The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has attributed the prevalence of child labour in Nigeria and Africa to high level of poverty, saying that the billions of Naira spent by the Federal Government on social protection programmes is a triple vaccination against poverty.
Ngige said this in Abuja when he participated in a media briefing organised by the Labour Ministry in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation on the occasion of the 2022 World Day Against Child Labour, with the theme, ‘Universal Social Protection to end Child Labour.’
The Minister said that the Federal Government was vigorously implementing its numerous social protection programmes to better the lives of parents and the children, adding that “everything possible is being done to sustain the social protection programmes in spite of the dwindling revenue of the Federal Government.”
Ngige said that poverty was fuelling child labour especially in developing countries and expressed optimism that the scourge could be eliminated through establishment of social protection floors and programmes.
He also noted that the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment and other members of the National Steering Committee on the Elimination of Child Labour were using this year’s event to call for increased investment in social protection programmes and schemes to establish solid social protection floors and protect children from child labour.
The Minister explained that social protection programmes are essential to fight poverty and vulnerability identified as the causes of child labour.
He said, “The Government of Nigeria, through the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, in collaboration with the ILO and other stakeholders have been working assiduously and collaboratively to ensure the elimination of child labour in line with SDG 8.7 and that young workers of legal working age are protected and work in safe conditions.
“Government is implementing vigorously the National Children School Feeding Programme (NCSFP) which is the major plank of the battle by the Federal Government to fight child labour, increasing children school enrollment and preventing them from dropping out of schools.”
Ngige said the government was also investing billions of Naira on the Universal Basic Education (UBE), which makes children to attend primary and junior secondary school free of charge, in a bid to prevent them from engaging in child labour.
He said poverty was also being addressed through the conditional cash transfer programme, Trader moni and N-power programme, the diversification of the economy into agriculture through Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme (YEAP) and the Technical Education Vocational Training (TVET) scheme.
He said the government has been trying to sustain all these programmes in spite of declining revenue.
Ngige described the current upheavals in the country including Boko Haram insurgency, banditry and menace of unknown gunmen, as a rebellion of the have-nots against the big men and the uneducated against the educated.
He called on the developed countries and the big corporate organisations in Nigeria to support the fight against child labour in Nigeria through investment in social protection.
In her remarks, the Director, International Labour Organisation (ILO) country office for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Vanessa Phala, described the situation as very serious.
Phala said recent ILO research in partnership with UNICEF on the role of social protection in elimination of child labour, revealed that 1.5 billion children worldwide, aged 0-14, receive no family or child benefits while more than 160 million children (one in 10 children aged 5-17) were still engaged in child labour and progress has stalled since 2016.
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