OSHOGBO, NIGERIA – Adekuni, 16, is hawking peanuts along Gbongan-Ibadan Road in Oshogbo. She is one of thousands of children here who sells goods in the streets in order to help her family earn a living. But for Adekuni, and countless other girls, hawking nuts and other snacks is often dangerous.
“I was raped at the age of 13,” she says quietly as she recalls a customer who told her to bring her goods inside. “There was so much blood when he finished,” she says with a shudder. “He warned me not to tell anybody or I will die.”
Just three years after her attack, Adekuni says she has come to accept sex and violence as part of her job. Now, she says she views sex as just another way to make money for her family.
In Nigeria, families rely on their children to work in the streets, hawking goods like soup ingredients, peanuts, snacks, and other basic provisions. But child labor has become a concern for many here, especially as reports of violence among young girls who hawk goods in the streets increase. New data indicates that child workers are also performing worse in school, which has prompted officials in some states to ban children selling goods in the streets during school hours. Still, for many concerned parents, there is no alternative. In the face of abject poverty, many parents say they if their children did not work, the family would starve.
According to Eunice Uzodike, a senior lecturer in the law school of the University of Lagos in Nigeria, “Child abuse as a social problem has only gained the recognition and attention of Nigerian public recently.” Yet more than 15 years ago the African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (AN PPC AN) established themselves in several African countries, including Nigeria. The Nigerian arm of the group has held several conferences over the last decade to explore child abuse, but advocates say many social obstacles exist in the face of eradicating child abuse here, especially for young workers.
Adejoke Orelope Adefulire, the commissioner for women’s affairs and poverty alleviation in the state of Lagos, was the first to ban children hawking goods in the street during school hours in 2008. Several other states have since followed her lead. “Education and the proper upbringing of our children is the only way to eradicate poverty,” she says. “Children hawking should be banned totally even after school hours because a child that hawks after school would not be able to revise what she has been taught in the school. And, she is still exposed to the dangers of hawking,” the commissioner says.
But for many local families, the income that their children bring in is the key to their survival. “I agree totally that education is the only way to liberate us from poverty,” says a local seller who gave her name as Mrs. Alaba. “I still believe children should be allowed to help their parents to sell after school hours because we cannot do this work alone and make enough for all of us to eat.”
According to the International Labor Organization, ILO, the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is more than 15 million. Their jobs include, street hawking, beggars and washing cars, while a large number also work as domestic servants and as farmhands. Children hawking goods in the streets is so wide spread in Nigeria that it has been accepted by many as a normal way of life.
So government involvement in regulating what is known as “child hawking” has been unpopular with many local merchants who say it is both necessary and unavoidable, despite the dangers. “The government can build more shops for us and give them to us [at] affordable prices. Maybe that would solve this problem of hawking,” says Labake Alaniss, 34. “If we say the girls should not hawk because of danger, hunger will still kill them at the end of the day,” she says with a shrug.
Another local seller, Cecilia Ajadi, says if the government is prepared to ban children selling goods in the streets, they must be ready to provide additional options. “We are only living on what my children make during hawking and so they will continue to hawk,” she says.
“We all need to work hard to make a living,” says Niniola Adunni, 42, a widow with four children, who sells bean cakes called ‘moinmoin’ in the local dialect. “We can’t afford a shop and therefore we have to hawk our goods [on the street]. There is no other way I can provide for my children.”
Research from the ILO shows that girls typically start working earlier than boys. For most, hawking goods is a result of extreme poverty that can lead to higher drop out rates for girls too. But with an estimated 10,000 girls subjected to sexual assault or other forms of violence each year while selling goods in the streets, the practice is becoming increasingly controversial.
“We all know the dangers that these girls are exposed to by hawking, apart from being abused they could even be kidnapped,” says Atunini Apeke, a local market woman who sells maize. “We just pray for our children as they go out hawking that no evil will befall them. It is about survival,” she says.
