May 27: Saraki celebrates children, urges implementation of Child Rights Act

To mark this year's Children's Day celebration, Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki held an interactive session with children from secondary schools in Abuja in Senate chambers.

At the end of the session, he gifted each child a copy of the 1999 constitution.

Saraki also used the occasion to call for the implementation of the Child  Rights  Act

Read part of his message to the children below.

"I want to first of all reassure you that we believe the future belongs to the children and there is no society that can flourish if the future is not better than the present and for the future of Nigeria to be better than the present, we want all our children to have a greater future and that is our own responsibility.

"On the implementation of the Child's Rights Act, we are going to engage with legislators from the different states to see how those who have passed the Child's Rights Act can begin to implement them and to make those in the remaining 12 states who have not passed it to understand the need for them to pass it.

"We are going to do a lot of advocacy and consultations and we are hoping to have a kind of conference with all the states, so that the entire 36 states would have the law. Clearly, it is a task before us to ensure that the laws we passed that have to do with the safety of our children are adhered to. We must today as part of the ceremony for this year's Children's Day, make a commitment to see that through oversight we ensure the implementation of laws meant to protect our children from abuse and violence.

"I think it is also the responsibility of the supervising ministries to engage us and bring some of these cases of abuse to the attention of the relevant committees so that we can through our oversight function address them.

"No matter what we do in any other aspect of this society, if we cannot achieve the basic things of providing safety for our children then we cannot say that we are one of the top 20 economies in the world. A country does not just achieve that status by GDP measured on the scale decided by economic forces. The quality of the future life for our children is very important," he said.