Family, marriage collapse fuels youth crime — Alaafin

The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Akeem Owoade, on Tuesday, said that an effective child protection system is a prerequisite for any nation aspiring to achieve growth and development. He also warned that the collapse of marriages and homes is fuelling youth crime.

He stated this while addressing pupils from the Federal College of Education (Special) Basic School, Durbar, Oyo town.

A statement by his Director of Media and Publicity, Bode Durojaiye, in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, said that planning for development without an enforceable set of laws, policies, regulations, and services across social sectors could only amount to a futile exercise.

He said, “Children represent the future and ensuring their healthy growth and development ought to be a prime concern of all. It is a fact that nations that experience prosperity are where family stability is jealously guarded.

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.”

He lamented that today, the fundamental rights of children are being encroached upon daily without appropriate sanctions.

This is so, not because we do not have laws and policies on child protection, but due to a 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 at the institutional level.

In some schools, it is still usual to see children being subjected to all forms of corporal punishment. Child abuse also occurs at home when parents unduly yell, threaten, reject or ignore him or her. It could be shocking seeing the extent to 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.

“All these can lead to interference with the child’s normal social or psychological development, leaving the child with lifelong psychological scars. Also, sexual abuses, which include but are not limited to child marriage, are 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 underage girls.

“Some engage in child abuse for ritual purposes and most times this leads to mental disorder on the part of the abused child, with perpetrators escaping sanction.”

Alaafin further explained that the only way citizens can cease to be prisoners of their historical and geographical spaces, times, and cultural boundaries is to completely revolutionise their historiography.

“The key to national reconstruction lies in accepting the past as a source of generation, as this will enable our present 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 a virile, healthy future, for ourselves and our descendants.”

Owoade, therefore, urged Nigerians to support and be patient with the present administration in its sincere and painstaking efforts to transform the country.

“The increasing rate of family marriage breakdown and its attendant effect on the children and the society at large has become a ticking time-bomb because it has given rise to an increase in criminal activities by the children from broken homes.

“It is important that we recognise 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.”