NLC calls for domestication of child rights act

The Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC) has called for the domestication of children’s rights activists in all the states of the Federation to check child labour in Nigeria.

According to a statement signed by President of the congress, Comrade Ayuba Wabba to commemorates 2020 International Child Labour Day, tje workers also demanded increased budgetary allocation to education and health sectors.

Comrade Wabba added that International conventions and national legislation defined child labour as the employment of any child under the age of 18 years in a manner that deprives the child of basic education and development.

He said in Nigeria, the incidence of child labour occured in every state, adding it is estimated that there are at least 15 million children were engaged in child labour.

The NLC boss further  disclosed that “this number perfectly tallies with the number of out of school children in Nigeria – 10 million children who are not able to access primary education and 5 million children who dropped out of junior secondary school.”

He lamented that Nigeria’s crisis of child labour was exacerbated by the Almajiranci culture in northern Nigeria.

He however commended the Northern Governors Forum for taking  a decision to stamp out the Almajiranci culture from their states.

“We urge that the pronouncement is followed up by concrete actions to fully rehabilitate and reintegrate Almajiri children back to the mainstream of society.

“Labour Congress (NLC) demands the domestication of the Children Rights Act in every state of the federation.  We also call on the government at every level to ensure the prioritization of enabling social conditions for optimum upbringing and development of every Nigerian child.

“In this vein, we demand increased budgetary allocation to the education and health sectors and particularly aimed at strengthening the Universal Basic Education Programme and children immunization,” Wabba said

In 2002, the United Nations (UN) through the International Labour Organization (ILO) set aside June 12 for the annual commemoration of the Child Labour Day all over the world.

The objective of the celebration of the Child Labour Day is to call the attention of heads of government, trade union leaders, employers, workers, local authorities, policymakers and civil society activists to the challenges of child labour in order to find sustainable solutions to stamp out this social crisis.

The International Labour Organization at the 87th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC), precisely on June 17, 1999, adopted the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention 182.

The convention, which aims at mobilizing national and international actions for the prohibition and elimination of the most extreme incidences of child labour came into force globally in November 2000.

Nigeria ratified Convention 182 on the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour on October 2, 2002. This convention, just as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has found local contextualization in the Children’s Rights Act passed by the parliament and signed into law by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003.

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