CHUKS OKOH
In observance of Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October, Dr. Olamide Thompson-Odeneye, the Convener of The Parent and Child Online Safety Network, spearheaded a significant initiative to bolster digital safety awareness among students, educators, and parents across Southwestern Nigeria.
What began as a focused poster awareness drive in selected public and private schools in Lagos State expanded to include schools across Oyo State, with distributions made in Ibadan.
The core of the initiative involved providing schools with readily designed posters featuring simple yet critical online safety messages.
Dr. Thompson-Odeneye stated that the campaign serves as an essential, continuous reminder to students, teachers, and parents about safe digital practices.
The objectives driving the network’s efforts are multi-faceted; to significantly raise online safety awareness among primary and secondary school students and to equip schools with ongoing educational resources.
Others are critically to educate teachers and parents, enabling them to actively discuss safe online behaviour with children.
Furthermore, the campaign actively promotes the broader efforts of the Lagos State government, specifically highlighting the Safe Schools Lagos initiative in its mission to safeguard children online.
The distributed materials were anchored on best practices, utilizing simple rules like the SMART rules for online safety.
Schools received several posters featuring different messages for prominent display in classrooms, hallways, and other high-traffic public areas.
The campaign’s core messages focused on crucial areas of digital citizenship, including cyberbullying prevention, fostering safe online interactions, emphasizing password protection, and promoting the importance of reporting suspicious activity.
In a significant move to enhance resource accessibility, The Parent and Child Online Safety Network partnered with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the national custodian for online protection.
This partnership allowed the network to distribute digital resources provided by the NCC in the form of QR codes.
When scanned, these codes direct children, teachers, and parents to targeted safety information, ensuring the nationwide safety message is effectively spread.
The campaign was officially launched on October 10th, Global Encryption Day, at an event attended by representatives from about 13 public schools, each receiving an initial set of materials.
In total, the physical distribution reached approximately 50 schools, bolstered by a digital outreach that shared resources with an additional 30-plus schools online.
Dr. Thompson-Odeneye stressed that online safety is a shared responsibility. 
The initiative’s target audience is comprehensive: primary and secondary students as the primary recipients, teachers and administrators as essential facilitators, and parents/guardians as secondary beneficiaries who help reinforce safety lessons at home.
“Everybody is fully involved because online safety is really is a shared responsibility and all of us should be involved in it,” Dr. Thompson-Odeneye emphasized.
The Parent and Child Online Safety Network itself is composed of a dedicated group of professionals, educators, and concerned parents volunteering to push cybersecurity awareness and equip children, teachers, and parents with the necessary skills to navigate the digital world securely.