*Tasks orphanages, and care home about child trafficking

Stakeholders and practitioners in orphanage and child care homes have expressed concern over irregularity and the lack of due process enforcement in child adoption processes in Nigeria.

National President, of the Association of Orphanages and Homes Operators in National, (ASOHON), Rev. Dr. Gabriel Oyediji lamented the lack of post-institutional monitoring of adopted children and proper documentation before they are given out.

He made this known at a Two-day National Conference of the association, yesterday in Abuja.

Oyediji said “There is no post-institutional monitoring of what happens to children when they leave care homes for adoption and fostering.

“We don’t know what happens to these children after they have been adopted and there is no follow-up on their well-being until they turn 18 by the government agencies responsible for implementing policies.

The president explained that members are being trained at the event on how to track the in and out of children in orphanages and also check abuses, as well as the growing rates of illegal orphanages, who are indulging in child trafficking and child merchandising, baby farming and others.

“We are also calling on government to get us involved, we are dealing with these children. Not getting us along in policy, decision-making and putting us aside is putting the destiny of the Nigerian child aside and it is very unfair.

We are asking the new government, who understands their pain and what they went through, to use that and make a new trajectory in orphan management and welfare in the country. And we are ready to support the government to turn around this country,” he said.

In her training presentation on better ways to document and make entry of children in care homes and orphanages, Vice President of the association, Sandra Chikan, noted that 29 organisations was piloted software tagged ‘Children First Software, (CFS), to see how effective and rich the software is about. as a simple management tool to ensure orphanages are run efficiently.

She said “This will ensure that we go in there and actually verify the number of children in orphanages, this will help us collaborate with the government to ascertain number of children in these homes.

“One of the reasons for this is because the image of orphanages in recent times has not been commendable with lots of stories of baby factories, child trafficking homes. So we want to deal with that and in partnership with the government to ensure that we are well documented and orphanages that we run are well structured.

North Central Coordinator, ASOHON, Grace Adams, pointed out that “Training on Children’s First Software in partnership with Both Ends Believing, (BEB), an NGO, and the aim to put the data of all children in orphanages so that people can trace genuinely the number and statistics of orphans in Nigeria and to be able to identify children who actually have needs, those who are up for adoption, fostering and reintegration.

“A child is not supposed to be in an orphanage when he is 18 years and even in an orphanage home for up to two or three years.

“As far as this child doesn’t have a link, a relation who will pick him out, this child should be adopted as every child deserves a loving caring family to be loved. So the aim of this training is to be able to identify children who need families and have special needs.

On the child adoption process, Adams said: “First you require through the Ministry of Women Affairs in your states and every state has their different policies, but the first step is to apply through the Ministry for Women Affairs, if the ministry works with orphanages, they will be able to refer people to orphanages or call directors of orphanages to know if they have children up for adoption or fostering and then the processes continues from there.”