultural practices that were harmful to their lives and existence.

Civil Society Organisations and faith-based groups, formerly known for educating the masses, no longer see themselves as problem solvers or watchdogs of society. Rather, they now assume a high ground that they do not understand, thereby leaving the masses that initially depended on them confused.

Government has become the greatest culprit of this injustice to widows and other less privileged people through its failure to provide good health care facilities, accessible and qualitative education, funding for social housing, minimum wage protection for widows, welfare benefits for the poor and vulnerable people, employment protection, shelters for women and adequate child care centres or laws that adequately defend the rights of widows.

To reverse this trend, the most important instrument to achieve this lies in government willingness to fully domesticate and enforce 1995 Beijing Declaration.

The declaration, among other things, upholds the universal human rights and other international human right instruments, in particular, the convention on the elimination of forms of discriminations against women, the convention on the rights of the child, as well as the declaration on the elimination of violence against women and the declaration on the rights to development.

It also ensures the full implementation of the human rights of women and the girl-child as inalienable, integral and indivisible parts of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

It will also be rewarding if our school libraries are equipped with cultural materials, so that students can carry out research and get valuable information that will help promote, protect and preserve our culture objective for posterity. While the media, civil service organizations and faith-based groups are encouraged to speak against injustice, another urgent imperative for the government is to recognise that failure to take care of widows, orphans and other less privileged people will result in many children taking to the streets.

As we already know, the streets are reputed for breeding all kinds of criminals and social misfits who constitute the real threats in the form of armed robbers, thugs, drug abusers, drunkards, prostitutes, who give our society a bad name.

We should use our resources to fight the undemocratic and criminal tendencies in us in order to usher in the truly egalitarian society that we all yearn for. This pivotal step must be taken. To make this enduring as well as bear the expected fruit, let us commence first by restructuring ourselves as a people. No matter how beautiful a policy appears, no matter how strong an institution tends to be, we always have deconstructionists who can undermine it. Bearing this in mind, our primary concern should be to work out modalities for instituting a reorientation plan that will erase the unpatriotic tendencies in us.

•Utomi contributed this piece viajeromeutomi@yahoo.com

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