SOBER REFLECTION ON CHILDREN

By Ogbonnaya Amarachi

Yesterday was children's day and many children in Nigeria are far from basic amenities like shleter, food and clothes, which brings me to the question, "Why give birth to so many if you cant take care of them?

I was opportune to visit an orphanage (Royal Diamond Ophanage Home) yesterday through an NGO, Beautiful Onyinye Foundation and was almost in tears when I heard most of their stories, beautiful kids, well taken care of, but you know the value of a mother to a child, it can't be replaced, even though it can be managed.

Kudos to the Lagos State Government on its implementation of the Child Rights Law; if you don't take care of your children well, if you maltreat them, Child welfare will take them away from you and government will provide for them and send them to thse who know their value and need them and before you get them back, you will battle it in court for years.

You see kids on the street hawking, while their mates are in school learning, you hear about abduction of school girls whilst they were in school with so-called security, you hear of sexual molestation against a minor (this one pisses me off to the bone, like how on earth will a man forcefully lie with a little girl and this so-called society will say her dressing seduced him).

You see children been scarred for life through domestic violence, a woman maltreating a little girl all in the name of, "House Help." W

We need to change in this part of the world, we need to re-orientate ourselves because change begins with us. These kids didn't ask to be born into this economy, neither into our lives, we didn't ask for this life, rather God sent them to be blessings to us and if you are tired of this blessing, kindly pass it on. I can't for the life of me understand why people give birth to so many children they can't take care of and end up polluting the society with so many unwanted pollutions in the name of young scarred adults.

You see kids sleeping under the bridges, NGOs are trying, the federal government should throw its weight behind this and make laws that will favor these children, because in the long run, if we loose them, we loose our future heritage.

These kids are important too.