CORP MEMBER EMPOWERS 31 MISCREANTS IN IBADAN

 ‘What motivated me was that I saw many children roaming aimlessly around the street, and I later find out that many of them use to sleep under the bridge, and some in an unsaved places, I believe criminality will keep increasing if these children don’t have anybody to take a good care of them and give them proper and adequate education.”

“After discussing with my LGI, my parents and my fellow corp members, we decided to bring the idea of this project in order to keep the miscreant children out of the streets in Oyo State and Nigeria as a whole; the Ministry of Education also helped me together with some Non-Governmental Organizations.”

Penpushing further reports that, Fabunmi noted that “31 children benefited from her empowerment, some of these children were drawn out where they were hawking around the street, we brought some of them from where they were smoking hard drug’.

‘Some of them have dropped out of school because of lack of fund, some were from other states due to broken homes and lack of proper and adequate parental care, while some have been impregnated, so we brought them together to make them to have another chance in life again.”

“After picking them from streets, we organized an orientation for them to know about what we intend to do for them, I enrolled them into different skills trainings such as hair stylist, fashion designers, furniture making, and barbing among others.Government should encourage other people to do the same thing am doing now because I cannot accommodate all of these children.”

The Oyo State Secretary of the Steering Committee on Child Labour, pastor Marcus Williams, while speaking noted that the empowerment was a laudable program which everybody should emulate, adding that government should leverage on it in order to get rid of miscreant in the society.

“This program has made us to understand that responding to community issue is a possibility, it is possible to bring children out of these problems, if we can use what we have to assist them.”

Penpushing also reports that, Marcus, however called on the stakeholders and the Oyo State Government through the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community Development, Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation to join hands in ensuring that miscreant and hoodlums are totally removed from the streets because these are leaders of tomorrow.

“For us, we have organized a sensitization programs for them, we are looking forward to support them and we are also calling on private sectors to also contribute their own quota, government should support them by giving them more money and equipments so that they can totally stay away from the street.”

Penpushing reports that, one of the beneficiaries of the empowerment program, Ezekiel Emmanuel, noted that he and his other colleagues have gained a lot from the program, saying that government should also collaborate with the initiator of the program, so that miscreanst in the streets can be reduced drastically.

“I use to pushed wheel barrow at Iwo road for me to fed myself, and we also sleep under the bridge, but since we have come across this empowerment program, our life status has changed, they have also promised to send us back to school, they use to give us money, government should assist us because there are still many of us outside there who are still roaming around, sleeping under the bridges, picking pockets, some are drug peddlers while some have become touts.”

The representative of the Director, Oyo State Ministry of Women Affairs, Community Development, Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation, Mr Taiwo Ibilade, in his remarks emphasized that the Oyo State government is trying its best to get rid of the menace, adding that government is collaborating with stakeholders and private sector to reduce the issue to minimal.

“Although government has a lot of work at hand, but we are trying our best to get rid of the miscreants and other vices in the state, we have a department in our Ministry where we take care of these children, we also have a home for them to be rehabilitated.”

“A family court is on its way to check the violator of child labour and sexual harassment of the minors, the last administration in the state has inaugurated sexual and agenda based violence in the replication on what the Vice President Osinbajo did in Abuja which I was part of the team.”