The Misconception Of Child Abuse & Human Rights Exploitation

Protocol:

What is it saying, Child Abuse or Human Rights, if the people are still hungry of food and don't even know where their next meal was going to come from? Human rights crusade shouldn't only be a paper war but also a material war. Meaning that the people should be fostered with everything necessary to make them happy, confronting man-made abuses to man with unsparing drastic measure.

It is delectable to welcome in our midst the best of the crop of individuals who are bent to protecting human rights in Nigeria to mark our end of year party and also mark the human rights day. Many of us were not invited, and this does not mean that those who were invited have special features to us. We also thank those who would have been with us present here today but were not due to one thing or the other best known to them, but we know that they are in good spirit with us. We preach egalitarianism, and may I thank those who have been with us since we started this organization in 2007. In a special way may I thank all the governors East and South-South states. I would also thank the leader of the Action Congress (AC) in Rivers State for his unrelenting approach to help the Niger Delta Children attain a direction in life. May I also thank the Commissioner of Urban Development Rivers State, Barrister Osima Gina, for his doggedness to seeing that the Niger Delta children have a voice. My sincere thanks goes to the Honourable Commissioner for Information Rivers State, High Chief Ogbonna Nwuke who always provide unedited information for all in Rivers State and always warns that parents should always monitor and train their children for they are the leaders of tomorrow. I have personally received numerous interview requests, but I must apologize that those I wasn't able to grant doesn't mean neglect – time and chance should be hold responsible. Therefore, I am prepared to elaborate more on the perspective of our great organization.

Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA):

PACA is an organization that has been registered in the minds of many, home and abroad, through our humanitarian and literary measures to combat Child Abuse in our society. It is a non-profit organization that provides a portal for all but most especially young people to find inspiration, express their rights, access information and get involved in improving their local and global communities on the fight against Child Abuse. Being a humanist, after long years of research, I have come to the affirmative that Child Abuse kills a child faster than the world's most dreaded virus, the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) does. While HIV is a killer virus, Child Abuse renders a child emotionally, mentally, spiritually and psychologically malnourished as long as that child lives. Africa has a large percentage of unreported Child Abuse cases. Children's rights are often relegated to the background in Africa against the African unequivocal tradition that centres opinion and decision-making in the milieu solely on the elders. Though PACA is not against any tradition, it is however against any tradition that abuses or represses the Child's Rights.

How The Child's Rights Are Repressed:

As an author or as generally used, a writer, I have always argued in my articles that what many people refer to, as Child Abuse, is not it. In one of my articles entitled, “Surname: Why Not Mother's Name”, I explicably narrated what should be seen as Child Abuse against many people's misconception of a child hawker on the street as Child Abuse. That article is implored here thus for its relevance:

Surname: Why Not Mother's Name?

In any ancient African family where there is no male child, emotional disturbances and feelings of being bereft of human beings, become rampant even if all the female children there are notable people in the society. This contemptuous attitude towards the female child is caused by the fact or gullible tradition that forbids women from inheriting from their father's property, as the male children do.

Every year, the African father, especially the Christian, celebrates what is called 'Fathers Day'. But, not all fathers are fathers, some are husbands. An African father feels that when the female child inherits from his property, she would prosper her would-be husband with it. He feels that training the girl-child is useless to him, but beneficial to her future husband. What a primordial sense! This is a child he flogs and sends on errands the same manner he does to the male child. This is a child that calls him father.

This is girl who was not asked to shy away from certain works in the family because she was a female. Yet, he would not father her, but would only erase her name and deny her inheritance because of tradition. He only calls her, “my daughter”, but when it comes to training her or making her an heiress of his property, he gives his son more preference. How bizarre!

In many homes today, it is the girl-child that spearheads the family financially, even from her matrimonial home, she does not mind only the problems besetting her immediate family, but the problems in her father's house becomes the fore in her priorities. She supports the family in no less ways, to see that she maintains her root, which only takes her titular, while the male-child that is held in high esteem may turn a criminal, a prodigal son, a hooligan, or contemptuous person, all the family legacy may go to him because he is a man.

This girl-child begins another phase of labour in her matrimonial home, working to please her husband. Swallowing all forms of debasements on her integrity. She begins to cope with the man's greedy nature, many concubines he keeps out of matrimony, how many bottles of beer he drinks, people he “dashes” money.

While the man lives on in marriage, the woman dies slowly in it. Because, it is a man's world. She goes to work in the morning, like the man, only to leave office before the office closes in other to cook for the man. She washes in the house and still carries her crest at hand, not knowing if she had pleased Mr. Right so much if he comes back.

Mr. Right would not appreciate this woman for her immense efforts towards the welfare of the family, but would begin to nag, asking, “Where is my food? Why is sand on the floor of the room? Here smells! Why did you not do this? Why did you not do that? Not minding, the amiable woman would obey her man and return to the kitchen. While the man relaxes in the sitting room watching television.

The woman begins to prepare the children for dinner and for sleep, by washing them, by dressing them up, by making sure that they are secured, while Mr. Right would be snoring in deep sleep in the sitting room. The woman won't still ignore him, she would wake him to come and take his bath, so as to be prepared for the night's sleep.

While sleeping, Mr. Right does not want to know what happens to the children, it is the duty of the woman. He often complains at his family, “Woman! You and your children are disturbing me!” He might leave the room for them to seek comfort elsewhere.

After battling with this in the night, the woman wakes before Mr. Right for the morning chores. She would wash the plates used for eating the night before, prepare the children for school and even comes to prepare “Mr. Right” the “pet” to take his bath, eat and dress him for his office. Yet, Mr. Right will not say “thank you” to the woman. What women see in the world is much, and it's only God that knows why it is so.

When the children need maximum care and training from the man, he would not be available. And when they remember that dad is rigid, a nag, they won't go again to tell him what his responsibilities are, thereby resulting to the man being free from his responsibilities. It is still this woman that the children would run or turn to.

The woman would not force them to meet their father, rather she might sell her valuables to ensure that the children are trained, not even minding that they are not bearing her name, not even minding that if she dies, no body remembers her name; everyone remembers the man's.

The man's paramount happiness in life for shying away from his responsibilities is that his relations have seen that he has paid his duty, at least, by marrying and bringing the hapless children he can not carter for into the earth. He may go from one beer parlour to another drinking to stupor. The man has no blame and should not be blamed, but the society should be blamed for seeing any unmarried man as a fool.

When the woman must have finished struggling to train the children and God blesses them and they are prosperous, Mr. Right comes back to claim ownership as their father. And if the children want to do anything funny to him, the amiable Mama would plead on his behalf. The children will forgive because the woman (who cannot stop loving them) has spoken.

When the woman is pregnant for this man, he may have no respect for her. He may go to “chase” other 'fresh' girls outside matrimony. He leaves the woman to solely bear the punishment his amorous libido had caused. The woman begins to carry the foetus happily. She does not leave her home chores, she still does them. She carries this for a period of nine months, while the man practices his usual infidelity. But assuming he were the woman, the whole world would hear of it.

When the woman goes to the labour room, it is another experience. She begins to call Jesus Christ. If that does not work, she begins to call Jehovah. These and more suffering the woman bears only for the man to have a name. Why not the mother's name?

Last Note: I did not mean to be a feminist, it is just for discourse.

How Not To Define Child Abuse:

What many people refer or define to/as Child Abuse is not Child Abuse speaking the truth. Many people see children hawking in the street as the potent definition of Child Abuse, but scantly it is not. What is Child Abuse is the undertone why the children were hawking in the street. Mind you! We do not have a government that provides for the poor in our society. Child Abuse, in my own opinion, is the right we purposely extricate from our children or other toddlers because we see ourselves as being 'ignorantly' superior. Sometimes we beat excessively these children when they offended or even didn't. We cause them physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological injuries and call it disciplining. I am not subscribing that a child should not be disciplined; after all, it is written that the whip makes the child wiser, but we should constrain how we apply this whip. I strongly believe that different people with different cultures, and different persons with different personalities. Is it an abuse to a child when in a community it is imperative that the child must learn basket making from childhood? If it is, what then happens if the old people in the community die and the children didn't learn basket making for the avoidance of Child Abuse? What I see as Child Abuse is when any cosmos obligations is subjected onto the child depriving him or her the fundamental rights of going to school, association and freedom of express, and forced the child to child-soldiering and forcefully labouring the child. Do we know that some children derive joy trading because it is what they have seen prior their parents do like most people beat their wives because that is what they see their fathers do? I see Child Labour as trafficking children to labour in the farm or elsewhere in chains with bruises and sometimes they are killed in the cause of their 'masters' trying to force them to work. But sometimes it is the parents or guidance of the children that rent them out for the stipend they could earn from their 'masters'. Suffice this to poverty? So, if a child hawking in the street were Child Abuse, what would we say to a child who left primary school or didn't go at all and was given to a man or a woman to learn handwork or a trade when the parents found they are incapacitated to train the child attain higher western education? The worst is sending the girl children to early marriage. Sometimes to a man supposed to be the father. Sometimes the bride price paid the parents is used by the parents to buy animal that could bear children and they would sell them for money. It is a pity! What children suffer because they don't have say in Africa? And when a child tries to explain an issue as against the wish of the elders, the child is termed a renegade. That is what PACA is combating to correct in the society.

The Rights For All:

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was it who wrote a special document, which declares the rights beneficiary for all. UNITED NATION'S UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS was the document. And she's the wife of the United States president who ruled the USA. from 1933-1945. According to the document, we are equal and free; we should not discriminate; we have the right to life; we are not slaves to anybody or organization; we are not subject of torture; we all have the same right to use the law; we are all protected by the law; we all must have fair treatment by fair courts; no unfair detainment; we have the right for public trial; we are innocent until proven guilty; we have the right to privacy; the freedom to move; the right to asylum; the right to a nationality; the right to marry and have a family; the right to own things and share them; freedom of thought; free to say what we want; the right to meet where we like; the right to democracy; the right to social security; the right to work and be paid; the right to play; a bed and some food; the right to education; culture and copyright; a free and fair world; our responsibilities; and no one has the right to avoid us from enjoying these rights.

Thank you.

This is a speech delivered by Odimegwu Onwumere on the 20 Dec. 2008 at the end of year party and the commemoration of the human rights day of Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Oyigbo, Rivers State. +2348032552855. [email protected]

Odimegwu Onwumere

Odimegwu Onwumere

Odimegwu Onwumere

Odimegwu Onwumere