UN 2019 Universal Children’s Day Celebration: SHADE-IN's Perspectives

Universal Children’s Day means investing in our future (children), this is why the United Nations (UN) has designated every November 20th as Universal children’s day. The celebration helps to promote togetherness around the world, awareness of the problems children face in every corner of the globe and improve the welfare for all children. The establishment of the Universal Children’s Day could be traced to 1954 where the UN General Assembly adopted the ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Child’. In 1989 the ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’ was also adopted by the UN General Assembly. The Children’s Day marks the celebration of both events.

The celebration of this year, 2019 is special because it marks the 30^th anniversary of the ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’ (an international agreement on childhood). It becomes the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and has helped transform children’s lives around the world. The convention mentions a number of children’s rights, some of which include rights to be protected from violence and discrimination and the rights to life, health and education.  It is therefore up to us to demand that leaders and government, business and communities fulfil their commitments and take action for child rights now, once and for all (UN, 2019). We must commit to making sure every child has every right.

Saving Hand Development Initiative (SHADE-IN) is committed to advocating for quality education in public schools. We believe that every child has a right to not just education, but quality education. We are particularly interested in public secondary schools in Nigeria. This is because 86.9 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty representing nearly 50% of its estimated 180 million population (Quartz Africa, 2018) and many parents cannot afford to send their children to private schools. The ‘common man’ most times opts to send his/her child to public schools because they are ‘free’. Our research in many of these public secondary and even primary schools revealed that most public schools lack basic infrastructures (such as water, toilets, classrooms, tables, chairs, laboratories, libraries, books, and even fence). Many public schools are grossly understaffed, and these schools receive poor subventions from the government. While public school education is ‘free’ the quality is very low. SHADE-IN believes that every child has the right to not just go to school, but should also be able to access quality education like it is in standard private schools. 

The 2020 budget proposed to the national assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari revealed that the allocation for education was very low. The low budgetary allocations for education would only further exacerbate the poor infrastructures in public schools and this situation would result in the production of half-backed students. Furthermore, there is currently, a widespread notion that ‘school na scam’. Some young people have begun to believe that education is hyped and make believe, because they cannot see the relationship
between quality education and wealth. A good proportion of children that believe this lie are in public secondary schools or attended public secondary schools. This lack of learning facilities has begun to condition their minds to see that education is of no value. However, SHADE-IN believes in the powerful value of education and the value it brings to people especially when it is not just ‘free’ but quality education. Education has the ability to transform the minds and provoke the thoughts and creativity of children, hence our stance on quality education.

In addition, another menace that ravages the streets of Nigeria are children involved in street trading (hawkers), bus conductors or ‘almajiris’ that beg. These categories of children are the most vulnerable to sexual exploitation, armed robbery, prostitution, terrorists’ doctrines (where some of them are brainwashed and end up becoming terrorist/suicide bombers), and all kinds of crimes/violence. These categories of children also have a right to quality education.SHADE-IN believes that if these children are in school, the quality of their lives would be improved and their capacity for greatness would be ignited.


While SHADE-IN works in assisting the government in improving the educational system through quality programmes such as ‘Heal the Foundation (HTF) Project’, ‘The Divergence’, ‘Teenagers Choice Conference’, amongst others, we believe that the government should put stronger measures in place to eradicate street trading by punishing parents/guardians of children involved in street trading or begging (especially during school hours) and to increase the subventions allocated to the educational sector.

On this UN Children’s Day Celebration, SHADE-IN calls on government at all levels to improve the rights of children everywhere in general and improve the rights of children to education in particular.

SHADE-IN at EdoBEST Children's Day Celebration, 27th May, 2019