CHILD ABUSE MUST END.

 by Ogunsola Oluwatosin

It is now a cause of concern with the rate of child abuse in the country. Many grown up in the country are gradually turning into monsters. There has been a lot of alarming reports of grown men defiling toddlers and little children not even up to the age of ten.

A research conducted has revealed the country has the largest cases of child defiling which is gradually becoming a cause for alarm. At least cases of rape are reported daily on the pages of various newspapers.  Only last week there was a case of a thirteen year old girl that was defiled by a man in his forties, which leaves us pondering, are our men gradually losing their sanity?

This heinous and barbaric act should be stopped before it gets completely out of hand, because we are talking about our future leaders here. We should think about the emotional pain and also the physical pain being melted to these innocent girls.

Our legislative and judiciary are not helping matters as corruption has eaten deep into the system which makes it difficult to rely on them but if stiff laws are passed on these culprits, it will deter them from engaging in this abnormal act.

If this problem is not addressed soon enough, in few years, Nigeria might emerge to be one of the countries with highest rate of child abuse around the globe.

It has to end now, a death penalty should be passed to any individual that engages in this act and also parents should be held accountable for not taking care of their children appropriately and putting them in harm’s way. Child defiling is a serious disease that should be eradicated before it gets out of hand.

MENACE OF STREET HAWKING IN NIGERIA

 by Ogunsola Oluwatosin

In a recent tweet, the governor of Kaduna state threatened that “any child of school age hawking in Kaduna will be asked to bring his parents who will be arrested”. Expectedly, the tweet went viral, giving force to vibrant discussions on the vexed issue of street hawking by children of school age, particularly in the Northern part of the country. It is a crying shame that for all these years, Nigeria has remained unable to address the challenge of street hawking and begging.

The menace of street hawking can never be over-emphasised. Unfortunately, it appears to be a normal business in Nigeria, hence most people do it.

Street hawking entails selling various items on the street, sachet water, bottled water, bottled or canned drinks,  beef rolls, sweets, gums, sunshades, phones,, power banks, wallpapers, vegetables, and some other items. Many children are found hawking or begging for money on the street, during high traffic jam intensity, and selected areas in a bid to survive and make a living.  What gets one thinking is the fact that these kids have parents, but most of them seem unconcerned, some even goes as far as begging in the streets with their kids. So many of these kids gets killed, raped, hit by a reckless driver or stray bullet, face teenage pregnancies or have to undergo abortion.

Measures such as providing free education to all children at primary and secondary level all over the country, strict enforcement of the law against child abuse, arresting parents whose children are found hawking in the streets could be used to control and gradually eradicate child abuse of any form, especially hawking an d begging alms in the street.

LASSA STRIKES IN NIGERIA

by Ogunsola Oluwatosin

Lassa fever is a disease usually contacted from rats. It is an acute and often fatal disease with fever. This illness was discovered in the year 1969, when two missionary nurses died in Nigeria. The virus is named after the town in Nigeria where the first cases occurred.

Lassa fever is endemic in parts of West Africa including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Nigeria.  However, other neighbouring countries are also at risk as the animal vector for the virus, the “multimammate rat” is distributed throughout the region.

According to a research carried out by World Health Organisation, in rare cases, the disease can be transmitted from person to person through direct contact with an infected person’s blood or bodily fluids, through mucous membrane, or through sexual contact. The virus is not transmitted through casual contact, and patients are not believed to be infectious before the onset of its symptoms.

The disease is now spreading vast like wild fire in Nigeria. Nigerian citizens are now so afraid of rats and other rodents so much that they even abstain from taking cassava flakes (garri), because they believe rats mostly infect the cassava flakes and there is no safe way of detecting the virus in it.

With the rate at which different diseases are taking many lives in Nigeria, it’s just a matter of time before Nigeria start experiencing “under population”.

Nigerian government should create medically educational programs which will be aired on local stations where most of the population within the country will be able to view it, and also they should see to it that medical care is taken extremely serious in Nigerian hospitals before more devastating damage is caused in the country.