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…Advocates girl child protection
Worried by the rate of moral decadence among the youths and the crime rate perpetrated by adolescents, a Non-governmental organisation, the Kingdom Women, has called on the government at all levels to start paying attention to marriages, saying couples must be mandated to undergo parenting institute before their marriage.
The faith-based organisation which also decried the failing parenting and communal parenting in the society, said that most couples are failing in their responsibilities to cater for their children and that the society is currently suffering the lapses with attendant rising crime rate and social vices.
Speaking at a press conference to commemorate the 2022 International Children’s Day with the theme:” A better future for Every Child”, the convener of the organisation, Mrs Adun Akinyemiju, said that the organisation sees a transformed nation through children and identified with them. She called on parents to pay special attention to their children in order to ensure proper upbringing.
Akinyemiju, who said that though the organisation has a particular focus on the girl child, noted that girls might not be able to fulfill their potential due to many societal challenges confronting them such as poor education, misplaced gender roles, ignorance, rape, molestation, child marriage and other forms of abuse.
On her part, Mrs Anthonia Daramola of the Kingdom Women Movement said that parenting values are fast diminishing in the country, saying that there is a need for the government to look into marriages before it is too late quickly. She said certain criteria must be met to show the readiness of the couples to train the children before going for marriage.
Daramola, who identified failing parenting as the bane of moral decadence and the increasing crime rate in the country, said that every couple must also understand the need to take parenting very seriously, adding that it is not enough to get married and have children, parents must be made to train their children and ensure they are morally upright for the good of the society.
The NGO said that parenting in the 80s is totally different from parenting in the 21st century and the computer age, adding that every parent must also monitor their children and their access to social media, which they described as another factor responsible for moral decadence.
“This is not the time parent will ignore their children, they need special attention, we must also understand the social media in order to effectively monitor our children and what they use it to do, moral values are fast diminishing due to lack of attention for children by the parents,” she said.
Meanwhile,Akinyemiju charged the government to look into the plight of Nigerian children, saying that 10.5 million children are out of school in Nigeria, which, she said, is the highest rate in the world. She added that the figure indicates that one-third of Nigerian children are not in school, and one in five out-of-school children in the world is a Nigerian.
