Tag: Oke-Ogun

An interest-free loan of N282million by British America Tobacco Nigeria  (BATN) to over 800 tobacco farmers in Oke-Ogun, Oyo State, promises to boost the economy of the area, but the drawback, as SINA FADARE finds out, is that children of school age labour on these farms for their parents to meet the tobacco giant’s target

The time was 6.30am. In saner climes, these children, with the oldest being 14 years, would either still be in bed or just waking up. But not these ones, who every weekends must be at their fathers’ farms to tend tobacco leaves.  They have become so proficient that they can tell you from afar if a tobacco farm will produce a good yield or not. It is their job, their life and they are proud of it. They feel great helping their parents who are managing to send them to school.

Welcome to the world of the child labourers on the tobacco farms in Isehin, Ado-Awaye, Ago-Are, Kishi, Igboho, Irawo and other towns in the Oke-Ogun, Oyo State where tobacco farming is the mainstay of the economy.

Tobacco farming, unlike most other types of farming, requires delicate skills. There are various stages of job to be done. Immediately the tractor ploughs the land, the first task is the transfer of the tobacco leaves from the nursery to the farm.

An average farmer lacks what it takes to cultivate this crop. So, the British American Tobacco, through its subsidiary, British American Tobacco Iseyin Agronomy (BATIA), which indirectly owns the tobacco farms in yearly support the farmers with what it calls interest-free loans. This year, over 800 members of the Nigeria Independent Tobacco Association (NITA) in the area are benefitting from a N282 million loans. This is N20 million higher than the N262 million given out to the farmers last year.

This is in addition to the provision of seedlings, herbicides, insecticides, fertilisers and technical support to the farmers by BATIA

Head of Leaf, BATIA, Thomas Omotoye, said the company targets 96 per cent loan recovery this year.

Omofoye said the company has been transparent through fair pricing with government, independent representatives in attendance during yearly pricing negotiations with the farmers.

Despite all the assistance of the BATIA, the farmers cannot afford to hire enough labourers to work on their farms. So, they resort to using their children. These children work in the nursery and it is their first port of call every morning and afternoon. Here they wet the nurseries so that the yield can be of good grade.

The Nation was in Oke-Ogun recently and met some of these children working on their parents’ tobacco farms. Adebisi Oladiti, 10, was all smiles when The Nation met him at Irawo village. A primary six pupil in one of the elementary schools in the village, he was happy as he discussed the process of planting tobacco with our correspondent. When asked why he was happy going to the farm on Saturday morning instead of playing around like his mates, Adebisi smiled a bit and asked: “Who did you think will help my father on the farm? When everybody is going to the farm on Saturday, including my other brothers, what excuses will l give not to follow them?”

He added: “It is not easy to work on a tobacco farm because we wake up early in the morning, especially on Saturday and Sunday because these are the two days we have to assist our father on the farm, aside during the (school) holiday.

“During vacation, we practically move to the farm for days, depending on the type of job that is available. Tobacco planting and hoeing are not as difficult as when the leaves are being dried up in the local way. If one is not vigilant and very careful, fire can consume the entire production.”

Two of his elder brothers, Oladele and Olalekan, said they had to assist their father on the farm on weekends and during the holiday because “we cannot abandon him alone on the farm and still expect him to pay our school fees. We are six in number going to various schools. How do you think he can do it alone?”

Olalekan, the eldest argued that if there was free education for every child of school age, “nobody will like to spend all its useful time tendering only tobacco.”

The situation was similar at Ago-Are, where Kola Karimu and his other siblings were on the farm to assist their parents. Speaking to The Nation, Alhaji Karimu said he had no choice than use his children as labourers on weekends.

He said: “To get the needed labour today is very expensive and if you do not manage what you have, one may run the tobacco farm at a loss. That does not mean that labourers are not engaged. You can see that l have about three, including my kids. During the week, it is only the labourers that will be on the farm, the kids only join them during the holidays and weekends.”

Speaking to The Nation at the nursery session of the farm, Modinat Karimu, 13, explained that it was her duty to wet the tobacco twice a day. She did not see it as a child labour, although she could have preferred to go and study at a quiet place because she would like to be a banker, “but l have no choice. l just have to assist my parents so that they can have enough money to pay my school fees”.

Combing the nooks and crannies of the villages, the story remains the same and the kids tobacco farmers were forced to dance to the tunes of their parents. Speaking to The Nation, Yemisi Onifade, a native of Isehin, said his first twenty years was spent tendering tobacco in his father’s farm.

He said: “As a teenager, the only business our father was doing was tobacco. At all the various stages, we were involved to the extent that during vacations, we would not be able to leave the farm. Nobody had the audacity or any boldness to tell our father that you would not go to the farm. The only time we were free was after our secondary education when other educational challenges took us away from home.”

According to him, everybody in the family then was familiar with an official of the British America Tobacco (BAT), “who often visited our home because my father was one of their dependable farmers.”

He explained that in the past some parents never bothered sending their wards to school as the children spent their youthful years assisting their parents on tobacco farms before deciding to either venture into the tobacco business or learn one trade or the other.

The situation was slightly different when The Nation visited Igboho.  Some of the tobacco farmers, who spoke on the issue, pointed out that the presence of BAT in the area has boosted the economic capacity of the community.

Alani Adewuni, who was one of the big tobacco farmers in the area, said tobacco business was no longer as it used to be, adding that “children are no longer used as labour on the tobacco field anymore. We are equally aware of the child rights and its abuses. Therefore, our children are going to school now, and they are no longer engaged as kid farmers on tobacco farms anymore.”

He said farmers are now denied benefits by BATN as a form of punishment for violating child labour. “In Igboho, BATN denied some farmers from receiving benefits for engaging children in their farms. They frown against this practice,” he said.

He lamented that “if government had made its presence felt in the community, may be tobacco farming might have been a secondary issue, but for many years, there was no government assisted programmes on agriculture in this place despite the fact that this area is known as the food basket of Oyo State.”

Speaking in the same vein, Alhaji Azeez Oloyoyo, pointed out that the tobacco farmers in the community would always be grateful to BATN for assisting them to be relevant in terms of tobacco business, when government turned their back on them.

He explained that the farmers were now wiser and no longer engage their children as labourers on the farm.

He said: “I want my children to also go to the university and be an important person in the future. Therefore, I will not encourage them to be toiling on the tobacco farm.”

Another tobacco farmer, Adewumi Basiru Balogun, explained that the business of tobacco has bailed most of the youths in the community from poverty and penury. According to him, only those people who mismanaged the loans given to them by BATN would castigate the tobacco giant.

“On the issue of child labour on tobacco farm, the BATN authority organised a workshop for us on the need not to allow our children to slave away on tobacco farms. That is what we are doing now.”

He challenged The Nation to re-visit the community during the planting season to compare with what happened in the past and the latest trend, adding that most of the young tobacco farmers in the community were educated and would not want their children to be slaves on tobacco farms.

The Chairman of Tobacco Association of Nigeria, Oyo State branch, Rasheed Bakare, said though the association understood the step government was taking to control the use of tobacco among the youths, he said such step should not jeopardise the economy of the communities whose main economic survival was tobacco farming.

He stated that while aspects of the law prohibits the use of children on the farms, the farmers under the rules and regulations of the association have been mandated to desist from using their children in the farm.

“We have about 800 members in this association and we ensure that none of them allow their children to work in the tobacco farm and the tobacco firm also frowns at this, hence, we obey the child labour law,” he said.

Perhaps the issue of child labour is germane in the sense that about 10 million children of school age in the country are not in school, according to the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. This might have informed why the Coalition Against Tobacco (CAT) frowned against child labour on tobacco farms. The co-ordinator of the group, Olatoyosi Onaolapo, noted that child labour was slavery and a crime against humanity.

“It’s unfortunate that because parents (the tobacco farmers) are indebted to the tobacco companies and are therefore impoverished, have extended their tentacles to the children, who unfortunately are withdrawn from schooling to work on these farms. The children, aside from the value they lose from the lack of education and knowledge, are also at risk, due to exposure to very strong and dangerous chemicals and pesticides, used to treat tobacco leaves,” she said

Onaolapo added that: “Lack of education for these children leads to the preponderance of illiteracy in the society, which definitely will not augur well for the nation. Child labour is also an abuse of the Child’s Rights Law, which stipulates how criminal it is to use these children on the farms; the tobacco companies encourage this impunity and are direct beneficiaries of the dividends of child labour.”

She explained that children were engaged in this kind of labour because their parents have no choice, as they require additional hands on the tobacco farm lands to enable them till the lands, while trying to meet the unreasonable demands of the tobacco companies, to provide tobacco leaves at paltry sums.

She said: “They are unable to hire adult farm workers because they can’t afford to pay them hence the children have become farmhand substitutes. Since they are indebted to the tobacco companies, they can no longer afford to even send their children to school.” The anti-tobacco crusader urged the government to make laws prohibiting child labour on tobacco and other farms, in accordance with the provisions of the child’s rights laws. And to also salvage the farmers from the impoverished situations they have found themselves, she said the government could provide alternative cash and food crops, which are easier to manage and quicker to harvest and therefore more profitable.