A non-governmental organisation, Save the Children International (SCI), in collaboration with the Katsina State House of Assembly Ad hoc Committee on Child Protection Law, has commenced the summarisation and translation of the law into local languages for easy comprehension and acceptability.
Speaking during the six-day exercise in Kano, the House Committee Chairman on Child Protection Law, Hon. Musa Nuhu Gafia, said the translation of the law into Hausa and Fulfulde languages would help in quality sensitisation of the populace, on the importance of protecting the rights of the child in the state.
He said: “We are summarising and translating the law into Hausa and Fulfulde so that the people which the law is meant for can read and understand its content. We are translating it into Hausa for a time being and later it can be translated into Fulfulde”.
Gafia, who represents Kaita constituency in the Assembly, stressed the need for the state government and other relevant stakeholders to adopt action plans with intervention strategies that would amplify the importance of the law and ensure its timely implementation.
With the enactment of the law, he said, the Assembly would continue to work assiduously with the executive arm of government and security agencies to surcease the prevailing cases of rape, sodomy, child marriage, child labour and other crimes bedevilling children, particularly girls in the state.
Earlier, the Katsina SCI Community Engagement and Advocacy Coordinator, Mrs Murjanatu Kabir, said the organisation would continue its collaboration and partnership with stakeholders involved in the domestication process of the law for its proper rollout and implementation.
THISDAY reports that the Child Protection Law was presented by the executive to the state House of Assembly in 2003 during the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua-led administration in the state as Child Right Act but the then lawmakers after series of deliberations, changed the name to Child Protection Bill.
The bill, which scaled the first and second reading, was not passed into law due to criticism of its content by prominent Islamic scholars, parents and other critical stakeholders, including some top government officials and it was later declared missing by the lawmakers.
But after pressure from SCI, the bill was resubmitted to the current sixth Assembly by Governor Aminu Bello Masari in March 3, 2020 and subsequent agitation for its immediate passage by SCI, the lawmakers unanimously passed the bill on November 25, 2020 and it has been signed into law by the governor.
Credit: This Day