Reps urges States Govs on Adoption of Motherless Children
By Oluwakemi Kindness
State Governors in the country have been urged to adopt at least five motherless children as part of efforts geared toward ending the menace of Out-of-School Children in the country.
Chairman, House Committee on Women Affairs, Kafilat Ogbara, made the call during the 4th day celebration of National Children Leadership Conference by Children of African Leadership and Values Development Initiative (CALDEV) founded by representative Bamidele Salam.
She applauded Salam for prioritizing children related initiative whom she observed have been excluded from various programmes organised by public institutions for women, youths, physically challenged and for all strata and all manner of people.
“My Clarion call first of all, is for all of us as individuals, you don’t have to be rich, all of us could do it, to adopt a child today.”
“the percentage of children that are out of school as we speak in Nigeria is one child out of three children everywhere in Nigeria as we speak”.
On his part, Country Director, Plan International Nigeria, Charles Usie underscored the need for young Nigerians especially the Participants to translate the knowledge acquired from their various schools into skills that will solve human problems.
“What you get in school is knowledge and knowledge is what you know, how the world is, you get to learn new things but I want to leave this challenge with you, for you to become a very successful person in life, you need to translate that knowledge into skills, knowledge alone cannot make you to progress in life”.
Also, Representative Abdulsamad Dasuki noted that the evolvement of social media has created a wide gap between the older and younger generations of Nigerians.
He said: “I strongly believe it’s high time we start having inter-generations coming together so that we can share knowledge.”
In his remarks, the Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida who was represented by Nafisat Usman who described Participants as those who will shape the future of Nigeria, maintained that the younger generations have better advantage than the older generations because of the advent of technology.
He however tasked them on the positive utilisation of social media for their intellectual development.
“You have the resources whether you own a tab or a laptop. You have the resources to read and better yourselves. Social media can be good if you are using it for educative purposes. But it can also be a distraction to you,” the NCC helmsman noted.
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