Monday, May 23, 2011

Nigeria: Speechifying Poverty Among Children

Vanguard
23 May 2011


OUR children are assuming less importance daily. We are not ashamed to lament the growing poverty among children - apparently forgetting that poor parents will raise poorer children.

When we reduce matters affecting children, matters that affect our future, to mere speeches, we postpone the doomsday, a postponement that cannot be forever.

May 27, Children's Day, is one of the few days when we are meant to celebrate our children. The importance of that day has been drowned in the past 12 years by its closeness to May 29, the anniversary of the end of military rule in 1999.

Beyond the speeches governments remember to make on that day, there are hardly other instances that they speak about the children with certainty. We are busy running governments into private estates that the future - the children - is of little relevance to the programme for a great nation in 2020.

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