A128187: Life ReVoLve AroUnd Me

Economic conditions theory (Bonger, 1916) explains:

•  child labor beyonda culture of poverty theory. In a society in which there are “haves” and “have-nots,” the “have-nots” will try to get even with the “haves.” 
• The culture of poverty theory sees the behavior of the poor as a response to the established and internalized cultural patterns.
• Most of the children who become child laborers are from indigent families.
• The theory of situational constraints portrays the poor as being constrained by some social factors, social structure, low income, unemployment, and the like and that they respond to their situation using all means available instead of being subjugated by a culture of poverty.

David Omozuafoh, the Group Development Officer of Amnesty International (Nigeria), 

• believes that the reasons advanced by parents who sell their children include the bad economy. Because of the economy, a child will be sold to meet the needs of the family or to pay the school fees of the other children in the family. 
• More often than not, however, the father spends the money on beer or takes another wife.

Arewa (1996):

• says that government has to be blamed because if there were normal economic growth in the country, even people from the poor families would still be able to get by very well. 
• Nigeria, only the upper echelons of society that live well, and there is nothing like the middle class anymore. 
• government has failed to provide needed assistance, often in the form of subsidies, to parents desiring to educate their children.

Map of Nigeria

Child labor

• involving youngsters between the ages of 7 and 16 years, rather than abating, continues to assume wider and more frightening dimensions.
• Highly vulnerable children, mostly elementary school–age students, continue to be lured away from their unsuspecting parents and guardians and deployed in slave labor

The International Labor Organization (ILO), in a report released in 1999, note that:

• Majority of workers aged 10–14 years are found in Asia, which has 44.6 million or 13% of the total number of child workers in the world,but the highest percentages are found in Africa, where 23.6 million children or 26.3% of the total are working. Latin America is in third place, with 5.1 million (9.8%). 
• Because of urban expansion, child labor is increasing inexorably in the Third World. 
• However, despite urbanization, 9 of every 10 working children are still employed in rural areas

Child labor in Nigeria

• ranges between 20% and 30% of the population under 18 years of age, which makes up a part of the 41% of African children between 5 and 16 years old who are laborers.
• With largest concentration in the major cities of Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Kano, Abuja, Zaire, Calabar, Benin City, Solcoto, Maidugri, Kdduna, Jos, and Akure. 
• Official statistics show that 4.1 million boys aged 10–14 years are at work in Nigeria, compared to 3.5 million girls (girl doing housework does not take into account)

• Child labor mostly occurs include construction sites in the semiformal sector, where children are employed to carry bricks. 
• In public places, they are street vendors, shoe shiners, car washers, and feet washers. 
• They also work in semipublic settings in cottage industries, such as vulcanizing, iron and metal works, hair dressing, and tailoring. 
• Child labor also occurs in private homes, where thousands of children, especially girls aged 10 years and older, work as domestic servants and are often emotionally and sexually abused by adults.
• Almost all parts of Nigeria are involved in the trading of children for prostitution, and over 70% of domestic servants are constantly not paid their wages, live like condemned persons—exploited, out of school, abused, and deprived of the necessities of life

1.  In these poor, rural areas, the buyers/man (future husband) are often cadres of the villages, buying because they want to get either a son or a wife. This cooperation  between  the  buyers  and  the  cadres  creates  a  false  impression that to buy an abducted woman to be one’s wife is approved or recognized by the state. Even the local police will close their eyes, because buyers are usually their relatives or good friends.
2.  That there are markets for selling swindled or abducted women or children. It is known in China that men in poor, remote countryside are sometimes unable to get wives either because: 

•  Women are trying to escape from their poverty by seeking a better life elsewhere 
• Women from other rich areas do not want to go to those poor areas. In this situation, abducted women become the best source to get a wife.

      3. Their ignorance of the relevant laws and regulations, the buyers believe that they are also victims if their purchased wives or sons are rescued and taken away from them.

1. This step would create employment opportunities and help with the eradication of poverty, but this was not the result.
2.  The money from the World Bank actually indirectly supported the child labor and exploitation of children in the silk industries

The World Bank’s International Development Association has also loaned $2 billion to India for the establishment of 10,700 primary schools and 62,000 non–formal education projects countrywide, but the bank has been criticized by the National Alliance for the Fundamental Right to Education regarding the disbursement of the funds. The government schools suffer on all levels, with poorly run schools, lack of rigor and quality, and less-qualified teachers

The emotional and psychological toll on these children is equally distressing. They are separated from their families, and the normal process of childhood development is truncated.