NIGERIA AND THE PROBLEM OF CHILD LABOUR
That children matter is as easy to say as it is to understand because it is a truism bereft of any complications. It is further simplified by the fact that if the world is to have any future at all, the children must play a part in that future.
Children matter. As the center of the family which is often the foundation of any stable society, children matter to an extent that cannot be fully described. As the youngest members of any society at every point in time, nature ensures that they will survive other members of the society and that naturally, they will be around after others have long gone.
Children matter because they bring with them the ability to reinvent the world as it is. Yet, this is a world that hunts children. In many parts of the world, children, as the most vulnerable part of the population often live under harrowing conditions. Whenever and wherever there have been conflict, experience has shown that children have disproportionately borne the brunt, experiencing in brutal turns what no one their age should ever have to experience even over the course of a thousand life times.
For many children in Nigeria, even before they are old enough to savour the fleeting miracle that childhood is, that most precious of gifts is savagely snatched away from them. One of the main culprits is child marriage but an equally culpable culprit is child labour.
Child labour, manifesting in its many malignant forms ensures that children stop being children even before many of them are old enough to really understand and enjoy what it means to be a child.
Child labour it is that ensures for example that children who should be in school getting equipped to take the world by storm are instead marooned in places where they are subjected to conditions alien to their age or aptitude.
The International Labour Organisation recently stated that no fewer than 15 million children are engaged in child labour in Nigeria. This is as the Nigeria Employers` Consultative Association (NECA) listed communities in Niger, Ondo, and Osun States as some of the communities where child labour is prevalent in Nigeria.
Gratefully, the International Labour Organisation also confirmed that the National Child Labour and forced labour survey will be released soon to properly beam the light on what has become a scandalous scar on the conscience and image of the ‘Giant of Africa.’
Why should Nigeria`s youngest and those who for reason of age bear the torch to a brighter future be subjected to backbreaking work when they should be in school getting equipped with all the tools they need to shape a peaceful and prosperous future for all?
Why have those who subject children to all manner of abuse and forced labour continued to work scot-free or at worst are let off with mere slaps on the wrist when they are caught in the middle of their crimes? Why have the conditions which make it possible for forced labour to thrive in parts of Nigeria remained in place with painfully little done to check them?
These grave questions must be speedily and correctly answered if Nigeria is to pay the enormous debt it owes its children especially those children betrayed by the spectacular failures of a country that once promised so much.
Kene Obiezu, @kenobiezu
