The Executive Chairman of Etsako East Local Government Council in Edo State, Hon. (Princess) Benedicta Attoh has described children as the link between the present society and the future of the nation therefore no efforts must be spared to ensure their proper welfare and upbringing.
According to her, “A lost child is a lost future because children are arrows shot forward. The future of the society is in the hands of children and what we sow in them today is what we shall infallibly reap from the society tomorrow”
The Etsako East Council Chairman advocated the need to promote a national agenda for preventable child death in order to save mother and child from avoidable death across the nation by engaging experienced and sufficient medical practitioners, nurses and midwives to care for mother and child before and after delivery.
“If children are indeed the future of this nation, the time to protect their future is now.”
Hon.(Princess) Benedicta Attoh in her message to celebrate the Nigerian Child and children’s day celebration, frowned against cruel and rampant exploitation of the Nigerian child. “We must protect our children against working long hours in dangerous circumstances in order to allow them access to education.”
She kicked against a tradition that attached higher value to male education than the girl child saying every child is from God and all deserved training in order to protect the society against future danger.
She maintained that there is the need for stringent laws against child abduction, prostitution and child trafficking which she described as inhuman, criminal and a sin against God and humanity.
The Etsako East Council Chairman thanked Governor Godwin Obaseki for providing the enabling environment for the safe delivery of children and safety of mothers with the assurance that government will continue to uphold the various measures that are already in place for the advancement, protection and development of Children.
Attoh who is also a civil society advocate and Child’s Right Defender through her NGO “DreamWorld Leadership Initiative for Girls,” blamed the recent mass failure in the just concluded JAMB examination to too much time devoted to social media rather than reading books.
She maintained that parents were complicit in soliciting for exam malpractice for their children. She tasked parents and guardians to distract their children from social media by compelling them to read books. She described libraries as the memory of the society and stressed the need for educational institutions at all levels to re-emphasize the importance of libraries to education and create library hours in the academic curriculum in order to emphasize the importance of books and learning to study by reading.
“Etsako East will continue to provide the enabling environment and support in promoting the welfare of children. The council will not hesitate in invoking the wrath of the law against parents and guidance who have formed the habit of subjecting children to various forms of inhuman treatment like educational deprivation, starvation and degrading treatment all in the name of discipline” the statement added.
