Probably the best way to abolish child labour is to institute and enforce universal free primary and secondary education.
Child labour is an anomaly in a modern, 21st century industrial society, which is what Nigeria aspires to become.
The famous “gap” between the northern and southern states is, more than anything else, a gap in education.
Even before the “amalgamation” of their northern and southern “protectorates” into what became “Nigeria” in 1914, the in-coming British colonial power let loose their Christian missionary shock-troops on the south but withheld them, for tactical reasons, from the north. The missionaries came carrying their Bible along with some key texts of the arts and sciences of “western education.”
The British protected the north from the Christian missionaries. They deferred, however grudgingly, to the rival world-conquering religion of Islam which controlled much of the northern protectorate. Their colonial practice had been to scatter and destroy existing administrative structures and replace them with “direct” British rule. However, under a freshly minted policy of “indirect rule” the northern rulership were to be left intact in exchange for administering the territory and doing Britain’s bidding in every particular.
This should have been a fair exchange, but it was not: it put the rulership beyond challenge by upstarts, but it also starved the north of the basic reading, writing and arithmetic (the famous 3 R’s) as well as the advanced, complex, exciting new knowledge systems in science, technology, industry, economics, politics and the arts with which the Christian missionaries were busy provoking a consciousness revolution in the south.
Nations grow through the fertilizing influences of cultural borrowing—even when the borrowing must be from a hated rival or conqueror. So, the challenge facing the north (facing the entire country but differently defined) soon became how to embrace western education but avoid the “poison” of Christianity and western ideas with which it was suffused.
The northern solution was not a particularly creative one. They chose a controlled exposure limited to children of the ruling classes. Result: western education updated and strengthened the power of the ruling elite, but the lower classes were left wretched and poor, their minds constricted, with no sense of the vast horizons of knowledge by which the modern world lives and moves.
The chasm between the northern ruling elite and the masses is so wide and deep that an insurgency has actually been founded on the conviction that western education is evil (or useless)—because all that is visible is the wealth and leisure that western education has purchased for the ruling elite, in contrast to the wretchedness of the masses. In revenge, the insurgents burn down schools, slaughter students and teachers, and abduct girl children for their perverted pleasure.
The solution which the north (and the entire country) needs is a fresh start in education. Universal free primary and secondary education, which has a spotty history in Nigeria, means that:
All children must be in school until age 17
No children can be anywhere else during school hours
No children hawking goods, minding shops or market stalls, guiding blind beggars or herding cattle during school hours “in school” means in a classroom or school compound (“nomadic education” is an impossibility)
Every school in the nation should be fortified and protected by the armed forces.
Universal free primary and secondary education is one of the few causes for which the nation can go a-borrowing. But that is only AFTER we have used our resources wisely—that is, after we have pegged our annual budget on a low oil benchmark of $25 – $35 a barrel, reduced “recurrent expenses” to 15% – 25% of the budget, reduced the number of states to 6, reduced NASS to 24 or 36 members, reduced federal ministers to 12, used up our tax revenue, educational levies on small, medium and large enterprises, and gifts from philanthropists and “high net worth” individuals—THEN we may go into debt to build and equip our schools and train and pay our teachers.
Let’s face it, Nigeria has no future worth talking about with an ignorant, uneducated or ill-educated citizenry. And always, education and jobs must go hand in hand. Already we have millions of able-bodied unemployed. More than half the civil service, federal and state, consists of persons who are under-employed, who do little or nothing day in day out—because there is little or nothing to do in the civil service. Creating jobs for the millions involves creating productive enterprises, especially in agro-industries and manufacturing—producing most of those goods we presently import from abroad.
Government must make it easy for entrepreneurs to do business (create jobs) in Nigeria. If you must travel to Abuja just to register your company; if you must wait several months for the registration to be processed; if you must pay multiple taxation; if your company must generate its own electricity; if its raw materials or its products must be shipped through broken-up roadways for which billions are appropriated and disbursed year after year, such as the infamous deathtrap called the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway or the Aba-Ikot Ekpene-Oron Federal Highway—then it is self-evident that Nigeria is not yet serious about industrialization, job creation and all the rest. It is merely TALKING about it—as it has been talking for 50 years!
To be continued
