Musa Garba, Kaduna state police commissioner, says the recruitment of underage children as house helps by some Nigerians and the irresponsible attitude of some parents were undermining the protection and enforcement of children’s right.
He stated this on Monday at the opening of a two day orientation workshop organised in Kaduna by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for police officers and other stakeholders on the “Nigeria Police Force Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) on handling cases involving children in conflict with the law.”
Garba said the protection and enforcement of children’s right will not be effective when many Nigerians employ underage children as domestic staff and parents fail in their responsibilities to their children.
He said, “If we want to protect the rights of children, we should start from our homes.
“We cannot be here talking about protecting the rights of children and then in our homes, we have underage children working for us.
He lamented that some people have so many children without catering for their needs, noting that “it is wrong to give birth to many children and send them to the streets to fend for themselves.”
“You will see some children below the age of puberty taken to well to do families to work for them.
“I am calling on everybody to stop recruiting underage children as house helps”, he said.
Garba said the Inspector General of Police (IGP), “feel that we should always sensitise our officers to not only know the rights of children, but to learn how to protect them.
According to him, the SOP on handling cases involving children in conflict with the law, was developed to raise awareness within the Nigerian Police Force…”
Garba said the training was very apt and called for collaboration with stakeholders to address cases of child abuse.
In a good will message at the event, Darius Khobo, a judge at the Kaduna state High Court and chairman, Justice for Children Committee, noted that the understanding of the SOP “will definitely help in guiding the police to know the objectives of interfacing with children that have come in conflict with the law.”
The judge said his committee, had gone round all police divisions across the three senatorial zones in Kaduna state to see the number of children that have come in conflict with the law and are in police custody.
“We interfaced with them and the results we got was quite disturbing”, he said.
According to him, child offender should not be treated like adult offender as there are different procedures in handling both cases.
He said the training will certainly “bring Kaduna state police command in line with international best practice if the procedure is effectively harnessed and implemented”.
Also speaking in an interview with journalists, Child Protection Specialist for UNICEF in Kaduna, Wildred Mamah, said the workshop was aimed at helping the police come up with a standard operating procedure to help them to implement the law as it affect children.
He said, “UNICEF as you know is an international organisation, focusing on rights of children.
“To that end, we have pushed for the domestication of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. The good news is that Nigeria is now doing very well in that area…”
Mamah said the essence of training was to help the police at the federal level to come up with a standard operating procedure to help them to implement that law- defining the dos and don’ts in legal issues concerning children.”
He said the procedure has been adopted at the national level. We are launching this SOP in Kaduna state and getting police officers, especially those who work with children and gender units to have a common knowledge about the procedure…” he said.
