NIGERIA-CHILDREN: Crackdown on Informal Workers

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Apr 28 1996 (IPS) - The packets of popcorn he was trying to sell littered the roadway in Lagos as sympathisers took 12-year-old Uche to a nearby hospital for doctors to attend to his fractured limb.

He had been hit by a motorbike while dodging soldiers attached to the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental Sanitation which aims to cleanse the city’s streets, not only of litter but also of street vendors.

Deprived of their prey that hot afternoon, the soldiers turned their attention on a 10-year-old girl selling oranges to motorists caught in a traffic jam on the busy Eko bridge, one of three linking the mainland to Lagos island. She was forced into a truck already half filled with other young vendors.

The task force regularly raids street hawkers. Normally, the vendors are released after paying a fine of 100 to 200 naira (between 1.25 and 2.50 U.S. dollars). Their goods are confiscated, but that does not prevent them from returning to the street.

Many of the vendors are children forced to help pad out family incomes that have dwindled as a result of the harsh effects of economic reforms started in 1986.

According to a survey by the Child Lifeline Association, a non- governmental organisation (NGO), about 10,000 children aged between seven and 13 years work on the streets of Lagos alone even though Nigeria ratified, in March 1991, the Convention on the Rights of the Child which seeks to end child abuse and labour.

In 1993, the government drafted a Children’s Decree based on the U.N. convention and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)’s charter on the rights and welfare of the child, but it is yet to be signed into law.

“The decree which has revolutionary changes in the fight for survival, development and protection of children replaces the 50- year-old laws on children in Nigeria,” explains Bukola Ponle, a member of the National Child Rights Implementation Committee.

“It will form the basis for child survival because, without a law against child abuse, children will continue to be abused,” Ponle told IPS. “The early signing of the decree will give legal backing to the monitoring duty of the committee.”

The committee’s tasks include reviewing the state of children’s rights and designing programmes as well as projects to enhance the status of the Nigerian child and submitting them to the government.

“The committee has a crucial role to play as Nigerian children are going through major crises,” says Batilloi Warrita, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Chief Information officer in Nigeria.

Warrita says UNICEF is developing Nigeria’s programme of action for the next five years. The programme is expected to serve as a foundation for efforts to alleviate the plight of children and women.

Its draft document, made available to IPS, blames increasing child labour on “the economic situation arising from the effects of SAP, the high rate of urbanisation and the resultant breakdown in the extended family system”.

“The labour act protects the child from being employed under exploitative circumstances, but unfortunately, socio-cultural and economic factors have compelled a large proportion to participate in economic activities such as street trading,” Ponle said.

One major reason for child labour here is the increasing poverty of parents, many of whom are jobless. In June last, an estimated 18 percent of the potential workforce of 34.6 million were unemployed.

“The government and its bad economic policies have virtually forced these children onto the streets as hawkers of anything including water in cellophane bags,” says Isaac Onoba, a state employee here.

“Civil servants have had their salaries stagnated while prices of goods have gone beyond the reach of most Nigerians,” he adds. “This has forced parents to use their children as sales persons even on the highways instead of sending them to school.”

Yemisi Adeola, who escaped arrest on the day that Uche was knocked down, told IPS: “I left school in primary three (grade three) last year because my parents could no longer pay my school fees.

“I have to help my mummy sell sweets and chocolates in the go- slow (traffic jam). My mummy used to own a shop but (the building housing it) was demolished.”

Shops are scarce in most Nigerian cities and monthly rentals for the few that are available cost between 600 and 1,500 naira (about 7.40 to 18.50 U.S. dollars) depending on their location. Moreover, landlords usually demand three years’ rent in advance.

As a result, Yemisi’s mother uses her one-roomed apartment as a store while her three children sell confectioneries, plastic plates, cosmetics, soap, toothpaste and other wares on the streets.

“We don’t like the situation where our children move between vehicles to sell, but we can not help it as we all have to survive under this harsh economic condition in our country,” says Comfort Oshadare, whose three children help her sell locally-woven shopping baskets.