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I visited a youth friendly center in my school set up by the government a few weeks ago and the first thing that greeted me was young boys playing board games in a waiting room big enough to have about 20 seated in it, but for just the three boys playing games there was no one else in sight. I walked in, I said hello and they all raised their heads rather reluctantly before answering with a mutter I soon made out to be a hi, it was obvious disturbing their game was something they didn’t really fancy. Quickly not to further anger them I asked if I could see the person in charge and they pointed me to the cleaner, a man way above 30yrs of age. I asked him the same question and he told me nobody had come yet and that I should return in say 2hrs, this was 9am.
At exactly 11am I returned to find the counselor just coming in, I walked in with him and told him I was a student on a research for a project I was working on and I wanted to know how activities there were going on in the facility. He told me at the moment they were more or less not functional as there were no personnel’s except him and there were also no medical facilities for work. He also went ahead to show me around the internet café that was set up for students to search the internet for various sexual and reproductive health issues, the computers looked like they hadn’t been touched in years and I wasn’t surprised when he said they were all not working. This really had me thinking “HAVE WE BEEN FORGOTTEN???” has the government forgotten that young people have reproductive health needs and if these needs are not met we would be heading to a disastrous tomorrow, a tomorrow where the leaders are infected with HIV/AIDS or had their education short lived because of an unwanted pregnancy!!!
Oh no! We cannot let this happen, we have to stand up and speak for ourselves for crying out loud this is the 21st century and in a country like ours we cannot watch while a supposed youth friendly center cannot even meet the needs of young people in its environs. Health is our right and everything should be done to preserve it, why don’t we wake up and device strategies to make the government understand our health needs and how important it is to the well-being of the country at large.
