30 Years After CRC Adoption, Nigerian Children Still Suffer Injustice
Chioma Umeha Three decades after Nigeria adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Bill is still existing in papers in many of the States as only 25 of them have ratified it, even as 12 States, mainly from the North are yet to domesticate the law. This is just as anxious child protection experts announced to journalists on Monday that poverty, community disintegration, family dysfunction, and child vulnerability are drawbacks to the actualisation of the Child Rights Laws in the country. According to them, failure in meeting the developmental needs of the Nigerian children makes him a victim of several forms of violence, the consequence is non-implementation of the Act in the country. Among the experts was Sharon Oladiji, Child Protection Specialist, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said at a two-day media dialogue on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC@30) held in Lagos who gave a breakdown of the slow trend in the Bill’s domesticatio