COMPREHENSION: YOUR RIGHT AS A CHILD
The word “right” means different things, it can mean the opposite of ‘wrong’ or the opposite of ‘left’ , right can also mean how you are supposed to be treated or what you are supposed to get free under the law because of who you are. Therefore, we have human rights, parents rights, child rights, and even animal rights.
Let us look at the rights of a child, a child is a person below 18 years. Every child has the rights to live. From the moment a child is formed in the womb, he or she has the rights to live. That is why, in most countries of the world it is wrong to carry out abortion.
Because of one reason or the other, pregnant girls or women sometimes want to remove the child in their womb. They want it even though they know the child will be first killed and cut into pieces before removing it. It is against the rights of the child. Also, after a child is born, the child has the rights to live and nothing should be done to take his or her life.
Children also has the right to be treated equally. No child should be treated badly because the child is a boy or a girl, or because of the colour of skin, language or religion. All over the world, people who are well informed no longer show more care or give better education to a child because he is a boy or a girl.
It is the rights of the child to be allowed to become a doctor, a judge, a governor, or a president. The child should be allowed to raise to any position as long as he or she works hard for it. Furthermore, the child has the rights to speak his own language, ones language shows the part of the world he or she comes from.
A child who, for instance is a hausa, igbo, Yoruba, kanuri, izun or idoma has the rights to know and speak his or her language, as it is spoken in the village, many parent in some part of Nigeria do not speak their language to their children. Instead they speak English or mix English with their own language.
Finally it is the rights of every child to go to school and learn. Here in Nigeria, government says, every child living in the country must go to school to learn to read and write at lease for the first nine years of schooling. It is also free in public schools in Nigeria.