Today is Children’s Day in Nigeria but for most children, it is not significant in any way because they have no reason to celebrate; it is as if they had been forgotten. Some children spoke with Tade Makinde and Kasali Segun on their plights and what they expect to make their dreams come true.
Children’s Day is celebrated the world over but not on the same day. According to convention, each country is at liberty to choose the day most suitable for it. For Nigeria, May 27 is the day set aside for the series of events marking the day. It was established as a holiday in Nigeria in 1964.
As usual, the day is often used to draw attention to issues affecting children across the country. According to statistics, children account for about 45 per cent of the Nigerian population and face all manner of socio-economic problems, which have remained hard nuts to crack in spite of efforts at highlighting them on an annual basis.
For example, it is a well-known fact that most children in the country have no access to education, health, security of life, and have to engage in one form of labour to survive. They are often abused, trafficked, abducted and even recently used as suicide bombers by the Boko Haram insurgents.
Statistics show that Nigeria has the largest number (14 million) of out-of-school children in the whole world. More that 60 per cent of this figure are in the Northern part of the country.
In 2003, Nigeria adopted the national Child Rights Act to domesticate the 1989 international convention on the rights of the child The Act had been passed by 24 states in the country out of 36. It is still not clear why the remaining 12 states are yet to act on this peculiar and most important Act affecting millions of children.
‘We don’t know what Children’s Day is’
Nasirat, a 7-year-old girl who lives at Karmo Life camp, Abuja, told Sunday Tribune that she knows nothing about Children’s Day as she has no knowledge of western education. She is enrolled into an Arabic school which she attends in the evening.
Nasirat who spoke in Hausa language during an interview with Sunday Tribune said: “What is Children’s Day? My parents did not take me to (western education) school, only Arabic school. I play from morning till evening, and then I go to the Arabic school. At times I run errands for my parents before going there in the evening.”
Yusuf Danladi is in the same shoes with Nasirat. He hawks sachet water around his neighborhood. When asked about the special day set aside to celebrate children, he denied knowledge of it, saying he has never attended formal school.
According to him, he stays at the Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Karmajiji where most times, children of his age are left to fend for themselves. So there is no way he could go to school.
He, however, said he attends Arabic school and hopes to be a great Islamic cleric in the future.
“I don’t understand anything called Children’s Day. I have not been enrolled for Western education but I go to Arabic school. I live in the camp in this village and I sell pure water to get money to eat.”
Amina who also spoke in Hausa and lives at Karmo Life camp would love to go to a school where western education is taught, so as to be able to speak English like other children.
“If you can come and take me to school I will be very happy because I don’t know anything about western education and I will like to understand ‘turanchi’ (English like other children),” she said smiling.
Our pains, our story…
Many children across the country suffer all manner of want. some of them live with single parents who are socio-economically disadvantaged and live in the poorest parts of town. The single mothers or fathers can’t send their children to school; thus the children try to survive the harsh economic environment by adopting all forms of coping strategies to help their single parents and survive as individuals. They care less for any Children’s Day celebration as some of them told Sunday Tribune.
For Aisha Usman, life could not be more difficult. She is 11 years old and hails from Borno State. She could have started school but she lost her mother and her father had left her and her siblings for God-knows-where and currently stays with one of her people from Borno State who came to pick her from there to Lagos.
“I am so much interested in going to school,” she stated, as she narrated her plight, ”but the money is not there. Even right now, I came to help this aunty (a woman selling corn) in roasting corn and when I am through at the end of the day, she gives me small money which is okay for me to eat.
“I feel ashamed of myself when I see my fellow mates wearing school uniforms while I stay at home doing nothing. Most times, I run away from them so that they won’t see me. I want to become a lawyer. I have been dreaming of this for a very long time and I am sure that the Almighty Allah will bring it to fruition. I would really appreciate it if the government can put me in school so that I can fulfill my dreams,” she said, her face lighting up.
Adamu Sanni’s story is similar to that of Aisha. He has also lost his mother and his tanker driver dad is now married to another woman who treats him badly. Though he is 11 years old, he is in primary one!
“Whenever I come back from school, she (his stepmother) always asks me to hawk cooked eggs which I must do. I would like to become an engineer in the future. I would like the government to refurbish my school (Kuramo Primary school) Lagos and provide good recreational facilities so that I can be like some other children in those big schools,” he said longingly with a smile.
Like most of the other children who live on the street, Katuna Hassan from Kano State survives by helping a woman who roasts corn by the roadside. He is 12 years old but still in Primary Four. His ambition is to become a pilot, but you might say that is a tall dream as his mother lives on a meager income.
“I usually help Aunty Shola in frying corn during my holidays or mid-term so I can have small money to take home at the end of the day. My mother fries chin-chin and supplies her customers. My ambition is to become a pilot. I really want the government to help my parents so that they can take care of me and my siblings and give us whatever we request for,” Katuna told Sunday Tribune.
Fifteen-year-old Tobi Babawale’s efforts at attending school had proved abortive for years. It was basically due to financial constraints. His mother is a single mum and Tobi fully understands the hurdles to his dream of going to school but he is not giving up.
Tobi, whose dad died some years back, dreams of a big break that would give him the opportunity to return to school. He wants to be a banker so that he could cater for his mother.
“All my efforts at going to school had proved abortive because there was no money. Whenever I tell my mum that I want to go to school, she would tell me that there is no money and truly I know that there is no money. That is why I am learning to be a vulcanizer so that I can be financially okay.. My mother is a good mother. I have been an apprentice vulcanizer for quite some months now and I am becoming good at it,” he said.
Surviving on the street
At Mokola area of Ibadan, Oyo State young boys who ought to be in school are always on ‘duty’ as early as 8.00am fighting with one another to get the upper hand in cleaning motorists’ windshields, even when they don’t need any cleaning.
This they do for survival, coercing the motorists to part with something by going ahead to clean the windshield even after refusing the offer. When they get nothing for their persistence, they curse under their breath, wearing long faces. If and when luck smiles on them, they fill their stomachs first before any other thing.
One of the boys is Bayo Adeola. Speaking with Sunday Tribune, he said his indigent background forced him to the street. “My parents couldn’t afford to send me to school,” he began.
“My father told me point blank that I should begin to fend for myself like other small boys, because he had nothing to give me other than this miserable life,” he added.
Born to a bricklayer father, Bayo described his life as hell which he must endure, hoping that he would be divinely visited one day soon.
“What we do here is ‘philanthropic gesture’ because we don’t get paid most of the time. It is a risk, but most of the times, we don’t get paid. It wasn’t like that in the past, but the economic crunch has affected many car owners, such that they don’t have money to wash their cars. Most times they ignore our presence, even when we get down to washing their screens,” he lamented.
Bayo would like to go to school, but the school fees keep getting out of reach every day. “Why should I waste my time in school when I know I will be asked to leave by the end of term if I can’t pay fees? Though we don’t get paid enough on the street, which corporate organisation will employ a primary school dropout like me? he wondered.
Another underage boy surviving on his own is ‘Manager’. Most of the customers at the beer parlour somewhere at Bolumole area, Ring Road, Ibadan know him by the appellation though he is just nine years old. Even at that age, he competently manages the drinking joint like a grown up attending to everyone’s needs.
‘Manager’ is so streetwise, he bears two different names – Segun and Biodun. To outsiders, ‘Manager’ was a serious boy who went to school during the day and worked in the evening, but in reality, he had dropped out of school while his parents in Abeokuta believed that he was studying.
At his age, Biodun is supposed to be in a school. “I attend a primary school close by,” he said, but he wouldn’t tell Sunday Tribune the name.
From investigation, ‘Manager had allegedly spent the N5,400 school fees given to him while maintaining that he had paid the money to his headmaster, though his school has a headmistress not a headmaster and he had not been to school in two weeks. But all that no longer matters to “Manager”; what interests him now is survival. Not even a reminder that Sunday [today] is Children’s Day would sway him, such a celebration as far as he is concerned should be for children and not people like him who have learnt to survive the harsh way.
Though this year’s Children’s day celebration would be full of activities and symposia on issues affecting children in the country, the impact will be lightly felt as it has been for years. The children could only hope that one day, one of them who was at one time a child would rise up to the occasion and make their dreams come true.
and then