An advocacy group, Police Campaign Against Cultism and Other Vices, has urged governments at all levels and organisations to support family institutions to stem criminality.

The National Coordinator of POCACOV, CSP Ebere Amaraizu, made the call in Enugu on Monday while speaking to journalists’ on the group’s “POCACOV in my family campaign for 2024”.

Mr Amaraizu said that the new campaign would help raise awareness, consciousness and reinvent the role of parents in the moral upbringing of children for a functional and better community.

He said that the campaign, tagged ‘Our-children-must-thrive,’ would be emphasising and re-emphasising on responsive and responsible parenting.

According to him, the family is an important structure in society that remains pivotal to community and national development, given the fact that it is the fundamental, first and basic of human society.

He said: “The campaign will call to mind the consciousness and action of parents as role models, coaches and mentors to their children as well as sound moral upbringing of a child.

“This will be anchored on promotion of those family values that expose children and youths to those standard morals, values and discipline which will make them thrive for a functional community and a greater society.

“The campaign will also raise the awareness that the family is the immediate environment of any child and further highlight the importance of adult guidance for utmost obedience by our children and young persons.”

Mr Amaraizu said that the campaign would speak volumes on the old African tradition that every child is everybody’s child in any community; adding: “This explains that whatever affects the family directly affects society at large.”

He said that the dysfunctional situation of families is part of the reasons children are left in vulnerable conditions which make them cheaply available to be recruited into membership of organised criminal groups and unlawful societies.

“Today many vices are in existence because of lack of adult guidance of children and youths although some parents are faced with serious challenges in carrying out this all important task of responsible and responsive parenting.

“These serious challenges are due to many prevailing circumstances which could be social, environmental and economical among others,” he added.

(NAN)