CHILD LABOUR IN NIGERIA: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

BY

Ugal David B. Ph.D

Department of Sociology
Faculty of the Social Sciences
University of Ibadan
Ibadan – Nigeria
Telephone: +2348057792492
Email: daveugal@yahoo.com

I present this paper for publication in your journal. It has not been
presented anywhere for consideration. I am also willing to grant
copyright upon acceptance for publication. I wish to be kept posted on
the status of the paper.
 2

ABSTRACT

Child labour manifested in several shades have destroyed and distort the
hope and the future of society by making the future leaders today’s adults
through taking part in roles and activities for adults. This reduces the output
per person as consequence and has retard National Development. The crucial
point is the legislation with stringent measures not only to discourage child
labour but to completely exterminate the obnoxious practice that is gradually
destroying our future. There is also an urgent need for the domestication of
the right of the child in order to discourage the engagement of children in
activities that debase their personhood and undermine their future.

Introduction
The print and electronic media is aghast with News on the engagement
of children in labour and or work. These media posits that the world
population especially in the developing countries of Asia and Africa is made
up of children (between ages 5-15) and about 60% of these children are
engaged in one form of labour or another. For them, children should not have
to work but the international labour organization (ILO) estimates the number
of working children aged between 5 and 14 years to be about 250 million in
the developing countries, of whom at least 120 million are working full-time
of these, 61 percent are in Asia, 32 percent in Africa and 7 percent in Latin
America. Relatively, fewer children work in developed countries (ILO 1995).
International organizations like the ILO, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO see
child labour as a serious global issue, it is the contention of these
organizations that the engagement of children in labour is harmful in several
ways to the children, the family and the society. It is their belief that it impairs
the physical and mental development of children. It affects the family image
and rubs society of her future leaders and labour force.
 3

It is this conception that the act of child labour is viewed as a deviation

from the rule even though it is assuming epidemic dimensions. International
and local organizations have cried out against the scourge as an evil act.
Legislations have been put in place to discourage child labour and
organizations have spring up to pursue the legislation to the letter. It is the
position of these efforts that no single institution acting alone can solve the
problem, given the massive resources required, partnerships are therefore
essential and that working together, a global effort to eliminate child labour is
feasible and would be a major contribution to world development (IBRD
1998).
Since countries of the world have established a minimum working age
and regulates the working conditions of young persons, in line with the UN
convention on the Rights of the child (1989), any deviation from the rule
makes the situation criminal and anti-development. The ILO of 1919
convention No. 5 prohibited the work of persons below the age of 14 in
industrial establishments. Nine sectoral conventions on the minimum working
age were subsequently adopted until the minimum age convention No. 138
(1973) came into force in 1976 along with the complying Recommendations
no. 146. Today 90 countries are bound by the provisions of one or more of
these conventions. A further 51 countries ratified this convention and others
are at various stages of completing it.
Since Nigeria is a member of this organization, an action to the contrary
of these conventions is viewed as a deviation and a break of an international
law. An effort of the “wotclef” led by the vice president’s wife is an effort
towards putting to an end child labour work in Nigeria.
This paper therefore intends to study the concept of child labour
looking at it from its historical frameworks, causes and consequences on the
individual, the family and the society at large. The paper will also attempt to
proffer solutions to the condition.
 4

Conceptual Definition
The concept under discussion does not align to an easy definition. This
is because the person considered to be a child in one context may not be a
child in another while labour in one may not be so in another. Basu (1998)
stated that the definitional problem stems from two extremes, at one, all non
educational noon-leisure time of individuals below a certain age can be
counted as child labour. At the other only full-time employment in economic
activity would be counted. The former includes light work after school work
during school holidays, which helps in skill acquisition while; the latter
excludes part-time engagement in such horrendous activities as child
prostitution.
Another part of the problem arises from the conception of most people
of child labour to mean “bad” child labour such as prostitution or scavenging
or backbreaking work on a construction site or long hours in a carpet factory
etc. such bad child labour can be part-time or full time and a child can both
engage in schooling and in ‘bad’ child labour.
The term child labour therefore covers a wide range of situations, to
which the ethical economic and legal responses could be different.
To attempt a definition of child labour, child should be defined and this
term is used to refer to different people in different places. In the west for
instance age is used to determine who a child is but in many societies, cultural
and social factors enter as well (Rodgers & Standing 1981). The evolution of
a child to adulthood passes through socially and biologically defined life
phases over which the degree of dependence and the need for protection of the
child gradually declines e.g in many societies an apprentice even if only eight
or nine years old is often considered a child – a determination based on social
status rather than age (Morile, 1981). In this sense, many societies especially
poor rural ones do not view child work as ‘bad’ rather, it is part of the
socialization process which gradually introduces the child into work activities
 5

and teaches the child survival skills. This view is present in many African
countries including Nigeria (Bekombo, 1981), Agiobu – Kemmer, 1992).
The concept of work is equally problematic to apply to the range of
activities which children do like domestic work, to work in the household
enterprise or farm, trading or heavy physical work (Rodgers and Standing
1981).
The definition should consider the arrangement whether it is
exploitative or it takes the form of bonded labour, quasi-slavery of feudal
relationship. Any work that a person engages at full-time at too early an age
(say 5-14) and works too many hours or when the work puts excessive
physical, social and psychological strains on the person and hampers the
person’s development in these areas (social, physical and psychological)
(UNICEF 1986; ILO, 1992) is considered child labour.
For Ashagrie (1993) a child is considered or classified as a labourer if
the child is economically active. That is the child is gainfully employed or
does work on a regular basis for which he or she is enumerated or which
results in output destined for the market.
Child work here is used to refer to the doing of light household chores
and can actually have some learning value (ILO 1995).
By and large, child labor in this paper shall be conceived as the
engagement of a person below the age of 15 in economic or remunerated
activities. This engagement has physical, social and psychological effects on
the person with implication in psychomotor manipulation cognitive co-
ordination and Affective distortion of the self on the family and the society
making it a social problem.
It is also work that is essentially exploitative and injurious to the
physical, social, cognitive and moral development of the child. It involves
young persons who are exposed to long hours of work in a dangerous or
 6

unhealthy environment with too much responsibility for their age and at the
expense of their schooling.

Types of Child Labour

As stated above, several children’s engagements in some activities are
said to be beneficial to the holistic development or the child by way of
socialization. This is because there are skills and capabilities that a child must
possess to function effectively in both the micro and macro society.
The cases of “bad child labour” which forms the crux of this paper are:
 Child slavery which involves the sale of children for economic
activities in agriculture regions like Ondo State, Rivers etc.
 Children that are used for drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
 Child trade which involves the act of hawking and engaging in all
forms of trade activities eg. is the case in urban centres.
 Child prostitution and pornography
 The forced or compulsory recruitment of children in armed conflicts.
A discussion of some suffices.
Child begging
This has negative psychological, social and health consequences. The
three categories of child beggars are - those who lead blind parents or
relatives, those who beg entirely on their own and those who act as fronts for
their parents, especially mothers, who are usually hidden from public view but
supervises them from a close distance.
These children are the most vulnerable because they are from families
of the poorest of the poor. In all three categories, they run enormous risks of
running or darting between cars in heavy traffic putting them in dangers of
accidents. They also suffer the severe psycho-social consequences of
 7

engaging in demeaning type of activity and being exposed to constant abuse

and aggression from the general public.
In the southern part of Nigeria, begging was not significant though
among the Yorubas, it was culturally expected that mothers with many
children would beg (normally for a few days) as a symbolic expression of
their willingness to demean themselves for the survival of the children. In
recent times however, this has changed as beggars can be spotted in several
cities.
Begging is most wide-spread in the North where alms giving is widely
regarded as a religious obligation. The largest percentage here belongs to the
almajiranci system – a semi-formal system of qu’ranic education, in which
children mostly boys are sent by their parents to take up residence with
Islamic teachers or mallamai for instructions in the qu’ran and other texts.
Almajiranci is an Arabic word almuhajir (migrated) an allusion of the time of
Prophet Mohammed when the Meccans migrated to Medina (Imam 1998)
Albert (1994).
Sexual Exploitation
Commercial sexual exploitation has become a problem of special
concern in Nigeria, both because of its scale and links with commercial
trafficking in women and girls and because of its role in the development of
the HIV/AIDS epidemic now sweeping the country.
Though studies on it is scarce owing to its clandestine nature and the
traditional inhibitions on discussions of sexual behaviour. The few studies
(Chickwem et al 1989, Adeyoke & Adedoyin, 1995) Oloko (1999)
MWADRS/UNICEF (1999). Indicated that child prostitution is now common
in towns such as Port Harcourt, Calabar, Owerri and other parts of the country
surveys carried out between 1989 and 1993 by the West African Research
Group on sexual Networking Orubuloye et al (1994) identified the
characteristics of commercial sex workers in five cities – Lagos, Ado-Ekiti
 8

and Benin, in for the west, Port Harcourt in the South South and Kaduna in
the North. They commercial sex workers were found in hotels, brothels, bars
and streets, many below twenty years and comparatively educated. They
operated outside their local governments, from different ethnic groups, most
of them were single (separated or divorced). Those who had children were left
with grand mothers in their local areas and there was tendencies to have them
originate from Polygamous homes.
They were on the average found to have about thirty clients a week.
The clients were both single and married.
Sexual exploitation does not end with prostitution alone, there are other
forms of abuse-scarcity of jobs economic pressure of dependent children and
in adequate financial support from husbands are among them. These include
students in secondary schools and tertiary institutions.
Child Labour in Agricultural Sector
Most child labour occurs in agriculture and in the informal sector of the
economy, where these and other provisions of the Labour act are neither
monitored nor enforced. Child labour in this sector by a study has shown areas
like Ondo, Ado Ekiti, Ibadan and others, areas as destinations of these
children.
Some of them are engaged in such demeaning practices akin to slavery
such as a sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and forced labour.
Child Labour: A Historical Appraisal
All social phenomenon posses historical contours or they are their
historical contours. Though it has never been easy to fix a definite beginning
of any concept but the events leading to or the effects of an activity (ies) is
often used as bedrock for assessing histories of phenomenon. For child labour,
an investigation carried out by a British parliamentary committee on
conditions of child labour in the United Kingdom in 1832 showed that
children have been working. (Basu 1998).
 9

Other scholars have severally maintained that the industrial revolution

in Europe and America in the sixteenth century brought about child labour
that conforms with the definition above. This is because before this time,
children were engaged in household chores and light farm work but these
were not remunerated. The coming of industrialization therefore marked the
beginning of child labour (Marx, 1967). At this time the percentages of male
child labourers exceeded that of the females. For instance (De Herdf, 1996,
Parsons & Goldin, 1989 and Saito 1996) severally maintained that the census
of England and Wales of 1861 had 36.9% of boys in the 10-14 age group as
labourers and girls was 20.5%. For Africa and Asia in 1950, it was higher than
this. However some Nations such as Ethiopia, have a much higher rate of
child labourers yet the industrializing nations of Belgium, USA and Japan
have different rates.
Though several scholars are against child labour but some are in
support of it. For instance Hutchins & Harrison (1903) quoted a 1770
document which argues that being constantly employed at least twelve hours
in a day… we hope the rising generation will be so habituated to constant
employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.
from children thus trained up to constant labour we may venture to hope the
lowering of its price.
Despite comments like the above opposition to allowing certain persons
of a particular age to engage in labour has been mounting showing that the
activities is counter productive.
The time or period of the beginning of child labour and its numbers in
Nigeria are not known owing to the wide dispersion of child labourers, their
employment in the informal sector and in agriculture which are not monitored
by labour inspectors and the limited research in this field. A recent
assessment, however, puts the lower limits at about eight million (Oloko
1999).
 10

Nigeria follows the Labour Act of 1974 (revised in 1990) which

includes a wide range of provisions (in sections 58-63) prohibiting or
regulating various forms of child labour. Section 59 prohibits a child under the
age of 12 from all work except where he is employed by his family on “light
work of an agricultural, domestic or horticultural character” it allows
apprenticeships from the age of 12 upwards once parents consent is sought
and forbids any child under 15 from taking up industrial employment.
The labour inspectorate system monitors the formal sector, ensuring
respect of the Provisions of the Labour Act, nonetheless some of the
distributive agents and suppliers of the large formal sector companies are
known to employ children and these companies cannot claim ignorance of the
fact. What then is the theoretical framework for this opposition? The next
section will find an answer to it.
Child Labour: Causes
The predisposing factors of child labour are multifaceted ranging from
demographic condition through income insecurity to poverty.
Demographically, the growth rates and the densities are of such
magnitude that available social amenities cannot go round or are too
expensive for the average families. When the family cannot afford the bare
basics of substance, the children in need begin to engage in labour.
Furthermore, income insecurity due to unemployment and or under utilization
are crucial issues in child labour. This situation which came as a result of
unemployment and under employment, the income is not enough and often
not secured as retrenchment stares them in the face. To make up for this
shortage, the child labours.
Ignorance on the part of parents, some parent pushes their children to
work because they are not aware of the grave consequences of this to the child
and the family in the long term. This condition is often reinforced by the non-
availability of or expensive education that is unaffordable to parents. Poverty
 11

is another factor that causes child labour. ILO (1996) maintained that poverty
is the greatest single force which creates the flow of children into the
workplace… Acute need makes it nearly impossible for households to invest
in their children’s education and the price of education can be very expensive
for a poor family …. Poor households tend to have more children and large
family size has been statistically shown to be associated not only with higher
likelihood that children work but also lower school attendance and
completion. The comment above shows succinctly, the effects of poverty on
very many issues that in turn creates a condition in which the children engage
in labour.
Finally there is the issue of norm Basu (1998) Dasgupta (1993)
maintained that the decision to send a child to work is partly matters of social
norm. This is stated that if a parent lives in a society where everybody send
their children to work, it is worthwhile for each parent to send his child to
work and if everybody does not send their children to work each parent may
find it not worthwhile some societies especially in Africa tend to hold this
frame.
Child Labour: What Consequences for National Development?
The effects of child labour transcends personal, family and societal, the
conception of these effects may not follow the chronology.
At the individual level, child labour impairs the physical and mental
development of children. This situation brings about an increment in the
number of lay about, mentally demented, and stunted persons in society. This
condition spells doom for the society as Basu (1998) maintained that there is a
‘child labour trap’ that the family is likely to fall into. His contention is that an
increase in child labour frequently causes a decline in the acquisition of
human capital. He explained further if a child is employed all through the day,
it is likely that the child will remain uneducated and have low productivity as
an adult. That is if a child works more his productivity as an adult falls
 12

because child labour diminishes adult productivity Pigou (1920) noted that
many forms of unskilled labour at present open to boys not merely fail to
train, but positively untrained their victims. Swaminathan (1997) confirmed
this in her study of India, Galbi (1997) argued that the share of child labour in
the mills fell during the early nineteenth century precisely because the earlier
use in child labour meant that, as these children grew up, there would be a
Cohort of none productive adult workers.
Eswaran (1996) in his contribution stated that existence of the
institution of child labour biases parents towards having more uneducated
children rather than a few educated children and this in turn perpetuates the
institution of child labour.
Child Labour: The Way Forward (Out)
Several approaches can be used to combat child labour and they are:
i. Reducing poverty – widespread poverty is said to be the major cause
of harmful child labour in developing countries. If the poverty level
of households is reduced, child labour will also be reduced.
ii. Educating children – making basic education compulsory will solve
the problem especially in rural areas children can be scheduled to
attend school and work without conflicting.
iii. Providing support services for working children that is the causes of
child labour may be known and palliative measures like feeding
schemes, literacy programmes etc can be used.
iv. Raising public Awareness -this include improving child knowledge
of work hazards raising parental awareness of the human capital loss
that may be associated with child labour and changing the emphasis
of policy makers.
v. Legislation and regulation-child labour laws and regulations can be
made and enforced to stop families from sending their children out
to work.
 13

Conclusion
The concept of child labour is inevitable in some societies as the
poverty and socio-economic conditions of the families pushes them out and
only when this is improved that the trend can stop. It can also be stopped by
adopting the remedies given above.
Meanwhile, some situations call for stringent measurements as their
condition does not warrant this scenario yet the only way out is to make the
parents know the dangers of not educating their children and we shall
conclude with a word from Mill (1970) who stated that for a parent not to
educate the child is a breach of duty not only towards the child but towards
the members of the community generally, who are all liable to suffer seriously
from the consequences of ignorance and want of education in their fellow
citizens. Hence children and young persons not yet arrived at maturity should
be protected from being over worked, labouring for too many hours in the day
or on work beyond their strength should not be permitted.

References
Ashagrie, K. (1993). Statistics on Child Labour Bulletin of Labour:
Statistics No. 3 ILO Geneva.
Ashagrie, K. (1998). Statistics on Child Labour and Hazardous Child
Labour in Brief Memo Bureau of Labour Statistics. ILO. Geneva.
Basu, A. M. (1993). Family Size and Child Welfare in An Urban Slum:
Some Disadvantage of Being Poor but Modern in Cynthia, B.
(ed) Fertility, Family Size and Structure New York, Pop Council.
Basu, A. M. (1994). The Poor Need Child Labour. New York Times.
Nov. 29.
 14

Basu, A. M. (1998). Child Labour: Causes, Consequences and Cure

With Remarks on International Labour Standards. Economic Journal
New York.
Bekembo, M. (1981). The Child in Africa: Socialization Education and
Work in Rodgers & Standings (ed).
Dasgupta, P. (1993). An enquiry into well being and destitution, Oxford
University Press.
Eswaran, M. (1996) Fertility, Literacy and the Institution of Child Labour:
Mimeo University & British Columbia.
Fallon P, & Zafiris T. (1946) Child labour Issues, Directions for the
World Bank, Nevy World Bank.
Grootaerk, C. & Ravi, K. (1995) Child Labour: A Review ILO. Geneva.
Hutcins, B. L. & Harrison A. (1903). A History of Factory Legislation,
P. S. King and Son London.
ILO (1995) Child Labour in Nepal: An Overview and Proposed Plan of
Action. ILO, Geneva.
ILO (1996) Child Labour, targeting the intolerable; ILO, Geneva.
ILO (1996a) Economically Active Population Estimates and Projections
1950-2010 ILO, Geneva.
Marx, K (1997) Capital: A critique of Political Economy, Moscow
Progress Publications.
Mill, J. J. (1970) Principles of Political Economy: Penguin Harmondsworth
U. K.
Pigou, A. C. (1920) The Economics of Welfare: Macmillan London.
Rodgers, G. & Standing G. (eds) (1981) Child Work, Poverty and
Underdevelopment ILO Geneva.
Swaminathan, M. (1997) Do Child Workers acquire specialized skills?
A Case Study of Teenage Wokers in Bhavaagar Indian Journal of
Labour Economic.
 15

UNICEF (1994) Children At Work: UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional
Office Bangkok.