Nigeria’s Child Rights Act 2003 was assented to by then President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in September 2003.
Since then, UNICEF had continued to partner with the media, communication institutions, and other development partners in diverse ways to promote child’s rights and mainstream it in all core areas working against children usually emanating from ignorance of what constitutes a child’s rights.
At the opening ceremony of an event to brainstorm on the critical steps for disseminating Child’s Rights messages to boost commitment on the part of the media and educators, UNICEF Chief Field Officer in Enugu state, Juliet Chiluwe, challenged journalists and Lecturers of the National Polytechnic to work towards promoting the implementation of the Child Rights Act in the country.
Speaking at the Two-day Training Of Trainers On The Presentation Of The Child Rights Curriculum Reporting For Polythecnics in Enugu, Juliet said, the mainstreaming of the Child’s Rights curriculum at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka Anambra State is a tremendous success having been implemented as a general studies course, thereby, making it compulsory for in-school mass communicators.
This success has been applauded by scholars as others were urged to emulate the track record to enhance child rights reportage in Nigeria.
The UNICEF Chief Field Officer for Enugu State said communicating children’s rights has huge challenges, hence the training will seek to address a whole range of abuses that has hindered a child’s brain development.
“A broad range of abuses against children emanating from ignorance of what constitutes a child’s right.
“This is where the media has a critical role to play, and am proud to say that media remains UNICEF s very close ally in ensuring a wider information spread on issues of child rights.
“This great opportunity helps to broaden the scope of knowledge and exposure of the communication students and practitioners of Mass Communication by way of infusion of the Child Rights concerns, which are also topical concerns for human development
Earlier, the Chief Information Officer,
Federal Ministry of Information and Culture Zira Zakka Nagga, while commending UNICEF for their commitment to ensuring the protection of the Rights of the Nigerian Child said the new curriculum will bridge the inequality gap in the country.
“This New curriculum and manual for Journalism / Mass Communications as well as instructors guide have been developed to fill these gaps for Polytechnics.
“Given the above, this will facilitate the movement of all journalists from the present level of Child Rights awareness to a certain degree of knowledge thereby bringing about the needed paradigm shift in reporting children and exposing them to the rights to survival, development, protection, and participation. ”
On his part, UNICEF Communication Specialist Geoffrey Njoku also called on the media to do more investigative reporting to
address some of the salient issues bothering child rights abuses in Nigeria.
“All I want you to do is to focus on the situation of children in Nigeria. Look at what the issues are, what the multiple degradations children suffer in Nigeria, pick them one by one and I mentioned seven, the area of Nutrition, the area of Education, the area of Social Protection, in the area of protection of violence against children, there are so many others, in the area of climate change, how does climate change affect children, these are all issues that we highlighted today.
“Now we hope that the media can support us, do some level of investigation about how these things are affecting children, and call out to the government to what these issues are and what we should be doing about them.”
