There is enough to engage your interest in the nation’s capital. You will find the rich and powerful but so will not miss the segment that is always threatened by prohibitive rent. Now, add to that the army of child labourers, especially those who, instead of being in school, hawk all manner of wares on the streets and highways of the glitzy capital city.
While some children are seen going to school, reading hard and having lesson teachers come home to teach them after school hours or during holidays, others can’t wait to leave classes and go out to sell one or two things in order to sustain their families.
With the influx of people into the capital city and the high standard of living experienced by residents, it is very common to see children as young as six or seven carrying wares on their heads and walking about trying to sell their products, in either traffic or street corners.
Just like you will find in any Northern part of the country where young Hausa girls carry little wares like vegetables, pepper, tomatoes, okra, etc and selling on behalf of mothers who are not allowed outside the house, it is now slowly becoming a trend in satellite towns of Abuja like Kubwa, Zuba and Nyanya, among others.
Unfortunately, most of these children barely go to school and begin their trade very early and can be seen sometimes dosing or lounging under trees when the sun becomes unbearable.
Some banana sellers at the satellite towns do not come out to sell alone, you find most of them and all of their children especially at night selling banana and groundnut especially at the phase 3 traffic in Kubwa, even on school days, young children are seen in traffic as late as 10pm trying to sell their bananas to motorists and passerbys, these children that have so mastered the trade that they can be seen convincing people to buy even under the rain or when the weather is extremely cold.
With the coming of groundnuts and fresh corn season, most of the peddlers of these food items are mostly children. Visit the Kubwa market and you will see a lot of children selling corn, groundnut, vegetable, yam, cooked cassava flour or fufu, among others, all trying hard to sell and supplement their family earnings.
Another popular trend is common on Fridays before prayers Children lead disabled relatives to places close to popular mosques to beg for alms and sometimes even fight over people trying to give them money, even though it seems like the almajiris are not in Abuja, a visit to most of the satellite towns will prove to a visitor that they are gradually taking up a stand in these parts of the city. Here young children with their famous plastic bowls go about singing to residents for money. Some of them hang around parks and overhead bridges. The overhead bridge at the famous Second Gate in Kubwa is popular for accommodating these children; they lounge around the steps and yell greetings at passersby. Most times, when a passerby ignores and refuse to give them money after their rendition of praises, some of them will begin insulting the innocent person in Hausa.
With the level of hardship on the increase and the almajiris making less and less money, some of these children have found alternatives to begging, some hand around the Kubwa market, following people around and asking to carry heavy loads, some that sit around the overhead bridge carry heavy loads across the bridge for stipends while of almajiris in town have now taken up another trade, they hang around traffic in town, they can even be seen at the Central Area, here they wait patiently for the light to turn red and as soon as it does, you will find little boys, some as young as six or seven struggling to wash the windscreen of cars with their readymade detergent water and stick. They do not bother to ask permission from motorists but simply dive
on the windscreen and begin washing, most angry motorist drive them away while some allow them to finish and hand them stipends.
Mr Benard, a taxi driver who takes Nicon junction to Secretariat route insisted that the children are a great nausea and need to be flushed out of the city centre. “ they are so annoying honestly, they won’t even take permission but use that their dirty water to stain the windscreen that you
have already washed, i don’t give them anything oh, i just yell at them anytime they come close to my car. What they do is very dangerous and they could easily be hit by a car but they never listen and security operatives simply watch them without chasing them away.”
A resident of Kubwa, Mercy Kalu called parents that allow their children sell things in the traffic late at night careless. Her words, “how much is it that the children are going to make for their families that they are being kept out late selling bananas that people don’t even want, some
parents can be very careless and you see them crying when something happens to the children. These children rush through traffic most times not even checking properly to be sure that the road is clear. The government of the Federal Capital Territory needs to do something about taking these children off the streets because it is child abuse.”
