Lagos — Across the country today some privileged children would be engaged in different activities to mark the International Children's Day whereas the vast majority of other children are in the firm grip of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, disease, squalour, war, slavery and other forms of bondage.

The celebration of this special day, set apart to appreciate children, has become for many multi-national companies involved in children's products, a day to show case these products more than a day for the entire adult population of the country to soberly reflect on the condition of all the children, especially the millions that are disadvantaged.

Among this unfortunate number, are the about 10 million children who are said to be out of school, swelling the population of illiterates in a country that should have wiped out illiteracy several years ago, given her resource base. Efforts to educate these children, especially the Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme have, so far, failed and need to be urgently re-engineered to ensure that these leaders of tomorrow receive at least, basic education.

The poverty ravaging the parents of most of these children, occasioned by unemployment or retrenchment has brought with it, hunger and diseases for most of these children who have, due to their dire circumstances, taken to the streets where they are exposed to sexual abuse, kidnappers and ritualists as well as adults ready to introduce them to lives of crime. Infants are not faring much better as statistics show that the under five years deaths and malnourishment are staggering at between 20 and 45 percent.

Those who manage to make it to public schools do not have sweet stories to tell as most public schools across the country are eyesores. The school buildings are dilapidated, the furniture are either provided by parents or the children squat to learn while basic teaching and learning aides, like computers, laboratory equipment and libraries are largely non-existent.

Most of these facilities and conducive environment for learning are these days available only in private schools whose fees are clearly out of the reach of the average parent. Many of the children that attend public schools, thus, end up half-baked because their teachers are also rarely at work as a result of poor remuneration that compels them to take to petty trading or other quasi-employment to augment their salaries. Due to regular disagreements with government, these teachers are also regularly on strike.

Those whose parents cannot send to school are sold as domestic slaves while the girls among them are handed over to traffickers who easily turn them to prostitutes. In some parts of the country, the kids become mass beggars and ready tools to be used whenever there is any form of unrest.

All these are happening in a society that should invest maximally in its children, knowing that these children represent its future and that any mistakes made in their upbringing would become a time bomb that could detonate at any given time and wipe out whatever legacies succeeding generations may have put in place.

It has been argued severally, and we agree, that the Child Rights Act, passed by the National Assembly, should be adopted by all the states of the federation and implemented faithfully as a way of protecting and promoting the rights of children across the country. At the last count, only a handful of states had adopted the Act. Stakeholders in those states that have not domesticated the law should pressure their legislators to do so as a way forward for children in those states.

It has also become imperative that education should be made free at some basic stages if only to ensure that in the near future, every Nigerian would be able to, at least, read and write. We support any initiative that would take education to where the children can be found, like the nomadic education programme that follows cattle rearers, the education that would follow children of fishers to the seas and that which would go to the market place to teach children that deserted the classrooms for the market place.

Agencies charged with combating child trafficking, child labour, prostitution and other forms of child abuse must redouble their efforts to ensure that these children are not exposed to grave dangers at this stage of their lives.

Families must also be strengthened to take better care of the children. Towards this end, all the tiers of government should utilize the resources at their disposal to create jobs and generally put in place conducive environment for self-employment.

Stakeholders in the education sector must address the sorry state of public schools while the health sector managers must pay closer attention to those diseases that endanger children.

On the whole, Children's Day celebrations must become occasions for serious soul searching, articulation of blueprints or assessment of the process of implementation of child-friendly programmes of governments, not necessarily only occasions for the celebration and showcasing of a few privileged children.