Street hawking in the FCT is a
menace that seems to defy all known solutions. Efforts made so far to curb the
menace and some enabling laws on children’s rights.
Street hawking has been roundly condemned
as being unsafe, children in most cities in the FCT have continued to defy the
government ban orders and sell their wares on some strategic roads. Children
who hawk in the street have become bold and assertive that they tend to disrupt
free flow of traffic on major roads at the same time, endangering their lives.
A street hawker ran after a coaster
bus, trying to collect her N50 from the passenger who bought her fried plantain
when an on-coming ‘araba’ bus almost hit her ; it was the driver’s wisdom that
saved her (this happened shortly before the ban on araba). When Martins Library Team accosted
her, she said, “my Aunt brought me from our village in the East to come and
learn trading, I didn’t know it was hawking, until I got here. There are four
of us who were brought to hawk for her. In the night we sleep in a small
batcher behind her house in Karmo, while she and her family sleep in a room and
parlour.
The children go to school while we
wake up and do the house chores before madam will finish frying the plantain,
package it and give it to us to go and sell. We sell more during heavy traffic.
We bring our wares in the evening and go home late. I don’t get to see my
parents until Christmas time when we are allowed to travel home. We are told
that, we can’t go to school, that if we are able to learn trading, we will make
more money than people that went to school”.
Another teenage hawker, Jime
Okireya said, he has been selling in the streets of Abuja for over three years.
“l begged my ‘Aunt’ to bring me to Abuja to come and make money. I was
tired of just farming and selling few bush meat. I wanted quick money, but it
is obvious that I can’t make it selling handkerchiefs and socks in the hold up.
I didn’t know life in Abuja was going to be difficult. But I won’t go back
until I have made it. I am saving to go and buy a motor cycle which I can be
using for ‘Okada’ back home. Street hawking is dangerous because we deal with
environmental protection agents who will catch you and seize your wares. There
is also the hot Abuja sun and dangers vehicles pose to us, but I will rather
hawk than steal”.
A town planner who spoke with Martins Library Team on
the menace of street hawking said, “as much as I don’t like the way these
children litter the road and dash-in between cars, I still lay the blame on
government. If they had provided resources, jobs or free education for these
children, they will have no reason to come and hawk in the street and become a
nuisance.
Developed countries make policies
that provide free education for children, but here in Nigeria, though with much
resources and wealth, education is left for the rich. Poor folks prefer to send
their children to the streets to hawk with all the inherent dangers associated
with it. Street hawking that was once taken for granted is now accepted
as part of life in Nigeria while the dangers of street trading is becoming an
issue only to a couple of people who feel that government should have
taken a decisive step to solve the problem. Street hawkers are mostly living
with relations, not parents, because most biological parents want the best for
their children. It is a common knowledge that no decent person would like to
send his child to hawk. Aside littering the streets, they make the roads unsafe
for road users.
A social welfare officer urged
government to sign the child rights bill so that the Authorities will start
enforcing the Child Rights act that was passed by the National Assembly.
According to him, only a few states have signed the bill into law which is to
eliminate teenage-street hawking. Most of the children who hawk know the
dangers involved yet they do it to make ends meet. Children being made to hawk
on the street is child abuse; the task force agents are fond of raiding these
children, maltreat them and take their goods. Nigeria is a signatory to
the United Nations and that of the African Union on the Rights and
responsibility of the African child which defines the child as “a person below
the age of 18 or any age as shall be specified by each individual member of the
organization.
They clearly spell these rights as
follows: the Right to qualitative education, health care, love and care,
adequate food and shelter, right to clean environment and the right to
relaxation and recreation. Children are our future and our values; they need
our protection. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child
states that, “mankind owes the child the best it has to give”. The Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989, signed and ratified by Nigeria, states
that every child, before and after birth, should have a right to life, basic
education, freedom of expression, right not to be used for forced labour, child
trade and child trafficking, among others”.
A psychologist and counselor said,
“children are engaged in hawking to bring money for their mistresses, masters
and relatives. But this often results in educational deprivation for the child
involved. Child hawking is a form of child labour that leads to stunt growth,
malnutrition and feeling of being worn out. But the UN declaration of human
rights of 1945 state that, “a child should have the necessity of lives of which
education and good health are paramount. Every child is supposed to have a
right to qualitative education, right to health care, right to love and care,
right to adequate food and shelter, right to live in a clean environment and
right to relaxation and recreation”.
The counselor also stated that, they
(children) have the right to life, survival and development; the right against
exploitation, child labour and to be protected against torture, abuse, inhuman
and degrading treatment, injury or assault; rights to parental care and
protections and right to protection from all forms of sexual exploitation or
encouragement to engage in sexual activities or pornographic activities.
A staff of Abuja Environmental
Protection Board, AEPB, who pleaded anonymity stated that, “the FCT
administration is making efforts to ensure that street trading is stopped
once and for all. A provision is being made for street hawkers to be
captured in the on-going registration of hawkers in the city. We are also
partnering with other agencies of government to get a good location where an
informal market will be built for these hawkers.
These hawkers are very stubborn,
they have refused to comply with the AEPB Act of 1997, section 35, but when our
people arrest some of these kids, for those who don’t have anybody to look
after them, we take them to the rehabilitation centre in Bwari and for the
adults amongst them, they are taken to court before they are sent to prison, if
they are not able to pay the stipulated fine. They have been told not to hawk
in the city centre, we don’t bother them when they do it in satellite areas,
but here in the city centre, it is prohibited yet they keep defying the orders
and when we arrest them, they call us wicked people. This is the capital of
Nigeria and we want to maintain the standard that our founding fathers had in
mind”.
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