It is in the light of the foregoing that I find no better day to address the issue of street children phenomenon in Nigeria. I want to examine the approach of government agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations to solving this seemingly insurmountable problem. Government agencies and NGOs, who “rescue” children from the street, often say they are involved in rehabilitation. In some cases, they actually incorporate the word, “rehabilitation” into the names of the organisations. The goal they set out to achieve is to rehabilitate the children they have rescued into responsible children or adults as the case may be, depending on when they achieve their goal of rehabilitation. Most of the children they rescue are between ages eight and18.
I have seen that many NGOs in this group do not make too much progress. I have continued to wonder why they do not do too much. I think one of the reasons they fail to make the desired progress is that they have a faulty understand of the children they work with. Their faulty understanding of the children they work with is safely deducible from what they claim they want to do with the children, namely “rehabilitation”.
Permit me to at this point examine the meaning of rehabilitation both as a word and concept of intervention and see if it fits into the goal they want to achieve with these children. Rehabilitation means “to restore to good health or useful life, as through therapy and education; to restore to good condition, operation, or capacity.” Rehabilitation is also re-teaching someone to do something.
Now, from this definition, it is apposite to analyse what the government agencies and NGOs, which want to rehabilitate children rescued from the street, want to do. They want to restore the children to useful lives by re-teaching them basic values of life. This attempt assumes that the children they work with were once living useful lives, having been taught the principles of same, concluding that the children must have lost their useful lives and the principles in which they were established when they took to the street. Still moving in the realm of the assumption, they design programmes to restore the children to the normal and useful lives they used to live.
Their conclusions cannot be farther from the truth. It is an attempt to build something on nothing and wondering why it is not standing. The truth about the children they are working with is that most of them had never known or lived normal or useful lives. They were born and bred in abuse. They had never been taught the values and principle of useful living and they do not appreciate same. They do not appreciate it and having never benefited from it. Therefore, they cannot defend same. They have survived all their lives by living on their toes.
The question those who labour to rehabilitate must ask is, what drove the children to the streets in the first instance? Please, do not be quick to say the children are stubborn. If they are stubborn, they learnt it from their environment, which their custodians are supposed to be in full control of. To take it further, they learnt it from their custodians. Please, note that no child was born stubborn. In fact, every child was born with the potential to be well-behaved. It is the responsibility of the custodian to develop the child’s God-given potential. Every child, who is tagged stubborn, was MADE stubborn. When custodians are high-handed in their dealing with their children, they raise what they now call stubborn children, a product of their ignorance and conduct.
Please, note also that most of the children on the streets are from poor homes, where the custodians, apart from the fact that they are ignorant are hindered by the state of our economy to access social support services, particularly in the areas of education and health to give their children enduring hope and a meaningful future.
Let me attempt to answer the question, which I earlier asked. That is, what drove the children to the streets in the first instance? The children were driven to the street by the abusive lives they lived. They have never known peace. I have said it time and again, that there is no child who will enjoy the comfort of a peaceful home and the love and acceptance of the parents and opt for the streets. The streets became an alternative when the home became unbearable.
I speak today as someone, who ran away from home at the age of 12. I ran away at the peak of abuse at home. I have sat as a Consultant to UNICEF to reconcile street children to their parents. I have heard the tales of woes of the children we were reconciled to their parents. In one of the occasions, while sitting as a mediator, I burst into tears as I witnessed the ignorance of the parents, who knew next to nothing about raising children. I once met a child on the street, who told me his father cut his penis when he was sleeping after he had been accused of stealing. He showed me his half penis and told me of the excruciating pain he went through as a result of the dehumanisation. Close to tears, he told me how his friends on the street made him the butt of their jokes. As he told me his story, I saw a boy whose self-esteem had been completely crushed. The truth is that he is not aware of anything so called.
The point being made here is that the concept of rehabilitation for street children in Nigeria will not work as it is built on assumption. The cooperation we demand from the children is too high for them to give to us. The principle is ever sure that you cannot give what you do not have. In most cases, we demand instant discipline from children, who already have a misconception about discipline. From their experiences with their custodians, they believe that discipline is the means by which a custodian shows his wickedness over a set of people, he has overpowered.
As a matter of fact, one of the main reasons they ran away from home is to seek freedom. Unknown to them, freedom comes with responsibility. This again is not their fault. The problem is that they have not been taught.
Many of them have now live in the jungles of the streets free, but pay a very high price for their so-called freedom. Yet, they do not crave for another kind of life on their own or at least, even if they crave, they do not search for it. The idea that they need to leave the streets is completely the idea of the government agencies and NGOs. It is they that see the danger and not the children.
However, I think those who are involved in working with children on the streets need to redefine what they seek to do. I think they should focus on habilitation instead of rehabilitation.
Habilitation is teaching the children for the first time. We must first understand that they have never been where we want to take them before and they do not know how to get there or how remain there. We must understand they may not be too interested in going with us because they do not know the benefits. We must accept as an undisputable truth that their willingness to go with us at the end of the day will be spurred by our approach and strategy.
I charge you today to spare a thought on these children of the streets today as we celebrate children’s day
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