HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF CHILD TREATMENT IN : A PERSPECTIVE

Egodi Uchendu

ABSTRACT

A significant proportion of Nigerian children have not benefitted from regional and international provisions on fundamental human rights and the rights of children.

Their citizenship rights are also not guaranteed. An attempt is made to look at the historical patterns of child socialization in the four most populous ethnic groups in

Nigeria responsible for 78 per cent of the entire population of the country and to relate this to contemporary circumstances of Nigerian children. This comparison yielded a different result from what was anticipated. While certain patterns of child treatment can be traced to past cultural practices, the degree of the modern manifestations cannot simply be explained by linking them to the past. It will be misleading to conclude that the neglect and denial of basic rights of Nigerian children in recent times derives from traditional cultural practices, despite the survival of certain legacies from the past.

Indeed factors traceable to the country’s economic crisis and political ineptitude are largely responsible for the circumstances of children in contemporary Nigeria.

INTRODUCTION Some scholars have underscored the fact that the status of children in majority of the world is on the decline.1 With respect to Africa, Brandon and Rwomire (2001: x) observed as follows: “comparing the status of African women and children to the status of women and children in the majority of the world, or comparing their current status to 2 their own status 10 years ago, it would appear that there has been a considerable decline in their welfare”. Meanwhile, in 1992 Women in Nigeria (WIN), a non-governmental organisation for the welfare of Nigerian women had produced a pamphlet titled “Child

Abuse” which aimed at creating awareness on the mistreatment of children in Nigeria.

These assessments of African and Nigerian children’s welfare are hinged on notions of child use and/or abuse and based on the stipulations of international and continental documents. The claims of a decline in children’s circumstances however, provoke the need for a historical examination of the condition of children in Nigeria. Incidentally, unlike the attention given issues about women, not enough academic studies have been carried out on Nigerian children’s lives and issues about them.2 This essay depends on interviews, media reports,3 ethnographic studies and relevant international documents.

It engages with aspects of Nigerian children’s lives both in traditional and modern times.

The discussion of children’s lives in Nigeria would also be considered against the stipulations of international and continental documents,4 the bases on which a link was drawn by WIN (1999) and Brandon & Rwomire (2001) respectively in their assessments of African, and specifically, Nigerian children’s experiences. Folklore very common with all Nigerian ethnic communities alongside colonial-sponsored ethnographic studies provides relevant evidence of Nigerian children’s rights and privileges in their societies that is helpful for this examination.

As the world moved towards capitalism, efforts were made to regulate the role of children to avoid their exploitation in the emerging world capitalist order. In 1959 the

United Nations came up with the Declaration on the Rights of the Child. In 1981 the

OAU also came up with its African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. The United

Nations as well as the OAU called for respect for a child’s life; emphasising the 3 importance of providing opportunities and facilities for the healthy and dignified development of the child and requested for the protection of the child. The United

Nations General Assembly in adopting the Convention on the Rights of the Child did so on the recognition that children have needs and human rights that extend far beyond basic concepts of protection and these needs evolve with age and maturity (UNICEF

1990; OHCHR 2004).

Children, in this paper refers to persons who, according to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1999 Nigerian constitution, are under the age of eighteen. Persons who fall within this categorisation, therefore, are infants, toddlers, pre- adolescents, and adolescents. The primary consideration in identifying who children are is age and not social or marital status. This breakdown is purposeful and should be used to identify those represented in this discussion. International statistics indicating that

43.4% of Nigerians are under the age of fifteen shows that children under eighteen years of age constitute close to half of Nigeria’s entire human population (CIA 2004).

CHILDREN IN TRADITIONAL SETTINGS (THE PRE-CAPITALIST ERA)

Nigeria is a multi ethnic country with a wide range of cultures in operation in the past two centuries. Out of an estimated 250 or more ethnic groups, the dominant ones are the Igbo and Yoruba in southern Nigeria and Hausa and Fulani in northern Nigeria.

The Ijaw, found mostly in the Niger Delta also in southern Nigeria, is the most populous minority group. Together, these four ethnic communities constitute 78% of Nigeria’s entire population (Nigeria 2007). Cultural traits among these groups varied during the pre-capitalist era but certain features were obvious: all were predominantly patriarchal, including the Igbo which had a small but significant matrilineal section; and their basic 4 cultural features were affected by their religious practices. Various brands of the indigenous religions—along with Christianity and Islam, depending on which applied— were found in these four ethnic societies. Thus, the operating cultural norms together with religious views determined the patterns of child socialization among these groups.

Attitudes towards children were generally warm and positive since many parents desired children and regarded them as gifts or special visitors. Much time and effort were expended on child nurturing in infancy, lasting upwards of two to three years (Last 2000; Ottenberg 1958: 48; Smith 1956). Child socialization—the process of integrating a child within its community and acquainting it with the social norms— commenced from the time the baby was weaned. Thus, children were made aware of their society and how to behave within the limits of its norms. Socialization was a process that combined moral instruction with some degree of child work. Parents, older siblings, and members of the extended family jointly participated in the nurturing and socialization of a child. An old Igbo proverb, nwa bu nke oha—the child belongs to all, was used to encourage every member of the society to play a part in a child’s socialization process. A related proverb among the Yoruba says Eni kan ni o mbimo gbogbo ara ni o nto—the birthing process may be an individual task but the child’s upbringing is a communal responsibility. 5 This ideology of child socialization as a communal responsibility pervaded nearly all the Nigerian cultural groups during the colonial period.

Phoebe Ottenberg’s account of “The Afikpo Ibo of eastern Nigeria” (1965) and

Adiele Afigbo’s Ropes of Sand (1981) give facts about growing up and child socialization in . Using the Afikpo Igbo as one point of reference, child socialization was non-coercive in colonial Igbo society. In infancy and early childhood, children were very close to their mothers, many of whom rarely employed force in dealing with them 5

(Ottenberg 1958). Between the ages of five and six, boys ran errands for their parents and older members of the extended family while girls of similar age cared for younger children. For both sexes, training for adult tasks began at the age of eight from which time boys helped their fathers in the farm and girls helped their mothers with house work and farming (Ottenberg 1965: 23). Until the 1920s, the menace of child kidnappers restrained children from visiting the farms unless in the company of adults and therefore from doing any work, or playing, outside the family compound and away from the watchful eyes of an adult. The only exception was in the evenings when children left their compounds in bands to collect water for domestic use (Edwards 1969:

31; Afigbo 1981: 164). Considerable periods of time were spent playing with friends and in entertainment within the confines of the family compound, which was usually walled round. By early adolescence, a girl was expected to assume much of the housework from her mother. At this stage girls did more domestic work besides farming while boys concentrated largely on manual work.

Discipline, the training of the mind and character to develop self-control, right conduct, and right attitude to life (Dopamu 2004), was approached in various ways but often with religion as a determining factor. In traditional Igbo society the child occupied a humble position (Afigbo 1981: 148). The Igbo, conditioned by their culture and Igbo religious worldview, were described as meditative and tolerant; utilising their mouths more than their hands to discipline misdeeds (Ohadike 1994). Male heads of household employed the tactics of denial to teach children self-control. It is common knowledge that certain delicacies, namely eggs and gizzard, were not previously consumed by children in Igboland because of the understanding that by denying these items children would not develop a craving for them, which could potentially lead them to theft and 6 other socially-censured actions. Denial was, therefore, to check against the inability to control one’s desire for them. But, occasionally, exceptions were made in favour of a dearly loved child who could sometimes receive bits of an egg or a gizzard from an indulgent father.

Among the Ijaw, children under the age of five were assigned simple chores such as sweeping the family compound, looking after younger siblings, and running errands.

At that age discipline was not strict and consisted mostly in parents or older siblings yelling at a child for any misdemeanour or acts of stubbornness. They could be beaten but this was not done often (Hollos & Leis 1989: 69). From the age of six a child’s workload increased slightly to include both work at home and on the farm. Girl children were observed to do more work than boys. As they grew older, they became more burdened with work unlike the boys. Girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen worked at domestic chores three times as much as boys and spent half as much time in play. Many were full-fledged helpmates of their mothers, taking over the running of the household, directing their juniors, and raising the young ones. Beyond the age of six, Ijaw mothers screamed at, or smacked, the younger children when they misbehaved. Older children were also screamed at in addition to being threatened, verbally abused, and struck (Hollos & Leis 1989).

Both the Yoruba (Dopamu 2004: 181) and Hausa (Smith 1954) also exposed children early to work. Baba of Karo, a Hausa Muslim woman, recalled a daily pattern of waking up “when the sun got up” (Smith 1954: 51). This was happening between 1890 and 1904 but the pattern remained relatively the same until the middle of the century at the time her story was documented. The first task of the day was selling bean cakes in the village or whatever one’s mother prepared. It was followed by a meal and then a 7 period of grinding grain for the afternoon meal. Girl children started early to cook. As boys followed their fathers to learn farm work, girls followed their mothers to learn cooking and spinning. Children entertained themselves with songs as they worked.

Baba of Karo recalled: “We girls used to go out and sing to the boys as they worked in the fields, ‘Work is new, Work is hard, We greet you at your work’ ” (Smith 1954: 59).

Interspersed with work times were play periods. This diminished with years and by the time a girl was twelve it was almost rare or non-existent since she would have been married by then.

Child beating occurred among Muslim Hausa, whose religious culture promoted firm control of persons, but like in the other parts of the country under consideration, it was not unduly severe and was reserved for slaves or non-slaves who seriously misbehaved. Murray Last (2000: 365-372) recounts the experience of the Maguzawa—a non-Muslim Hausa community—that completely rejected physical punishment for fear of offending a child and making him/her leave the family thereby causing the family to loose much needed labour. The Maguzawa until 1972 remained traditional, non-Muslim, non-Christian, and agrarian in their practices (Doi 1984; Last 2000). Children, by their worldview, were guests who should be treated as such. The absence of punishment did not imply a life of total leisure for children who also were socialized early to work and made to contribute their labour for the good of their families. The Hausa, just like the

Igbo, employed denial as a method of child discipline and this featured in the sleeping and feeding patterns of children. Children’s preponderance to sleep was curtailed on the understanding that too much of it was unhealthy; and going without food occasionally was part of the general training children acquired in life (Last 2000). 8

Among the culture groups under examination, punishment was not severe but children were exposed to pain through certain social or ritual observances such as circumcision. Male circumcision among the Hausa occurred at the age of eight. The Igbo and Yoruba performed it eight days after birth. In some Igbo communities girl children had their genitals mutilated just before adolescence or just before the birth of a first child, a practice they shared with the Ijaw (Talbot 1967; Hollos & Leis 1989). The Igbo and Ijaw also practiced cicatrisation—a rite that proved one’s ability to endure pain.

Although, commonly performed for adult men and communal leaders in Igboland, wealthy parents sponsored their sons’ cicatrisation for economic and political reasons

(Afigbo 1981). The Aro, , and Ikwerre Igbo groups, in addition, cicatrised girls as a mark of beauty at the completion of their marriage process (Talbot 1967: 183-4). Yoruba society allowed the infliction of pain in child discipline and emphasised this in the proverb: “Punishment awaits a senseless child, Weeping awaits a child roaming about”

(Dopamu 2004: 181).

The process of child upbringing, incorporating discipline and child work, reflects the nature of child socialization among 78% of Nigeria’s population culture groups before 1960, cutting through major and minor ethnic groups. Gradual exposure to work was part of the childhood activities in most parts of the country. Work thus served as an avenue for educating children and keeping them occupied at a time when western education was not universal and, in some places, not yet introduced. Child work was by no means exploitative in pre-colonial and colonial Nigeria because it did not require children to toil beyond their capacity. From eight years of age it became the avenue through which the society provided children with the skill and training required for adult roles. Ibhawoh (1999) noted that it created in children a sense of personal worth 9 and accomplishment. The Igbo looked upon it as a system of learning by doing and to the Yoruba it was an essential ingredient of self-discipline (Dopamu 2004).

Adolescent children were exposed to more hours of work and to more demanding duties at that transitional period in their lives when they were attaining the physical maturity necessary for marriage and the assumption of adult roles. Traditional societies thus expected an adolescent to be accomplished in every possible way, in line with the cultural and religious expectations of the people. Among the Igbo, an adolescent found deficient and who was unable to engage in the occupation of the parent of his or her sex was considered a profligate. If a female, she would have difficulty attracting a suitor (Njoku 1991: 129). The goals of traditional child socialization fits Le Vine’s conclusion that the common set of goals shared by human parents everywhere in the world include the physical survival and health of the child; the development of the child’s capacity for self-reliance and eventual independence; and the cultivation in the child of cherished cultural values and attitudes (1980: 17).

NIGERIAN CHILDREN SINCE INDEPENDENCE (THE CAPITALIST ERA)

Between 1960 and 1970 when western education was gaining ground in many parts of Nigeria and children were sent to school, the social pattern of most communities witnessed some changes, some of which impacted on communal child socialization processes. School children had the scope of their responsibilities expanded. In addition to observing communal patterns of child socialization, they coped with responsibilities related to their education. Much was expected of children: to live as children always lived in the society while simultaneously keeping up with their schoolwork. Ijaw 10 parents wanted their daughters “to perform all labour that was appropriate to females of their age level in their mothers’ time” (Hollos & Leis 1989: 70).

Local forms of punishment and exposure to work were reinforced by the use of corporal punishment and the introduction of manual labour into the school curriculum.

Physical punishment, backed by the Christian and Muslim religious texts,6 became popular in the school system that it prevented teachers from trying alternative measures of correction. In Hausaland, physical punishment pre-dated the western school system and was practiced within the indigenous Qur’anic system of education that dates beyond the 19th century (Doi 1984), now popularly called the almajirinci. The use of physical punishment in western school system popularized indigenous patterns of inflicting pain as the consequence for misdeed. Sometimes its application was more severe than the indigenous cultures prescribed for its variants.

After the Nigerian civil war in 1970, patterns of child socialization in Nigeria gradually took on a less child-indulgent nature. Important developments that contributed to this were the abrupt economic deterioration of the country and political ineptitude. From the oil boom of the early 1970s, the nation was plunged into debt within a few years. The resultant economic chaos caused confusion at all levels and affected political and social institutions, including the family. Children’s circumstances were considerably altered and their privileges withdrawn by older members of the society who were under pressure and frustrated by the dismal economic and political situation in the country.

The treatment of Nigerian children since 1960 has been seen more as an abuse caused by ignorance, frustrations and greed. Abuse refers generally to all forms of cruelty and mistreatment. It is represented by violence, which could be physical, verbal, 11 or psychological. Violence in this context is the application of force to injure and to damage. Acts of violence towards children are many and varied and include child battering and verbal assault that strip children of self worth and erode their confidence in themselves. Parents, teachers, guardians and also strangers are guilty of these crimes, the severity of which differs for children living with their biological parents and those living with guardians and parent surrogates. 7 Verbal abuse was identified as a commonplace act in Nigeria, used to cause maximum shame and humiliation through scorn (Last 2000). Child battering in Nigeria occurs mostly in homes and has no age limit.

Child battering, argues Nancy Scheper-Hughes, is done by punitive, extremely exacting, and overly controlling parents for whom the boundaries of discipline and abuse are blurred (1987: 14). One of the severe cases of child battering that occurred within the last two decades involved Dotun Egbedeyi, a nine-year-old boy. For breaking a three-day religious fast imposed on the family, he was flogged with an electric cable by his father until he became unconscious.8 The total jurisdiction Nigerian parents wield over their children allows for a lot of abuses within the family system, which sometimes may suggest a malicious and sadistic rejection of the child. But, then, as observed, “the abusive and infanticidal acts of parents are often the end products of abusive and infanticidal social structural, economic, and political relations” (Scheper-Hughes 1987:

24).

Freedom of expression has rarely been the privilege of Nigerian children, whom society expects to be seen and not heard (Afigbo 1981). Indeed, this cannot be blamed on abusive and infanticidal social structural or economic and political relations. Failure to be heard heightens helplessness and has the potential to result in anti-social behaviour in a child, which in turn may attract punishment and physical abuse for the child. The 12 opposite of abuse is communication, understanding, and consideration, all of which have the possibility for some form of negotiation between children on one hand and their abusers on the other (Brandon & Rwomire 2001: 64). In the context in which a child is not allowed to express himself or herself before a superior, the benefits of communication, understanding, and consideration are lost and at the expense of the child.

Many more children are being separated from their natural mothers entirely or for prolonged periods within the country through many avenues but especially by trafficking and child abandonment (Uchendu 2006); emphasizing the relevance of a 1975 study indicating that impersonal satisfaction of a child’s material needs is insufficient for his or her growth (Wall 1975: 86-87). Indeed, close, stable, warm, and affectionate ties between mother or mother substitute and the child are very essential. Wall (1975) also showed that where the mother-child tie does not exist or is ruptured, and where the child is not speedily allowed to form a new and consistent relationship to some mother- substitute such a child may suffer an apparently irreversible warping of his or her emotional development and be unable for the rest of his or her life to form adequate relationship with other human beings. It was projected that such a person’s intellectual development will be prejudiced and, in an extreme case, may be markedly slowed resulting in a defective mentality and the development of stereotyped mannerisms.

Child trafficking became a sophisticated engagement in the 1990s emerging as a lucrative business in many parts of Nigeria. It is estimated that about forty percent of street and working children in Nigeria are trafficked (Bass 2004: 4). Victims end up as domestics, outright slaves, prostitutes, fronts for alms begging—now becoming common even in non-Muslim sections of the country, and in child labour, aspects of which are 13 injurious to their health. In effect, the historical pattern of child socialization involving child work that was practiced in Nigeria before the 1960s became replaced with an exploitative form of child labour in which the primary beneficiaries are persons other than the child labourers and which results in excessive physical, social, and psychological strains for the child victims (ILO 1987 & 1992; UNICEF 1986). For instance, of the 1,880 to 2,500 minors who worked as street prostitutes in Italy in 2004, 1,500 to

2,300 had been trafficked predominantly from Albania and Nigeria, reports the

International Labour Organization.9

Trafficked children are separated from their families, rendered defenceless, exposed to traumatic experiences and deprived of their childhood. In Nigeria, this act is fuelled by widespread poverty and deprivation, vulnerability, lack of political will, large family size, rapid urbanization, urban to rural migration, rapid culture change, high school drop-out rates, and a preference for cheap labour. Poverty leads to a violation of numerous basic human rights (OHCHR 1997/98: 6; UN 2006). Child trafficking has its antecedent in the old custom of child fostering by which parents sent children to live with relations and friends for social and economic reasons. The practice featured commonly in the child socialization patterns of the Hausa, Igbo, and Ijaw until the 1970s

(Smith 1954; Hollos & Leis 1989). Majority of children trafficked in the last two decades were recruited from poor families in rural communities. Children are particularly prone to enslavement or other forms of exploitation because of the desperation of their parents, their own powerlessness, and their usefulness in performing menial tasks or in the case of girls, in ultimately providing sexual services. A 2002 study revealed the existence of a slave trade in children between Nigeria and Gabon (O’ Hear 2002: 229). This is confirmed by WarmAfrica.com (2004), which reported the activities of a syndicate that 14 kidnapped children and women. While women were forced into prostitution, the children were forced to dig granite in Alamatu, a little village near Abeokuta, Nigeria, and were paid 50 Naira (the equivalent of US $0.35) a week. Their working hours ranged from twelve to sixteen each day. Testimonies from the children, some of whom were as young as eight years old, showed that they: “were always tortured and beaten, at times until we fainted” (WarmAfrica.com 2004).

The Nigerian Vanguard newspaper also in 2002 quoted the International Labour

Organization’s report that more than 2,400 Nigerian children were trafficked from

Sokoto State across the West Coast yearly.10 Other states of the federation where child trafficking has been rampart are Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, and Abia States while

Lagos, Edo and Ogun States, in addition to Sokoto State, provide the major routes for transporting children out of Nigeria to other West African nations. The marine creeks of

Akere and Idopetu in Ogun State serve as safe haven for ferrying children abroad.11

African countries benefiting immensely from the labour of Nigerian children include

Cameroon, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea (O’Hear 2002). Outside the African continent,

Italy tops the list as the highest importer of Nigerian girls for prostitution. Nigeria, on its part, imports a lot of children from Benin Republic and Togo for domestic work (Bass

2004). In 1998 UNICEF placed the number of child domestic workers in Nigeria at 40,000 and in 2004 describes Nigeria as “a major player in the selling and buying of children and as one of the biggest supplying, receiving, and transit countries in West Africa”

(UNICEF 1998; UNICEF UK 2004). The recruitment of girls into prostitution is more wide spread in Edo State than in other parts of the country. Italy, the major absorber of

Nigerian female prostitutes, had as many as 20,000 Nigerian girls engaged in commercial sex work in 1999 (CEDAW 2004: 21). 15

Child labour exists in the informal sector. They are found in cottage industries and mechanical workshops working as apprentices in various trades including weaving, tailoring, catering, hairdressing, and auto repair. They are also found on the streets working as vendors, car washers, scavengers, beggars, head-load carriers, feet-washers and bus conductors. Child labour with its multifarious long-term impacts places the interest of the beneficiary above those of the child. Much of the work done by Nigerian children as domestics, sex workers, and as child labourers is detrimental to their physical, mental, social, educational, and moral development. In the long run it will deprive the country of some degree of positive economic advancement and development. In 2004, the largest concentration of trafficked child workers in Nigeria were in the Yoruba States of Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo, and Osun (WarmAfrica.com).

In 2002 alone close to thirty percent of Nigerian children less than fourteen years of age were mistreated and abused through child labour (ILO 2002a: 17).12 The misuse and negligent treatment of Nigerian children contravenes Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that enjoined state parties to recognize the right of the child to protection from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be harmful or to interfere with the child’s health or physical, spiritual or social development (OHCHR 2004). In ratifying the Convention, a country is legally bound to ensure children’s access to health care, free and compulsory primary education, protection from abuse and neglect. They are also to guarantee among other things their right to be cared for by their families and to participate in matters that affect them. The

Nigerian government publicly acknowledged the same year the continued preponderance of trafficking in the country, noting how “The gains from the trade provide a strong incentive for traffickers who bribe and subvert weak law enforcement 16 and immigration officers while taking advantage of Nigeria’s porous borders” (CEDAW

2004: 22). Failure to control the public and easy evasion of the law is the characteristic of a weak state (der Veen 2004: 370). Nigeria’s administrative weakness is therefore responsible for most child abuse practices in the country.

With the alarming growth rate of poverty in Nigeria—some 91% of the population since 2006 live under USD2 (300Naira) a day (UNDP 2006)—rural poor parents have come to regard child labour as children helping to augment their living.

This new ideology for child labour differs from the pre-1960 view that locates it within indigenous child socialization practices. The difference between the pre-1960 view and this recent explanation rests on the fact that working children and their exploiters place work above every other childhood activity unlike what obtained in indigenous socialization patterns. Play periods are reduced for victims of child labour and their education are hampered if not completely arrested.13 In the 2001 survey of Nigerian domestic helpers by the International Foundation for African Child (IFAC) showed that out of a thousand families sampled, 11% of the domestic helpers (110 domestics) were sent to school but 7% (approximately eight out of ten) attended night school while 4%, four out of a hundred and ten, attended regular day schools.14 The remaining 89% were not enrolled in any school. Although most biological parents send their children to school, some would overwhelm their children, particularly the females, with work.

Hollos and Leis (1989) records that in between early morning and afternoon chores, Ijaw girls attended school; they returned early to continue with their house keeping duties, to which also some had the extra responsibility of hawking or store keeping. Many found their domestic responsibilities interfering with their studies. 17

In the following pages, some social activities would be examined closely for their impacts on children. Firstly is the use of children in street marketing. Many child domestics work in and outside the home. The commonest outside work is hawking. In northern Nigeria in particular where wife seclusion is practiced by the Muslim community child hawkers are ubiquitous. Wife seclusion has placed a burden on children whose use in the domestic economy in turn sustains the practice of female seclusion. Nigerian children from six years old may be found in the streets hawking but generally most hawkers are between nine and fourteen years of age.15 Child hawkers are a popular sight on Nigerian streets, major and inter-state roads, at motor parks, and around church buildings. Simply put, they are ubiquitous. Although poverty is the root cause of hawking, the extent to which hawking enhances the economic status of the proprietors is anybody’s guess and it does not in any way compensate for the wanton abuse child hawkers are exposed to; namely sex abuse, accidents, deaths, and ritual murder. In the process of hawking cooked groundnuts for his guardian Ikechukwu

Okonkwo, an eleven year-old boy, was lured away, murdered, and butchered for ritual purposes in in Igboland in September 1996.16 Child domestics could be denied food and shelter for failing to market their fixed daily average of whatever goods their beneficiaries deal. In appreciation of the dangers faced by hawkers three states in northern Nigeria—Bauchi, Zamfara, and Kebbi—had recently enacted laws against hawking by girls less than eighteen years of age (CEDAW 2004: 22). Nevertheless, the deluge of child hawkers is yet to be contained even in northern Nigeria.

Another sector of the society that exploits child labour is the National Union of

Road Transport Workers for whom school age boys function as bus assistants, commonly called bus conductors, and many of whom subsequently graduate into 18 motor-park touts and political thugs. In the early 1980s, working as a bus conductor was a major avenue for drug use and abuse among male children in Kaduna State. In 1991 it was also identified as responsible for exposure to drug use in Kano (Aliyu 1981: 73;

Abdullahi & Haruna 1991, 31). Between 1980 and 2000, there was noticeable increase in the use of amphetamines, heroin, and cocaine among teenagers, some of whom belonged to various cult groups operating in secondary schools and tertiary institutions

(Uchendu 2005).

The almajirinci system of education prevailing in northern Nigeria subjects boys under the age of fourteen to unspeakable treatment (Doi 1984; WIN 1992; Ibhawoh 1999;

Last 2000; Bass 2004). The almajirinci is an old Islamic system of imparting Qur’anic knowledge in West African Muslim communities that has survived until the present in

Nigeria and Senegal in particular. Parents wishing their children to acquire Qur’anic education leave them in the care of local instructors called almajiri. The pupils, drawn mostly from poor Muslim families, live with the almajiri and his family where they combine their studies with domestic duties and also with begging for the maintenance of the instructor and his family and for their own sustenance, besides also paying for their education. The system is well documented that very little needs to be said here.

(See Last 2000; Bass 2004). Bass’ study of the institution showed that many almajiri’s give their students just a modicum of instruction to free up time for begging, the major activity of the day. Students spend twice as much time on begging than studying and may be subjected to severe punishment, including restriction with shackles, when they misbehave. From Last’s account of the institution in northern Nigeria, the students are poorly fed and clothed. Most sleep on mats spread on cold floors with little or nothing for a covering (Last 2000: 376). It is a common sight in northern Nigeria to see them 19 scavenging for food from dustbins and sucking discarded bones for the marrow. They belong to the most disadvantaged group of children.

Many boys and girls live almost permanently in the streets in Nigeria. In Lagos alone in 1996 there were 100,000 such children living in the streets17 where they are exposed early to crime, drug abuse, and other forms of delinquency. Teenagers among them are easily recruited to work as substance traffickers and Nigeria has become one of

West Africa’s hubs for illegal traffic in hard substances some of which are moved through the country to Western Europe (der Veen 2004: 317). Media report dates the practice of living in the streets by children to the 1990s, starting with the streets of Lagos, where they live in the open and feed from rubbish dumps.18 While some street children were attracted to Lagos by the prospects of making money others alleged that mistreatment at home forced them to the streets.19 Street life keeps children of school age from formal education and the attendant future benefits. If more children keep away from formal education, the country’s levels of knowledge would decline and there will be no expansion of its intellectual elites.

A distressing form of child abuse in recent years is the growing incidence of professional beggars hiring babies from day-care centres to enhance their profit from their begging business.20 After each day’s episode the babies are weak, tired, and listless when returned to the day-care centres before their unsuspecting mothers arrive to take them home.

All children, including infants, are confronted by poor health care access. There is on average one doctor for 18,000 people (Cheru 2002: 6), and medical personnel are found mostly in the urban areas. The medical profession in Nigeria is plagued by the brain drain crisis that has assumed alarming proportions in the country since 1990. In 20 the last decade Nigeria’s infant mortality rate stood around 105 per 1,000 live births. The under-five mortality rate survey revealed gender disparity with a mortality rate of 148 per 1,000 live births for males and 167 per 1,000 live births for females. In the rural areas, the rates are higher than in the urban areas (CEDAW 2004: 44). Malnutrition and the lack of medical attention contribute enormously to infant mortality and the short life span of children in Nigeria.

A CASE FOR FEMALE CHILDREN

There has been obvious amelioration in the circumstances of girl children in

Nigeria since the 1960s but so much remains to be achieved towards granting them social equality with male children in the country. Many girls are neglected, over-worked, and abused because of their gender. They rank high as domestics and victims of all manner of sexual exploitation. Parental preference for the male child is still observed by

Nigerian ethnic groups. In poor families preference for the male child is rooted in the dependence on a subsistence mode of economy and in the institution of patriarchy, which promotes male inheritance and male leadership. Hence, the birth of a male child is still heralded with much joy and celebration in a manner distinct from the birth of a female child.21 This is in spite of the non-discrimination stipulation in the Convention on

Children’s rights stating:

State Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status (OHCRC 2004).

21

Prejudice towards female children in Nigeria is partly responsible for the resistance to ending female genital mutilation—a major problem in southern Nigeria— and the early marriage syndrome plaguing northern Nigeria. Child brides also work as domestics for their mothers-in-law, playing elaborate roles in running the extended family into which they are married, along with fulfilling their marital responsibilities to their husbands. Female genital mutilation and early marriages are abuses suffered by

Nigerian girls. Genital mutilation robs them of a healthy body and sexual fulfilment later in life. Early marriages deprive them of their childhood, self-determination in the choice of partners, and access to education at the appropriate time. It results in girl children becoming adults and mothers when they are not emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically prepared for those roles. The attendant consequences of early marriages include the acceleration of the process of ageing in women; infringing on the opportunities and rights of the girl child to better economic status and participation in national development; cases of Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) and Recto Vaginal Fistula

(RVF), and early maternal death (CEDAW 2004: 44). Between 1995 and 1997 the number of victims of VVF increased. The number of cases per thousand births rose from 648 to

668,22 an increase of three percent (3%). In the absence of recent statistics, its progress in the last five years cannot be assessed. Some cases of VVF are worsened by unsuccessful surgery performed by local midwives. There are very few treatment centres in the country with the result that the most affected states have no free medical treatment for victims (CEDAW 2004). The observation by Yusuf (1991) made over a decade ago that many child victims are rejected by their husbands and thereafter face social and psychological problems was reiterated recently in an interview.23 According to Bass, 22 there are well-intended laws on the books protecting children, but there is still a real gap between theory and practice (2004: 175).

CONCLUSION

Misuse of children has far reaching consequences for the victims, for individual members of the society, and for the nation. It had sometimes provoked negative feedbacks from the oppressed. For instance child domestics had been known to hit back at their masters or mistresses either through preventable destruction of property or purposeful mistreatment of their guardians’ children;24 but such instances would seem few and insignificant in the face of the number of domestics in the country and the continuing lucrative nature of trafficking for that purpose. We have also seen that as more children are kept away from formal education, Nigeria’s levels of knowledge would decline and there will be no expansion of its intellectual elites.

In addition to the above findings, this study shows that patterns of child treatment observed from the 1970s in Nigeria have little to do with traditional practices of child upbringing and socialization. The interaction of the child and the society has assumed dimensions reflecting on-going ills in the country. The first eleven years of a child’s life is considered very instrumental in determining his present and future ability to learn, solve problems, and react with confidence and understanding to the changes and transformations in his environment later in life (Wall 1975: 107). Government should consider changing the unfavourable circumstances of all children. Official initiatives in this direction must include strengthening and empowering the family unit to protect children from too harsh a contact with negative realities throughout their growing period. Since poverty is responsible for most of the social ills plaguing the 23 nation and robbing children of their rights, some amelioration of the poverty condition of Nigerian parents is necessary for the protection of children from abuses and the driving force behind parents yielding to the enticement of child traffickers will loose much of its potency.

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ENDNOTES

1 For the sheer numbers involved a catalogue of books and articles on children cannot be given here but some worth mentioning are: Erickson, E. H. 1950. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton; Aries, P. 1962. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage; Rohner, R. 1974. They love me, They love me not: A World wide survey of the effects of parental acceptance and rejection. New Haven: HRAF Press; Fox, V. & Quitt, M. H. (eds.) 1980. Loving, Parenting, and Dying: The Family Cycle in England and America, Past and Present. New York: Psychohistory Press; Jill Korbin. (ed.) Child abuse and Neglect. Berkeley: University of California Press; Dingwall, R., Eekelaar, J., & Murray, T. 1983. The Protection of Children: State intervention and Family Life. England: Basil Blackwell; and Scheper- Hughes, N. (ed.) 1987. Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children. Dordretcht: D. Reidel Publishing Co. 2 The degree of attention given children’s issues in Nigeria does not compare favourably with the situation in most parts of the world. Studies on children’s experiences in Nigeria include: Schildkrout, E. 1981. “The Employment of Children in Kano.” In Rodgers, G. & Standing, G. (eds.) Child Work, Poverty and Underdevelopment. Geneva: International Labour Office; Aliyu, Y. O. 1981. “Contemporary Drug abuse among children”, In Kiseka, M. N. (ed.) Children in Kaduna State, Nigeria: Problems and Needs. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University; Last, M. 1991, “Adolescents in a Muslim city: The cultural context of Danger and Risk”, Kano Studies (Special Issue), 1-21; and Last. M. 2000. “Children and the Experience of Violence: Contrasting cultures of punishment in Northern Nigeria”, Africa, 70 (3), 359 – 393. 3 The print media is a major avenue for dissemination of news in Nigeria. Oral sources for this work came from interviews or discussions with the following: Mrs. Chuta, Civil Servant, 58 years, Nsukka; Mrs. E. Emenike, Rtd. Civil Servant, 62 years, Umuahia; Mrs. Nkechi Edeh, Banker, 36 years, Benin; Mrs. Akwarandu, trader, c. 55 years, Nsukka; Mrs. Justina Obianyido, former proprietor, 55 years, Nsukka; Dr. Bolaji Batere, Civil Servant, 38 years, Ile-Ife; Mrs. Obi Eboka, Civil Servant, 38 years, Asaba; Priscilla Obianyido, 35 years, Nsukka; Winifred Nwaefido, undergraduate student, 23 years, Nsukka; and Miss O. Akwarandu, 18 years, Nsukka. 26

These interviews and discussions were held between March 2003 and November 2004. A further interview was held in May 2009 with Dr. Khudirat Sanni, Lecturer, 44 years, Uyo. 4 By 1999 when Nigeria’s latest constitution came into operation, there was no explicit legislation on the rights of children in the country. However, Nigeria is signatory to a number of international and continental documents on children. 5 Interview with Dr. Bolaji Bateye, Lecturer, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 2004. 6 The Bible and the Qur’an encourage physical punishment of children. The Qur’an, in addition, prescribes its use on disobedient wives (IV:34). 7 Discussions with some parents and guardians revealed this. Guardians were reported to be strict with their non-biological wards more than with their children because, as explained, non- biological children are unappreciative of efforts guardians make on their behalf. There was also the view that in exchange for maintaining the child by providing shelter and food, buying clothes and educating the child, she/he should compensate the provider through work. UNICEF UK’s Child trafficking case studies featuring stories of Nigerian child victims of trafficking (2004) and Loretta Bass’ study of Ghana and Senegal (2004) on the use of domestic labor in private homes support this assertion. 8 Guardian Express, May 22, 1987. 9 Source: http://www.globalmarch.org/worstformsreport/world/nigeria.html 23/11/04 10 “Casual Child Labour get ILO attention”, Vanguard, May 30, 2002, p. 30. 11 “Halting the menace of Women trafficking”, Sunday Vanguard, March 3, 2002, p. 27. 12 “How not to Use the Child”, The Post Express, October 19, 2001. 13 See Child trafficking case studies, UNICEF UK, 2004. http://www.endchildexploitation.org.uk/case_detail.asp?case_id=32&issue_id=1 14 Michael Nwafejoku in “Child Labour: Mortgaging the Future of Nigerian Children.” Vanguard Newspaper, October 1, 2005. 15 Source: http://www.globalmarch.org/worstformsreport/world/nigeria.html 23/11/04 16 “Otokoto and the Head Hunters of Owerri”, The Guardian, February 2, 2003, p. 12. 17 Child Welfare League of Nigeria, Alternative Report on the Implementation of CRC, submission to the UN CRC, September-October 1996. At http://www.globalmarch.org/worstformsreport/world/nigeria.html 23/11/04. 18 “Beggars, beggars everywhere”, Daily Times, November 16, 2001, p. 12. 19 Tunde Kaitell, “Kids of today”, Guardian Express, March 21, 1989. 20 “Beggars, beggars everywhere”, Daily Times, November 16, 2001, p. 12. 21 “The Girl Child in the Shadow”, The Post Express on Sunday. October 21, 2001. p. 31. 22 “Nigeria: 45 Years of Nationhood.” At www.allafrica.com/stories/200510190649html 23 Interview with Dr. Khudirat Sanni, Uyo, May 2009. 24 Discussions with Mrs. Akwarandu, Miss Onyerichi Akwarandu , Mrs. Nkechi Edeh and Mrs. Eboka.

Author’s Biography Egodi Uchendu is a social historian. She is the author of Women and Conflict in the Nigerian Civil War (Trenton, New Jersey: 2007) and edited Masculinities in Contemporary Africa (Dakar: 2008). Presently she is working on Islam in Eastern Nigeria.