THE TALE OF TWO CITIES: #ABUJA & #NEWYORK

The nations with a future are the nations, which pay holistic attention to total development and protection of their precious children.

The nations who are without a present and a future abandon their precious children.

The way nations relate with their precious youngsters is a reflection of the state of their souls, revealed Mandela.

Recently, a video clip went viral of a neighbour who went to the school to his collect his neighbor’s son. The neighbour later reached out to the parents to demand for ransom for the release of the boy, who he has now kidnapped.

The question is how did a stranger gain access to a school a collected a child seamlessly? The answer is simply. There was no Child Protection System in place codified into a Policy, broken down into processes on which every stakeholder(including parents and students) are trained periodically.

Where a system is in place, it envisages the kind of situation we enumerated above and made it impossible for such to occur.

In another clime, I was with a very close relative in New York City. His wife would want me to help pick up their son from school when he closed from the school. The wife went with me in the morning while going to drop the child in school and introduced me to the head of school that I would be picking their son. The head of school asked the mum if the parent(s) had completed a particular form to which my name and means of identification will be affixed, authorizing the school to release their son to me for that particular day. The responded in the negative. Case closed, I would not be allowed to pick the child.

When my host tried to plead, the head of school simply told us it was beyond her, informing us it was part of the Child Protection protocol from the The New York State Education Department.

In one city, the state has taken over the responsibility of Child Protection and in another city, the state is clueless, parading a suspected kidnapper, who gained unfettered access into school, when the same police should be explaining to us why the government failed to prevent the kidnapping through a System of Child Protection.

The question is would the child, though rescued ever recover from the trauma of spending days in the den of kidnappers?

You see, this year must be our Year of #NOPROTECTIONNOSCHOOL.

This is the 11th Edition of our #NOPROTECTIONNOSCHOOL DIRECTION STIMULATING DISCUSSIONS

I am Taiwo AKINLAMi