The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Gombe State has said that it recorded 127 complaints of parents neglecting their children in 2024 in Gombe State, a telling indication of the impacts of insurgency and accompanying poverty on Nigeria’s Northeast households.
According to the Commission’s spokesman, Mr Ali Alola-Alfinti, who spoke in a press interview, 127 out of the 356 complaints of rights violations recorded were on parental neglect, representing 35.67 per cent of the cases under review.
The cases were mainly of fathers running away and abandoning their responsibilities to their children and wives, Alola-Alfinti added, explaining that what made the situation worse was that these fathers left their children and wives without any source of livelihoods, shelter, clothing, care and or medical attention.
Although Alola-Alfinti cited the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Law as a warning that it is an offence to neglect one’s children to the extent of abandoning without any means of livelihood and care, he was to reveal that some of the parents “shunned their responsibilities under the guise of economic hardship,” which actually reflects the current socio-economic reality of the northeast
The situation is, however, a source of concern to the human rights body, which is taking measures to address the menace, Alola-Alfinti stressed, insisting, however, that “Leaving a child without a source of livelihood and care constitutes a threat to their dignity of human person, threat to life, health and wellbeing.”
“This is a direct infringement on the rights of children and the VAPP law in Gombe State criminalises such acts with a view to protecting children and ensuring their wellbeing,” he said.
To save the situation, the NHRC spokesman disclosed that the Commission is partnering with relevant organisations to train and empower women with skills to enable them to take adequate care of their children in the event of abandonment by their husbands and children’s fathers.
“We always listen to both parents in the case and where there is need for support, we link them up with organisations that could help them,” he said.
He advised parents to re-strategise ways to fend for their families, adding that leaving children without care should never be an option as it exposes them to greater risks of violations.
Alola-Alfinti said the commission also recorded 91 inhuman and degrading treatments, 47 economic development and two reproductive rights cases.
Others include five threat to life cases, five right to property, four unlawful detention, 12 alleged rape, 15 domestic violence, amongst other such cases.
The Commission, he informed, treated 315 cases within the period under review while 41 others that required criminal investigation or not within its jurisdiction had to be referred to relevant agencies, urging residents of the State to report cases of abuse to enhance rights protection in the state.
It would be recalled that106 fathers abandoned their children in Gombe 2023, citing economic hardship as the reason behind their actions.
