Children’s theatre: a Nostrum to juvenile delinquency in the Niger Delta Region, Nigeria.

Abstract

Juvenile delinquency is a habitual problem among the youths that are under the legal prosecution age. The awareness and prominence of juvenile delinquency remains minimal despite the establishment of a juvenile court in 1943. Recently,
juvenile delinquency has become proliferous in the Niger Delta Region. Theatre through performance can be employed to change/create a new world for
youths and teenagers by developing their emotions through performances. This paper focuses on the exploration of the cultural methods of bringing up children in the Colonial era and the 21st Century in the Niger Delta. To determine the effect of these negative behaviours such as drug-related offenses, violent crimes, sexual abuse, armed robbery, rape and vandalism on the child,
the nuclear family, society and the Region; a qualitative research methodology was adopted; with a focus on the Niger Delta Region using random selection to select six (6) out of the nine States that make up the Region. Persons that
wereof sixty and eighty (60-80) years of agewere the target age to administer thequestionnaires to. The result shows that parents in the colonial era were stricter and more concerned with the images their children/wards portrayed outside the home. Furthermore, single parenting, divorce, and abortion were alien to African culture and society. Finally, the research illustrates how theatre as a phenomenon can be used to minimise/ eradicate these juvenile problems among youth in the region.