Kid labourers in the midst of luxury

 

Some of the children

Abuja, Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory, is ordinarily a city of splendour. Many of its inhabitants are powerful and stupendously rich. But for its under-performing social facilities, the nation’s capital would compete favourably with an average European city.

In spite of its grandeur, some unfortunate children are living in squalor. Caught in the web of poverty, which is foisted on them by unfriendly policies and corruption among the nation’s leaders, these kids are left with no choice than to go to the streets to fend for themselves. Consequently, child labour and abuse have become the order of the day in Abuja.

These children are involved in various forms of businesses such as shoe making, carpentry, vulcanising, domestic service, cart-pushing and hawking.

In spite of the efforts of the authorities to tackle the problem, experts say the desired results have yet to be visible owing to the near absence of an effective social safety programme.

While some of these under-aged children,  owing to the fear of being arrested by the Abuja Environmental Protection Board, have now relocated to the markets located in the suburbs such as Gwagwalada, Zuba, Utako, Dutse, Nyanya, others still carry out their activities within the city centre.

For instance, a visit by our correspondent to some of the markets located in the suburbs revealed that apart from hawking, majority of them have now found a new mode of making money: truck-pushing

At the popular Gwagwa Market in Deidei, these underage children hire wheelbarrows for between N150 to N200 per day.  The wheel barrows, it was observed, were used to carry wares for customers who patronised the market.

One of them who spoke to our correspondent said he had to do menial jobs because that was the only means of livelihood he had.

The 11-year-old boy, who simply gave his name as Yakubu, said he had been pushing wheel barrows for the past three years.  According to him,  his parents could not afford to send him to school;  hence,  he decided to help himself by doing menial jobs.

“When I’m not pushing trucks, I follow my father to the farm,” he added.

Yakubu said he always arrived in the market as early as 6 am everyday. So, he could hire a wheel barrow to perform his tasks.

“Anybody who cannot get here as early as 6 am would not get a wheelbarrow to hire because other people would have rented them and this means he would not be able to work,” he said.

When asked how much he makes in a day, Yakubu responded that he realises between N500 and N800, depending on the patronage.

“I come here every day by 6 am and go home by 7 in the evening. This is the only means for me to make some money to take care of myself.”

Asked if he has the ambition of going to school, he replied, “Yes”, but quickly added: “There is no money for that now.”

Similarly, 13-year-old Esther hawks sachet water, popularly called pure water — at the Wuse market for her mother and claims she makes N700 per day.  While Yakubu is not lucky to be in school, Esther claimed to be a JSS 2 pupil. He said she hawks water after school hours to assist her mother.

She however claimed to have been arrested by officials of AEPB twice, adding that in both cases, her elder sister secured her release after paying a fine of N5,000.

She said, “I came to Abuja from Makurdi to stay with my aunty after the death of my parents in an accident in 2008. But since then, we have been struggling to survive.

“My aunty told me that life in Abuja is expensive and that my brother and I would have to do menial jobs to survive in order to have enough money to go to school.”

Esther’s story is not entirely different from that of Ndubuisi. While Ndubuisi’s peers are in school and battling academic work, he sweats it out hawking fruits at the Dutse Market to make a living.

But speaking in an interview with our correspondent on the level of poverty in the country, the Director-General, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, Prof. Isreal Taiwo, said that despite the positive growth rate recorded by the economy, poverty rate and income inequality among Nigerians are on the increase.

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product has been growing at an average of seven per cent over the last few years, but Taiwo said a study conducted by the institute in 18 out of the 36 states of the federation, including Abuja,  in 2012 showed that the growth in GDP had not impacted positively on the lives of the people as the poverty and inequality gap had increased.

He said, “The study covers the entire country and we sampled 18 states out of 36 and we also sampled two local governments in each of the states. And the study also included a survey of the Federal Capital Territory.

“From the information collected, we discovered that although the economy is growing, poverty is not reducing and income inequality is also not reducing. That is the evidence that we have and we cannot manipulate the evidence. What we can do is to provide explanation as to why this is happening and the explanation that we can give is that the benefit of growth is not spreading sufficiently to the poor people.”

Asked why the impact of the GDP was not being felt by the people, the NISER DG explained that instead of developing safety net programmes for the people, the country had focused more on “capital deepening and widening.”

He said, “We have been focusing on improvements in investment both private and public but we need to develop a technological base in the country, which, if developed,  will enhance our ability to produce, thus making the country to grow much more faster.”

He also said the labour force participation rate in Nigeria which,  according to him,  is the lowest in the world,  needed to be enhanced.

“Our labour force participation rate,  which is about 50 per cent,  is one of the lowest in the world, needs to be enhanced by bringing more people into the labour market.”

He added that the government needed to play more roles in developing a safety net that would help to reduce poverty in the country.

“There is a lot of programmes in the system. These include the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment programme, National Poverty Eradication Programme, but we don’t have enough information about the poor people that need the programme and this should be focused on,” he said.

The Minister of State, Federal Capital Territory, Mrs. Olajumoke Akinjide,  attests to the poverty situation in the nation’s capital when she said that about 46.9 per cent of Abuja residents earn less than N30, 000 monthly.

She said the figure was obtained from a demographic household survey carried out by the Federal Capital Territory Administration.

She said, “The FCT administration recently carried out a demographic household survey to generate basic date and information for purpose of planning and development of the FCT.

“We were able to ascertain that 72.11 per cent of the households earn below N100, 000 per month and that the majority of the workers fall within the low income groups.

“About 46.9 per cent earn below N30, 000 per month. 19.77 per cent earn between N30, 000 and N50, 000 per month, while about 5.44 per cent earn between N50, 000 and N100, 000 per month. This means that only about 28 per cent above N100, 000 per month in FCT.”

Child labour is the employment of children in any type of work that deprives them of their childhood and interferes with their ability to attend school regularly. In other words, the act can be mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.

This  practice is considered exploitative by many international organisations and nations across the world prohibit child labour.  But, while a rise in household incomes, availability of schools and passage of child labour laws have led to a reduction in the rate of the vice in developed countries, such cannot be said of a developing country like Nigeria.

For instance, in 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa is said to have had the highest incidence of child labour, with several African countries having about 50 per cent of children between 5-14 years working.

According to the United States Department of Labour, poverty is a major driver of child labour in Nigeria. In its 2010 report, the USDL claimed Nigeria was witnessing the worst forms of the problem, particularly in agriculture and domestic service.

The United Nations Children Fund,  also in its report on Child Labour in Nigeria,  revealed that a whopping 15 million children under the age of 14 were engaged in labour activities.

Apart from being exposed to dangerous and unhealthy environments, these children, the report noted, carried too much responsibility for their age.

While the report said about six million children in Nigeria do not attend schools at all, it added that about one million of them had been forced to drop out of school due to poverty.

The National Bureau of Statistics in its 2010 poverty report gave credence to this when it said that about 112.519 million Nigerians, representing about 69 per cent of the country’s total population,  were poor.

According to the report, the North-West and North-East geo-political zones accounted for the highest poverty rates in the country with 77.7 per cent and 76.3 per cent respectively in 2010 while the South-West geo-political zone recorded the lowest at 59.1 per cent.

Interestingly, the report said about 97 per cent of the population living in the Federal Capital Territory agreed that they are indeed poor.  But the situation, according to findings, seems to be on the increase as  the majority of underage children have joined the labour force against their will.