The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has challenged online publishers in Nigeria to create space in their platforms for issues concerning children.

Rising from a two-day dialogue with members of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) in Enugu yesterday, UNICEF emphasised that issues affecting children across Nigeria and the world are so crucial that they could not be kept in the dark for long.

Describing children as the vulnerable part of the society, the UNICEF’s Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku, who coordinated the dialogue, regretted that voices of children have been shut out from media because they are seen as not important.

He said that the shutting out of the voices of the children has been one aspect of the discrimination which the UN General Assembly’s Convention on the Right of the Child is out to correct.

Njoku, however, expressed happiness that with the dialogue, things would change in favour of the children, even as the online publishers requested UNICEF to make their work easier by supplying them with relevant news materials on children.

Apart from UNICEF communication experts, the dialogue was addressed by the Acting Head of Department of Mass Communications of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Associate Professor Abigail Ogwezzy Ndisika. She made it clear that the future development of any society is determined and shaped by the kind of children such society breed.

GOCOP was led to the dialogue by its President, Mr. Malachy Agbo.

•Photo, courtesy of Yahoo!, shows Associate Prof. Abigail Ogwezzy Ndisika.