Barrister Fabian Awhen
The scenes of innocent babies poking their heads from filthy gutters, some left in cartons or wrapped in clothes and kept in refuse heaps on our streets to the chagrin of the society, have created a dent in the moral tone of our society.
Abandoned babies range between the ages of three months and five years.
In all cases, such scenes attract a gathering of people wrapped in their own emotions.
More than that, the shock draws tears from women in such scenes while the men sigh in utter amazement, yet the unwholesome act of throwing away babies to their fate hast continued unabated.
In all of this, the conclusion would seem that the question we must answer is, what is responsible for the upswing of dustbin babies or child abandonment?
Could it be a fault of the leisure of sex, resulting in unwanted pregnancy or poverty?
It may indeed be ideological in the sense that in the practice of capitalism, which is also obtainable in Nigeria, human life appears to have lost its essence, particularly in our excessive pursuit of materialism.
To the proponents of this school of thought anything can be sacrificed, be it life or death so long as the end is attained.
They even go as far as contending that if armed robbers kill without compunction, why should we expect virtues from our women, as if they are not products of the same decadent system?
However, many more see child abandonment as a social problem.
To them, the urban areas have over time irresistibly attracted all classes of people, optimistic of a slice of the juicy morsel.
They argue that most people come unprepared lacking in skills needed to compete for jobs.
This invariably pushes such unskilled people to tight socio-economic comers which expose the young, especially the weaker sex into doing anything to survive
Again, the kind of family life education and information that represent an essential prelude to adult life and existence itself are being overlooked while some resort to pornography.
This phenomenon caused Walter Lippmann a sociologist of note to state that “a continual exposure of a generation to the commercial exploitation of the enjoyment of sex, violence and cruelty is one way to corrode the foundation of a civilized society”.
It has been said with certainty again and again that children are like plants in the garden. They blossom at every touch of tenderness and frown each time we are too busy to care until they are blown away by the harsh winds of time.
In all frankness, the abandonment of children is barbaric. This finds support in the fact that the child is brought up in impersonal institutions where motherly and fatherly sentiments are lacking.
The psychological build-up present in the family is absent which in many cases makes the child suffer a crippled personality.
Therefore, we must save our children by increasing the level of information on safe family life and indeed sex education.
Indeed, the time has come for us to reinstate our normal traditional values, the values of morality, compassion, and respect for the sanctity of human life.
Parents, particularly those who unwittingly encourage their daughters to dip their hands into the pockets of men should not when their daughters bring home pregnancies turn them into instruments of rejection but of rehabilitation.
Agreeably, those who commit this heinous crime of child abandonment are part of the society.
They are therefore known, which is why they must be reported by those who know them.
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