The child care system

When I saw this prompt, two things came to mind. One was a question, which goes: "Does Nigeria have a child service system?" And the second was a recall of a movie I watched, Fear The Walking Dead, where children in their infant age were forcefully taken from their parents to an unknown camp. In this camp, the children were trained and cared for, all in the name of child service. The idea behind this was to prepare the children to stand strong and survive in the apocalyptic world.

To answer the question, I went on to make a Google search, and all I could find were statements like "if the government did this and that."
Now, the real truth is that my country does not have an active child care system—or let me say, they have one, but it is not in operational condition.

Some months back, there was a trending story about a mother who works as a road sweeper. She decided to take her 12-year-old daughter along with her to help sweep the road, just to make the work faster that day. They arrived very early in the morning, and when a staff member from the council saw her and the little girl sweeping, she raised an alarm, warning the woman not to let the child do such work again and accusing her of depriving the child of her education. The staff made these remarks in a very rude manner while trying to caution the woman who brought her daughter to work.

When the video went viral, a lot of opinions started flying from every angle. Some people criticised the woman who made the video and cautioned the mother, while others criticised the mother for taking her daughter to work. Finally, many criticised the government for not providing a better living system—one where children are properly cared for and protected from unfair activities like that.

That being said, from what I’ve read about child care services, the system is authorised to intervene in family situations to assess how a child is being treated. If a child is being treated poorly, they have the power to remove the child from the home. While this may sound like a good thing in terms of the child’s welfare, it appears very odd to me. Just like in the movie I mentioned earlier, there’s no way the parents would not feel the shame. However, this is actually advantageous to the child if they are indeed being maltreated—especially in cases where the so-called parents are just guardians and not biological parents.

Aside from this, I truly wish a functional child care system was in place, because I have seen young ones roaming about in my street without shelter. I once had a casual conversation with one of them, and he said he lived with his grandma. But the woman was too lenient and couldn’t control him or keep him at home. The boy roams around the lounge close to my house, picking up money sprayed outside, drinking from unfinished bottles, and eating leftover food. I once saw him eating what looked like almost a full barbecue. When I asked him where he got the money to buy it, he said he picked it from the trash centre. Imagine that!

In truth, the existence of a proper child care service would have been effective in handling such situations.

Thanks for reading

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