As the world makes effort to combat poverty, Stepping Stones Nigeria Child Empowerment Foundation (SSNCEF) underscores the link between child abuse and poverty; showcasing factors responsible for negligence and abandonment of children by parents and the society at large.
The International day for the Eradication of Poverty has been observed every year since 1993, when the General Assembly of the United Nations by resolution 47/196, designed the day to promote awareness on the need to eradicate poverty in all countries particularly in developing countries; a need that has become a development priority. Year in year out, the world sets out themes to commemorate the day and seek workable strategies in proffering sustainable solutions to the issue. Nigeria and Akwa Ibom State in particular will need to explore non conventional strategies of tackling poverty related child abuse concerns and not just create awareness unaccompanied by means of closing out or at least reducing poverty to its barest minimum.
Child abuse cases have become prevalent in past recent years especially with the turn to ‘spiritual remedy’ to provide answers for inexplicable situations in our cultural setting. Children have most recently become the victims of circumstances ranging from change in family structure, ignorance, religious profiteering, and lack of education all to which poverty can be associated as a push factor for them to thrive. Poverty has been proven to be the most frequently and persistently noted risk factor to child abuse as seen by thousands of research analyses. An occupational distribution analysis of parents who abandon their children reveals that over 80% of such parents are involved in low scale farming, petty trading and mason jobs while 11% of the sample population is unemployed with only 5% working as civil servants; (Table 3.5 Stepping Stones Nigeria Child Empowerment Foundation research report - 2008).
Given that parents of most ‘street children’ live below the poverty line of One Hundred and Fifty Five Naira income a day, it is crucial to sit back and consider the Millennium World Leaders summit’s goal of cutting by half the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, this implying that government, International agencies, private institutions and corporate bodies all need to develop practicable approaches to combat the ugly trend of poverty. Amazingly, several initiatives have cropped up in the country to include but not limited to the National Agency for the Eradication of Poverty, Poverty Alleviation program and the rest. The question remains, to what extent is the man from Odoro Nkit , Ibaka, Okot Ette, Nto Edino, Odio, Iwuopkom Opollom, Nkari and the likes affected by these ‘laudable’ initiatives, how sustainable are the programs, what measures are taken to monitor progress on a consistent basis, and how committed are the vision carriers and taskers to these initiatives.
We at SSNCEF believe that it is time for our policy makers to improve the management of public funds and natural resources, ensure that allocations made for development assistance are judiciously expended, develop better operating parameters for business and investment and dedicate more to education and capacity building if any micro-credit scheme were to work. Akwa Ibom must work to set in motion basic preconditions for development (such as democracy, effective public management, provision of social amenities, education, the rule of law, health) as it is only when these micro –economic factors exist that development can thrive. At 22 and 49 of Akwa Ibom and Nigeria respectively, the campaign to make poverty history should truly become a moral challenge of our age and cannot remain a task for the few; it must become a calling for ‘THE MANY’
