Nigeria’s Child Abandonment Crisis Deepens

Across the country, from the bustling streets of Lagos to the farmlands of Benue, from the creeks of the Niger Delta to the outskirts of Kano, cases of kid abandonment are rising astatine an alarming rate. In galore instances, these children are discovered hardly clinging to life, wrapped successful rags oregon integrative bags, discarded similar waste.

While teenage pregnancies erstwhile dominated the communicative of abandonment, the situation has worsened to the constituent wherever adjacent joined couples, peculiarly successful Rivers State , driven by joblessness, hunger, and hopelessness, are leaving down their offspring successful a hopeless outcry for help.

LEADERSHIP Sunday reports that the worsening economical scenery has created a harsh world wherever basal endurance eclipses parental instinct. With ostentation soaring, unemployment rampant, and societal information nets astir non-existent, galore parents, particularly mothers , are pushed beyond their breaking point. The enactment of abandonment, portion indefensible, is often the tragic effect of systemic nonaccomplishment and a federation struggling to attraction for its astir vulnerable. And portion each abandoned kid tells a communicative of pain, each enactment is besides a reflector to a nine successful distress.

While it’s existent that the nation’s system is biting harder than ever, 1 cannot assistance but ask: is it genuinely justifiable for a parent who carried a kid for 9 agelong months to wantonness that kid without a 2nd thought astir the dangers that await? In a state wherever kidnappers, ritualists, and organ harvesters are said to beryllium lurking successful each corner, however tin a parent locomotion away, knowing the unimaginable risks her kid whitethorn face?

In a caller heart-wrenching incident, Apostle Chibuzor Chinyere, laminitis of the Omega Power Ministries (OPM) successful Port Harcourt, raised a heartbreaking alarm that  helium had to crook distant 2 abandoned children brought to his church.

Abandoned child

He disclosed that incapable to instrumentality them successful owed to constricted capacity, helium directed that they beryllium taken to the Special Area Police Division successful Rumuokoro, Port Harcourt. There, their begetter yet came forward, explaining that their parent had near them behind, incapable to header with the crushing value of economical hardship.

The OPM laminitis stated during his revelation  that his Ministry has agelong been a beacon of anticipation for abandoned and underprivileged children, moving respective escaped schools and offering afloat scholarships up to assemblage level. The cleric  nevertheless added that contempt this, the load is overwhelming

Apostle Chinyere, who is presently lodging implicit 500 children successful his idiosyncratic residence, says this is not the archetypal clip helium has recovered children dumped astatine his doorstep. With tears successful his voice, helium pleaded for greater societal and governmental enactment due to the fact that religion unsocial is nary longer capable to transportation the increasing value of a nation’s abandoned future.

His dependable trembled with sorrow arsenic helium revealed that adjacent spiritual institutions, erstwhile the last refuge for the forsaken, are present overwhelmed by the sheer fig of cases.

Many residents, who listened to his disclosure described the enactment arsenic “ a calamity unfolding earlier our precise eyes. One that pierces the psyche and calls retired for urgent intervention.”

It’s nary longer quality that children abandoned connected the streets often referred to arsenic thoroughfare children, are among the astir susceptible members of society. They look unimaginable risks regular specified arsenic exploitation by traffickers, carnal and intersexual violence, hunger, sickness, and a implicit deficiency of entree to acquisition oregon healthcare. These are not conscionable statistics, they are children, near to past successful a satellite that seems to person turned its backmost connected them.

When LEADERSHIP Sunday went astir the streets of Port Harcourt, it observed a grim reality.  Apart from the efforts of Omega Power Ministries (OPM), nary different spiritual organisation successful the metropolis appears to connection a imperishable harmless haven for abandoned children. While immoderate churches and different spiritual centers occasionally organise foundation events oregon outreach programmes to enactment little privileged children, determination is simply a glaring lack of consistent, structured care. This spread has contributed to the alarming emergence successful the fig of stateless children who present instrumentality refuge successful centrifugal parks, nether bridges, abandoned vehicles, oregon derelict buildings.

By day, galore ...