Tackling out-of-school syndrome in Lagos beyond Sanwo-Olu’s intervention  

Globally, the most accepted standard on children’s rights is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is in this all-important document that the full list of rights for children and young people under the age of 18 is laid out.

According to the convention, children’s rights include the right to family life, play and recreation, as well as health, and education. It also entails an adequate standard of living and being protected from abuse and harm. 

Importantly, children’s rights also include their developmental and age-appropriate needs that are bound to change as they grow up. From the aforesaid, every child has the same, inalienable right to develop his/her potential in all situations, and at all times. In other words, every child should have equal access to education regardless of the child’s gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, parentage, sexual orientation or another status.
  
It is in the light of this that many are subjecting Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s encounter with two school-age children, and his subsequent offer of a scholarship to them to diverse interpretations according to their whims and caprices.
  
There are about two million out-of-school children in Lagos State.

“By this, the government would have fulfilled the right to education as enshrined in the above law. By the same token, Section 11 will be easy to implement by parents and can be enforced effectively… If the government can cut down on wastages and unnecessary procurements to the barest minimum, there will be enough resources for effective implementation of any law, nonetheless, child rights law should be about building systems that will positively impact everyone regardless of who is in government.”
 
For the Programme Officer, Civil Society Action Coalition on Education For All (CSACEFA), Adeleke Damian-Mary, the failure of laws to have the needed effect in the country boils down to lax enforcement, poor monitoring and strict implementation. 
 
“What the governor has done is not enforcement, but a political show to arouse pity. As the custodian of the law, if he were ensuring the enforcement of the Child Rights Law (CRL), the governor would have gone after the parents of the girls and not sent the children outright to school. Doing so amounts to window dressing the problem, without getting down to the root cause.”

Adebayo, who is also a disability-inclusive rights specialist, suggested that government should work with civil societies and other stakeholders to play roles in eradicating out-of-school children. 
 
“It should not only take the governor accidentally running into out-of-school children. Communities, traditional rulers, development associations and civil society groups must play that role. There should be conscious efforts by the government to engage stakeholders in doing this. There has to be a structurally organised process, including having law enforcement agencies all over the place who would help in identifying children that are out of school. 
 
“For me, accosting the two girls by the governor, when governors begin to identify roaming children that ought to be in school is just showmanship. I am sure it is not today that the governor is moving around and seeing children roaming the streets. It could be looked at as political showmanship because the elections are coming, and the governor wants to look nice in the eyes of the citizens,” she alleged. 

“Before you enforce the law, you ought to, as a government, effectively discharge your part of the bargain. Besides ensuring that there are enough schools, the admission procedure should be made known to all, as many claims that it is very tedious and cumbersome. Some people often feel that they might be exploited by schools’ authorities, or that they need a lot of money before they can enrol their children and wards. This is where public enlightenment and sensitisation come in.”