In this episode, we speak with United Kingdom-based Ms Debbie Ariyo (OBE), an eminent anti-trafficking advocate and Chief Executive Officer of AFRUCA , a UK charity and the BME  (that is black and minority ethnic communities) Anti-Slavery Network (BASNET).through deprivation and various forms of gross human rights abuses especially taking advantage of the 'omo-odo's usually vulnerable socioeconomic circumstances.

In this episode, we speak with United Kingdom-based Ms Debbie Ariyo (OBE), an eminent anti-trafficking advocate and Chief Executive Officer of AFRUCA: Safeguarding Children, a UK charity and the BME  (that is Black and Minority Ethnic communities) Anti-Slavery Network (BASNET).

Ms Ariyo shares her insight into her perception of the tradition which she describes as modern day slavery. She also talks about her fight against the practice in Nigeria and in the diaspora community in the UK. She equally shares her view on how the practice can be eliminated here in Nigeria with the right governance approach.

Our latest episode looks at a sad reality -- the use of children as domestic workers in Nigeria.  It is an ugly trend with poverty as the reinforcing factor despite the criminalization of the practice by all local and international laws on child's right and welfare. 

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are 250 million child workers in the developing world and with 15 million of them in Nigeria. At a staggering 43% of the total population of minors, it is the highest recorded rate of child labor in West Africa.

COVID-19 and associated economic pressures have made things.

How do we correct this anomaly so that children can retain their childhoods, be saved from domestic servitudes and associated deprivations which so gravely blight so many futures?

Kindly listen to our analysis and array of expert views on this important issue. 

In the second episode of the series on the sexual abuse of domestic workers in Nigeria, we feature a number of robust expert opinions on the issue. It is clear that from the analysis and survivors’ narratives that this is an unspoken epidemic in the country deserving of serious attention by relevant stakeholders.

The physical and psychosocial tolls on the impacted domestic workers can only be imagined. It is even worse that most are young, vulnerable, helpless, and mostly with very little education thus reaching out to the right redress channels or even the basic act of speaking out may be an issue.

Is there a way out? How long should this go on? The experts make various suggestions reporting to relevant bodies. We also give out contact information to agencies that would be of help.

Thanks in advance for listening.

In the second episode of our series, we look at the rampant but often unspoken trend of the sexual abuse of domestic workers. We hear also from a survivor, Ms Yinka Kenny, a broadcast journalist and women and children’s rights activist as she narrates the traumatic one-year period in which, as a teenager, she was allegedly subjected to a series of sexual assault by a Lagos-based clergy while working as a domestic help in his home. Listeners may find some aspects of the narrative aspect somehow graphic.

We also hear from Barrister Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi, coordinator of the frontline Lagos State agency, the Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) as well as an Edo State-based gender rights activist, Ms Ronke Ojeikere.

How can victims get help? What steps should they take, and what must government and relevant stakeholders doing to stem this ugly tide?

This is the first of a two-part episode on the burning issue.

Thanks for listening!

Hi there! We are excited to bring your way another important and compelling series—the plight of domestic workers in Nigeria! Yes, ‘House helps are indeed Humans’!

The abuse of domestic helps in Nigeria has been a long, tortuous and sometimes fatal reality, a silent epidemic, to put it mildly. How can this be stopped? How can they get better wages, better treatment?

This first episode puts in contexts many of the huddles on their way—the lack of a formal organizing or unions that fight for their rights and enforces them, or ensure that they are treated with dignity and fare better. Note that countries like Kenya and South Africa have very vibrant domestic workers’ unions.

In this episode, you will listen to the words of a relative who lost a loved one in the course of domestic work—a ‘suicide’ believed to be faked by the alleged culprits as well as expert opinions. Also, where to get help where necessary for those caught in these cycles of multifaceted abuse.

Stay tuned as we seek ways out of the menace and ensure that domestic workers are not underaged, are no longer abused, are better organized, empowered and are accorded their deserved respect.

Happy listening!

COVID-19 came along with a bagful of complications on all levels. One of them is a major spike in teenage pregnancies. A recent research by the International Rescue Committee, says as many as 152,000 Kenyan teenage girls became pregnant during the lockdown period, a 40 percent increase in the monthly average. Though there is no official research finding yet on the subject in Nigeria, the increase in teenage pregnancies as a direct result of the COVID-19-related lockdown and associated school closures is obvious, especially in rural areas of the country. And the sexual violence factor is not to be ruled out.

This episode, as usual, features the voices and perspectives of children and young persons on the topic, as both presenters and interviewees, on the matter, joined by a few adults.

What can government do to stem the tide? What are the roles of the parents? How can girls stay safe? These and more are in this episode that draws the curtain on our six-episode program on ‘Children and COVID-19’ aka ‘the Undiluted Voices of Children’ featuring children’s views on the global pandemic and presented by themselves.

Happy listening and please stay tuned for more spicy series on this platform.

Our new episode focuses on the challenges that children and young persons are grappling with in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though it is a tough time for everyone, they suffer disproportionately in terms of access to learning platforms, discrimination by health authorities, even lack of basic health facilities and care in addition to dwindling family resources due to curret economic downturns.

In this emotional episode, listen to a parent of a child with special needs grapple with COVID-19-aggravated difficulties, a person living with disabilities speak about her plight as a visually challenged person and a doctor analyses the difficulties.

And what is the place of the authorities? How more should our government act to make this period bearable for children needing special care and their families? For a country lacking in basic welfare programmes, the plight of the impacted children/young persons and families in Nigeria can only be imagined.

The government also received a piece of advice here.

Do listen in, and thanks.

In a trend which has spanned decades, the Lagos State Government routinely resorts to forced eviction of the urban poor. These harsh and illegal treatment of the urban poor impacts negatively on children and young people and most times alters their educational and multifacted dreams. The distabilising impacts is usually huge but mostly uninterrogated. 

The December 31, 2020 demolition of Monkey Village, an informal settlement in Lagos, by the Lagos State Government and its agents (leading to the displacement of more than 400 persons), is very much reminiscent of a series vicious attack in the Lagos urban poor besides various discrimination and criminalisation policies and actions. This is even more curious seeing the forced eviction was not only without the mandatory prior notice but at a time of a major national economic recession and a global pandemic. The harm by this singular action can only be imagined.

In their own voices, young persons narrate their experiences and air their views on the development. We also hear from experts on the ilegality of the action, the effects on children among other thoughts. This episode is also typically brought to you by a young person. 

It is hoped that the authorities will do the needful and right this wrong as soon as possible. 

This episode focuses on 'Violence Against Children' to mark the end of the #16DaysOfActivismAgainstGenderBasedViolence and in celebration of the global #HumanRightsDay (December 10, 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures, economic depression and general instability has given rise to a new wave of violence against women and children in what experts have described as 'a pandemic withing a pandemic.'  Children across the world face various forms of violence including sexual violence, domestic violence, physical abuse among other abuse of vulnerable children by mostly adult persons. 

The episode, like others in the series, feature children's voices either as victims and at least a child activist, and recommends ways out of the malaise.

You would love it, but most of us, you would be inspired to work towards the protection of children in your corner of the world. 

'According to UNICEF, a total of 188 countries have imposed countrywide school closures, affecting more than 1.6 billion children and youth, forcing more than two-thirds of countries to introduce national distance learning platforms, but among low-income countries the share is only 30 percent...  Before this crisis, almost one third of the world’s young people were already digitally excluded...'

Scary statistics there.  

This edition highlights, in figures and direct words of children and young people from across Nigeria, the distruptions caused to academic lives by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This podcast series comes from the stable of the Centre for Children's Health Education, Orientation and Protection (CEE-HOPE), Nigeria's non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on the rights and development of children, young persons and their families. 

Happy listening.