Expert task stakeholders on status of children

A Child Rights Activist with Paulash Community Development Initiative, Charity Anaja, has called on all stakeholders to improve on the care and protection of African children especially Nigerian children.

Anaja made the call while speaking exclusively to Blueprint Weekend when the organisation carried out a youth leadership project at Aduvie International School in Abuja.

She stressed the importance of data collection if the issues affecting children must be tackled, while urging for coordination between government and agencies to enable an accurate data documentation.

According to her, without data it is impossible to improve the status of the African Child, saying perpetrators of Violence Against Children (VAC) have always gone scot free due to the lack of documentation of cases.

“We talk about data because we cannot improve what we cannot measure and one problem Nigeria has in tackling the issues of girl child is coordination.

“Where there is no coordination you cannot have adequate data and that is why it is hard to get people to punish when we talk of these cases.

“Statistics are there but they are vague because there is no true statistics of victims and most times it is guess work so we need coordination,” she said.

She therefore called on agencies charged with protecting children against violence, trafficking, child marriage to do more take the issue of data seriously, while stressing the need for the child rights act to be domesticated in the 36 states of d federation.

“We know that in the northern part of Nigeria more girls are out of school but do we have adequate statistics, and that is because the ministry of women affairs, FIDA and other developmental agencies are not coming together to work and have a united front.

“We need coordination on the part of government and agencies to be able to get accurate data of the issues affecting children,” she stressed.

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