Nigeria: Govt Places 50 Kids for Adoption
Nigeria: Govt Places 50 Kids for Adoption
James Sowole
4 January 2009
Akure — Ondo State government through the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development had, in the last four years, placed for local and international adoption, 50 children abandoned or endangered through unfavourable circumstances of their births.
Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs Margaret Akinsuroju, who disclosed this, said about 250 street children had been rescued and resettled by the ministry within the period.
Akinsuroju, a nurse, said this in the heat of controversy over the whereabout of a six-week-old baby taken by officials of her ministry from an insane mother last year, and kept in the custody of the Children Home, owned by the state government.
Although the baby died after the sixth day due to its unhealthy condition at the time of retrieval, one Pastor Lawrence Babalola who brought the pathetic condition of mother and child to the attention of the state government, alleged that the baby had been placed on international adoption.
But Akinsuroju, in a chat with reporters, said "it is inconceivable that a child will be placed on international adoption and taken abroad within 12 hours, as alleged by the pastor, because there are lots of legal conditions to be perfected before the process could be completed.
"Besides, it is not possible to take a child abroad without filing all the required travel papers and this cannot be done within the 12-hour period that this pastor alleged that the baby was taken out of the country. The pastor that made that unfortunate allegation had been coming to us for assistance for inmates in his church, but we told him that we deal only with registered homes. I guess that was the reason why he started the rumour to tarnish our image,: she said. Akinsuroju said social and cultural perception of Africans to adoption of children made it difficult to for the Ministry to find people to adopt abandoned and endangered children."We have many children under our care that we hope to put up for adoption, but foster parents are not forthcoming. Although we provide them with good condition of living, it is always better to have such children adopted into a home where they can grow within a family set-up," she said, and called for the return to the extended family system of the traditional African society, "where the family umbrella covered everybody and took care of those in distress. What we have now is somewhat of an aberration. We must return to the era of being our brothers' keepers."He urged the people to take advantage of the numerous credit windows opened by the state government to economically empower the citizenry, "as this would reduce incidents of child abandonment, a major fallout of poverty."
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