SOCIETAL AWARENESS OF THE CHILD’S RIGHTS ACT AMONG RURAL AND URBAN DWELLERS OF OGUN STATE

Abstract

Protecting the rights of children has become important to local and international agencies of government and non-governmental organizations. This led to the formulation of laws that provided for and protected the rights of the child. Such laws include the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Nigeria’s Child’s Rights Act (CRA) and the Child’s Rights Law of Ogun State. However, the provisions of these documents seem to be inefficient in curbing the violation of child’s rights due to the high prevalence of street hawking, raping, corporal punishment, etc among children in Nigeria and Ogun State in particular. Hence, this study sought the societal awareness of CRA in rural and urban areas of Ogun State. About 243 rural and urban residents were interviewed through multistage sampling techniques with the aid of questionnaires and interview schedules administered on the different groups of respondents. The result showed that 69.14% of Ogun State residents were aware of the CRA. It further revealed that awareness of CRA was higher in urban than rural areas. Awareness of CRA was primarily sourced through the radio (42.86%) and television (42.86%). Radio and awareness campaigns were the most common sources of awareness among rural (51.76%) and urban (65.06%) residents respectively. The study recommended that government agencies and non-governmental organizations should sponsor more programmes that will be specifically directed to raising residents’ awareness of CRA in rural areas of the state.