By Brave Dickson
The National Orientation Agency, Rivers State has blamed parents for the increasing cases of rape in the state.
The agency said this while sensitizing Muslim leaders on COVID-19 at the state secretariat of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Port Harcourt on Thursday.
The state Director of NOA, Barr Young Ayotamuno who frowned at the way rape incidence jumped up during the COVID-19 lockdown faulted some parents for not drawing closer to their children.
He said: “Some parents are too distant from their children. One of the ways to know what our children are doing is when we get closer to them.
“Sometimes, when they (the children) don’t expect, we should go into their rooms and ask them to bring their boxes and their cloth bags for inspection.
“Parents should also create the opportunity to check the bags of their children when they arrive from school. I can tell you that a lot of revelations do come out of some of these surprising checks.
“So let us, who are parents try as much as possible to know what our children are doing and create more time to communicate with them.
“We should also try and check the kind of dresses our children put on. The type of cloths that some children put on at home are different from what they wear in school.
So as parents, we all have the responsibility to inculcate the right values into our children as measures to reduce the incidence of rape cases in our environments.”
Our correspondent reports that one of the Muslim participants, Alhaji Luqman Akintoye also used the interactive session to advocate for tougher penalties on rapists.
