The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade I, spoke on the vital importance of family unity and successful marriage in shaping and modelling children ahead of their transition into youth and adolescent ages.
In a statement signed by his media spokesperson, Bode Durojaiye, Alaafin stated this while addressing pupils from the Federal College of Education ( Special ) Basic School in Durbar area of Oyo town.
According to the statement, Oba Owoade said that a working child protection system is a prerequisite for any nation aspiring for growth and development.
He stated that planning for development without enforceable set of laws, policies, regulations and services across social sectors could only amount to a futile exercise.
According to him, “children represent the future and ensuring their healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern of all, adding that it is a fact that nations that experience prosperity are where family stability is jealously guided.
“To achieve global development goals, Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for the protection of children in and out of the home. Similarly, Nigeria’s Child Rights Act 2003 provides for children’s rights.
“This explains why, in spite of being regarded as precious gifts from God and best hope for the future, children are still subjected to abuses and neglect.”
Commenting on the diminishing value system, harped role of the family in maintaining a stable and crime free society, which he said cannot be over-emphasized.
“The increasing rate of family marriage breakdown and its attendant effect on the children and the society at large has become ticking time-bomb because it has given rise to increase in criminal activities by the children of the broken homes.
“It is important that we recognize the role of marriage in building a strong society, especially if we want to give children the best chance in life.What you learn from a very early age has a great deal to say about the person you will eventually become and the life you lead.”
The Paramount Rule, accompanied by his Queen, Ayaba Abiwunmi, she stressed that the fundamental rights of children are being encroached upon on a daily basis without appropriate sanction.
She said, “this is so, not because we do not have laws and policies on child protection but due to lack of social consensus and political will to successfully implement laws and policies. It could be heartbreaking reading about inhuman and degrading treatment being meted out to Nigerian children both at home and institutional level.
“In some schools, it is still usual to see children being subjected to all forms of corporal punishments. Child abuse also occurs at homes when parents unduly yell, threaten, reject or ignore the child. It could be shocking seeing the extent at which some parents rain curses on their children. Some even fail to provide basic needs, adequate food, clothing, hygiene and medical care or support for their children.”
She added, “all these can lead to interference with the child’s normal social or psychological development leaving the child with lifelong psychological scars. Aso, sexual abuses, which include but not limited to child marriage is a form of child abuse that has become a scourge in our society. Cases abound where fathers, uncles, guardians, male teachers, clerics, among others, have sexually molested under-age girls.
“Some engage in child violation for ritual purposes and most time this leads to mental disorder on the part of abused child with perpetrators escaping sanction, here is an extreme weakness of child protection systems in Nigeria, and more worrisome is that there seems to be no reprieve in sight for the victims as children’s right advocates complain of weak child protection structures in the country.”
Alaafin further explained that the only way citizens can cease to be prisoners of their historical geographical spaces, times, bounded by cultural languages and societies into which they were born, is to completely revolutionize their historiography.
‘’The key for national reconstruction lies in accepting the past as source of generation, as this this will enable our present cede to merge with our past and further into an enlarged future. Only then can we really identify with what constitutes our real local resource base on which to build virile healthy future, for ourselves and our descendants”.
Oba Owoade urged Nigerians to support and be patient with the present administration in its sincere and painstaking efforts at transforming the country.
Alaafin further stressed that the traditional value system of the Nigerian society like most other African societies, is characterized by such enduring features as collectivism, loyalty to authority and community, truthfulness, honesty, hard-work, tolerance, love for others, mutual harmony, and co-existence and identification of individual with one another.
He said, “other distinctive features of the Nigerian traditional society are abhorrence for theft, incest and high values for life. Stealing was considered extremely disgraceful and lives were highly valued. All these values which made society secured and safe have all gradually been discarded or lost.
“However, new obnoxious values have succeeded the lost ones, as citizens are often acquainted with modernity and civilization.”
While urging the pupils to be serious about their studies in order to be responsible citizens in the future, Oba Owoade also enjoined management of the School not to relent on its oars in imparting adequate knowledge on the special need pupils.
