By Alaba Olusola Oke

The Ondo State Government says the Children’s Parliament will be resuscitated and featured as one of the activities to mark the 2025 Children’s Day celebration.

Dr Seun Osamaye, the Special Adviser on Women Affairs and Social Development, said this at a news conference to outline the programme of activities for the 2025 Children’s Day celebration in Akure.

“Another activity which will be coming up tomorrow is visit to the State House of Assembly.

“We’ll be meeting the Speaker at the State House of Assembly tomorrow and what we are doing tomorrow is to encourage these children to observe the plenary when it is ongoing and also to be able to encourage them to have access directly to first-hand information of what happens in the State House of Assembly.

“Ondo State Children’s Parliament which has been moribund for over 12 years will be revived; the process has been initiated and tomorrow the children will be at the State House of Assembly,” she said.

Osamaye promised that the state government would give the best participating school in competitions N500,000, as it rolled out activities to commemorate 2025 Children’s Day celebration on May 27.

“The first place winner of the competition will be given a lucky star prize of N500,000; the second position will go home with a sum of N200,000 and the third position winner too will be given a sum of N100,000.

“So, in each of these categories, there are expected prizes to be won and these prizes, these trophies will come with some amount of money and all of these things are to promote unity and love.

“Our children will be engaged and that is what this year’s theme is all about, ‘Love and Unity’.

“So that after the celebration throughout the year we can have free-bully schools,” Osamaye said.

According to her, the event will recognise, acknowledge and most importantly, identify with children across the state, especially in primary and secondary schools.

She said that the event would inform school children and sensitise them on what government was doing to make lives better and also ensure that there was continued contribution of government towards children’s development and child education in the state.

“For this year, we have brought about new innovations towards this year’s celebration that is a complete departure from what has been taking place in time past.

“Gov. Aiyedatiwa has said that in his administration, in his agenda for children, the social welfare, the development, the access to health care of our children will be a priority.

“This year’s celebration will not just go the way of the usual celebration but instead, the intellectual capacity of our children will be exposed, especially towards knowledge identification and also reward of every identified intellectual capacity of these children,” Osamaye said.

The Special Adviser said that 2,500 pupils from 100 schools across the state would participate in the event. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Bayo Sekoni