Forum adopts Gwadabe committee’s report

The Nigerian Forum on Rehabilitation of Street Children has decried the plight of about 13 million street children across the country, urging policy makers, NGOs and other stakeholders to urgently draw a national policy on street children.
They advocated that any violation against the child should be seen as serious infringement on human rights.
A statement signed by the forum’s National Chairman, Alhaji Ibrahim Umar, and National Secretary, Chief Ikechukwu Nwonu, said they believed that the setting up of reclamation and rehabilitation centres will help in curtailing the menace of insurgency and restiveness in the country.
NFRSC at a meeting in Abuja at the weekend also adopted the communique of a two-day national conference on the plight of street children in Nigeria, organised by Iykon Global Foundation for Child/Youth Care in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development on December 8 to 9, 2015 as part of activities marking 2015 human rights.
Participants at the conference had implored the Federal Government, national and state legislatures, duty bearers, care givers and civil society organisations to jointly press for the implementation of the Child Rights Act and the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act beginning with the domestication of the laws in all the states.
Highlight of the communiqué, signed by Colonel Lawan Gwadabe (rtd), the Chairman of the 2015 conference, was that the Federal Government should liaise with state governments to establish reclamation and rehabilitation centres in the states.
The centres will encompass agricultural programme that would make them self-sustaining.
The communiqué also urged education planners to inculcate mentorship in the curricula of primary and secondary schools as institutionalization of ethics and values will help in building a morally sound and conducive society. It equally called for the promotion of scholarship and vocational education.
The Conference agreed that a comprehensive nationwide survey be conducted to ascertain the actual number of street children in the country, indicating the statistics in each state and geopolitical zone.
Over 200 participants from across the states, including Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Lagos and Delta attended the programme.