The Nigerian Child: Face to Face With Abuse

The streets are increasingly becoming the homes of children in Nigeria, such that if nothing is done a lot more of these children will end up constituting nuisance to the entire nation.  In Nigeria, it is a common sight to find children walking, jumping and running to meet up the pace of moving vehicles so as to exchange articles for money with motorists along major busy roads and streets of the nation. These children are on many occasions compelled to sell “pure water” which they are never meant to consume.

If this is not the idea of staying all day long along these streets, then a child remains in the streets just to hawk oranges, boiled groundnut, push compact discs, fishes, tubers of yam, and other commodities for sale. It is also terrible to discover that most of these children found in the streets never return home at the end of such transactions as they pass the nights under bridges, sleep inside school buildings or incredibly sleep inside market stalls, their places of abode.

This is nothing but child abuse. This article presents the challenges that force the Nigerian children to take to the streets rather than remain in their homes to attend to educational needs and requirements. This will in the end offer a very critical understanding on the contributory factors that necessitate this together with how it can be effectively reduced. However it is apt to define what child abuse is all about, to enable us determine whether this is child abuse or  just what parents of such children involved term “hustling” a Nigerian terminology used to describe an act of making ends meet using uncomfortable means.

Wikipedia.org defines child abuse as “the physical, psychological or sexual maltreatment of children.” It thus includes “neglect,” physical abuse,” Child sexual abuse” and “psychological abuse” as the major tools which occasion child abuse. To Safe Child, Child Abuse, neglected child means “means a child less than 18 years of age whose physical, mental or emotional condition has been impaired or is in danger of becoming impaired as a result of the failure of the child's legal guardian to exercise a minimum degree of care in supplying the child with adequate food, clothing, shelter, or education or medical care.”

Think Quest sees child abuse as situation whereby the fundamental human right of a child is tempered with. That is, the child is not given adequate care and protection as it’s the responsibility of every parent to take good care of their children. These rights are to education, religion, freedom, movement, shelter etc. The child on most occasions is exposed to unnecessary hardships and odds in life”

Having successfully determined what child abuse is from the different perspectives, we shall now apply it to the Nigerian society and how it has impacted on this very society which before now had very high regard for tradition. Nigeria is viewed as having the potentials in determining and defining the future of the African continent by reason of being the continent’s largest population, an idea which rests on the future of children and the youths of the nation as the leaders of tomorrow but certain situations which erode the right of our children grossly leave the idea at risk. It is hugely a risky venture to think that Nigeria will lead the African continent if she does not urgently address child needs currently plaguing the nation.

In the Nigerian society, children should be considered equally as important as adults because the society entails continuity, children taking over from where adults have stopped when they are grown.

Child abuse in within the Nigerian stretches beyond the ordinary, and this raises great concern to all as children optimum development is greatly reduced by child abuse followed by the unconcerned attitudes of our government not realizing that child are our best resources for the development of the nation.

In Nigerian homes, the idea of domestic servants in which children are utilized against their personal wishes and will continues, these children wake up to realize they are going to live with another human being, whose background, character, ideologies, likes and dislikes and reasons in life are mostly unknown. These children do not even get paid but their parents or guardian receive money on their behalf while they work harder with dim future, and may spiritually viewed as witches and wizards responsible for bringing ill-luck to such families.

While these “modern slaves” are made to sit at home or at best be placed in public schools where educational activities are in inertia, the children of “slave masters” get the best of life, yet many of these slave masters are Deacons/Deaconesses and Alfas in our churches and mosques and we pay spiritual homage to them in the name of God.

A lot of children have been made to give confessional statements to spiritualists under duress, and following torture to deliver address on our they have unturned many homes, which turns out to be self-made stories used to justify stagnant family situations.

Children may also be required to hawk in busy roads as an alternative to education in order to generate money for their parents, and when put together, one discovers that collectively, the articles content for sale cannot worth more than N500.00 (Five Hundred Naira) or consider the case of a small girl who hawks several number of large tuber of yams which even his parents cannot lift from the ground, when she is tired of walking and as result decides to sleep by the road side is raped by a number of unidentified gangs or lured away for ritual purposes, having some of her private parts removed for this purpose.

In this era also, we find many Nigerian children who act as guide to beggars, in most cases it is hard to tell how related they are to these beggars because they are rarely seen conversing except when they are both tired and resting, funny enough, when they are set to go home, commercial bus drivers rarely show the urge or intention to convey them with their buses because as beggars, they are seen as people incapable of affording the fares. Sometimes bus conductors attempt pushing them off their vehicles for the reason stated her.

Many men lure young female hawkers to their houses or elsewhere where their articles are bought up by giving them money equivalent to these articles and engage in sex with them with or without their consent. Our culture gets these victims to keep quiet and not make any disclosures to their parents because they may end up receiving many more torture from their parents.

Not sending children to school may also mean sending them to gambling centers where they mix up with adults of different kinds obtaining different gambling skills and exhibiting them. This mostly occurs because parents and guardians have failed to give their children proper provisions of supervisions or guardianship, and the child is left with no option than to take to what is available to him/her.

Child abuse in Nigeria may never be a thing of the past until the government intervenes; it is on the basis of this that we call on relevant agencies and child-right activist to help ensure that meaningful life returns to the Nigerian children and that they are not denied the basic right to life. When this is done, children will become happy and contribute their own quota to the development of Nigeria when they are grown.