By Christiana Ekpa
The House of Representatives has called on State Governors to adopt at least five motherless children as part of efforts geared toward ending the menace of Out-of-School Children in the country.
Chairman, House Committee on Women Affairs, Hon. Kafilat Ogbara who gave the charge 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.
While applauding CALDEV Founder, Hon. Salam for prioritizing children related initiative whom she observed have been excluded from various programmes organised by public institutions for women, youths, physically challenged and for all strata and all manner of people.
“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 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 organizing 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.
“When we give our young people a voice then we are preparing for our future and I’ve told young people that I’ve come across to let them know that there is future anywhere, the future is now. So, we need to start including our young people in everything that we do, so that the leadership talent and.level that they need to get to, will be done naturally, because they have been part of the process from the beginning.”
“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 the percentage of children that are out of school as we speak in Nigeria is one child out of three children is out of school everywhere in Nigeria as we speak.
“For your information, we have about 60 percent of this number of children that are girls. Apart from that, this population constitutes about 15 percent of the world population of children that are out of school. So, it means Nigeria is taking the large chunk of the world population of children that are out of school and this calls for an emergency, it calms for our proactiveness, it calls for all of us to be called to act.”
