BY ANKELI EMMANUEL, Sokoto
Barrister Akilahel Shettima, the Sokoto State Coordinator of Legal Aid Council of Nigeria has advised Nigerians to ensure that they carry out their responsibilities to the letter to avoid breeding criminals.
“By the time we develop the culture of parents and the society abandoning their responsibility to children, it often leads to vulnerability, which in most cases makes the children willing tools for others to entice and recruit into diverse forms of unacceptable acts in the society,” Shetima observed.
Barrister Shetima spoke on, “Children in Conflict With The Law,” at the ongoing 2 day capacity building workshop on “Approach to Victim Identification and Reintegration of Trafficked Children and other Vulnerable Children for Child Protection Officers,” in Sokoto South and Illela local government areas of Sokoto State, organized by the National Agency For the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) Sokoto Zonal Command with support from the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) under Access to Justice Project for Vulnerable Children and Children on the Move.”
While pointing out that, criminals are products of society and parental failures, Barrister Shetima added that, until we collectively learn to imbibe and demonstrate the right attitudes, the society will continue to be saturated with children without the fear of God, good morals and virtues.
According to him, some of the good things of life are actually not complicated as expected but others make it so because of greed. He said further that when we learn how to embrace each other with love, share with each other with passion, feel each other’s pain, and share in each other’s joy, the world will be a better place for all.
In his explanation of the phenomenon of children in conflict with the law, Barrister Shettima said anybody under the age of 18 is considered by law to be a child, adding they become Children in Conflict with the Law when they do anything at all that brings them before the law.
He therefore admonished security personnel to see and treat children in conflict with the law with dignity and innocent until proven otherwise.
On his part, Muttaka Suleiman from Sokoto State Ministry of Women and Children Affairs who delivered paper on Child Protection Management Information System (CPIMS) said without reliable and verifiable data, you cannot have a meaningful plan of action in any thing you do.
Addressing participants earlier, Sokoto State Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Barrister Aisha Mohammed Dantsoho, thanked donor agencies, NAPTIP and all other stakeholders for their respective contributions towards ending Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Sokoto.
Dantsoho further assured that the State Government, through their ministry has and will continue to demonstrate the needed political will towards ending the menace.
In his welcome address, the Sokoto Zonal Commander of NAPTIP, Abubakar Abdullahi Tabara said, protecting children is the responsibility of all.
Tabara further insisted that participants who are security personnel from the various agencies were carefully drawn from the two local governments of Illela and Sokoto South to help equip them with better understanding of how to approach cases of trafficked and vulnerable children.
