Schools or snares?

In a country where the supremely well-to-do and the average wealthy shove their kids out to foreign shores to study, while vast swathes of children here are essentially fed the crumbs of ignorance, a new terrifying trend is emerging to add to the already nightmarish catalogue of horrors.

It was in the dead of the night of 14th April, 2014 that the daredevil Boko Haram sect seared an unforgettable horror into our national psyche and consciousness with the brazen abduction of hundreds of female students from a school in Chibok, Borno State. Since then a country and a world has been reeling as one from that horrible attack on human security and civility. Like a spectre, insecurity has continued to stalk the land, and now, it finds a soft, vulnerable target in children as if the cringe-worthy cocktail of difficulties they already experience is not enough.

To add grave insults to our already gaping wounds of insecurity gleefully inflicted by the Boko Haram sect, Fulani herdsmen and rampaging kidnappers, a string of kidnappings has hit secondary schools around the countrynotably in Lagos recently. In the unraveling nightmare, armed bandits break into schools at night and pick away innocent students to be held as hostages until ransoms are paid. What will happen in the unlikely event that terrified parents fail to raise the money demanded is anyone`s painful guess. This prevalent state of affairs while it mirrors the surging insecurity sweeping through the country is particularly portentous for the future of a country already making a beeline for the precipice.

Now that they have become targets of predatory hawkers of death and insecurity, we must rise at once to defend the children who would usher in posterity and serve as the bastions and custodians of the fact that we ever lived through these times. As much as the signs are not exactly apocalyptic just yet, an alarmed nation must arise to confront this new challenge that threatens our children in all their innocence. They already confront challenges that children should not ordinarily face anywhere in the world. Living as it is in Nigeria is an uphill task especially for children. They bear the brunt of the harsh economic realities swirling in the country and the storms of insecurity which rise time and time again in places across the country. It is an already difficult situation as it is.

The repugnant reluctance of some State Legislatures to give domestic effect to the Child Rights Act of 2003 also leaves a particularly sour taste in the mouth. This is because their impaired rationalization seems to show that they do not really think that the interests of children should occupy prime place in discourses and policy making. This reluctance definitely has religious and cultural undertones. But it seems to betray most spectacularly the lack of political will that has had such a crippling effect on governance since the country transited to democracy in 1999.

Children should never be allowed to age before they get to that stage. They should be protected at all costs from all religious, cultural, political, psychological and political upheavals. The government at all levels can greatly help with this singular and historic task. Kenechukwu Obiezu, Abuja.