TheCable

El-Kanemi Memorial Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, says 43 percent of the child labour force in Borno state is made up of children between the ages of 11 and 13 years.

In its recently published child labour report in the state, the El-Kanemi Memorial Foundation said its explanatory study employed field survey to collect data from 10,644 households for the analysis.

The organisation said despite the domestication of the Child Rights Act in Borno, the state still has a lot of children who engage in labour to sustain themselves and their families.

The NGO said there is an urgent need to support vulnerable families and educate parents in order to end child labour in the state.

“The Child Rights Act was signed into law in Nigeria in 2003 to protect children from exploitation; however, Borno is the 13th state to domesticate the Child Rights Act into law. there has been minimal enforcement of this Act with some states, yet to domesticate it,” the El-Kanemi Foundation said.

“Studies that identify the types of tasks children are engaged in and their effects are needed. This will enable the eradication of all forms of child labour among children.

“This intervention aims to identify the tasks that children in Borno are engaged in and the effects of these tasks on them. It would serve as evidence to engage the policy formulators on the need to outlaw these tasks for children and to support the implementation of the Child Rights Act in Borno.

“The study observes that most of the children in the child labour are orphans or children without parental care. The study concludes that child labour exploitation operates as a last resort for the vulnerable poor families and greater percentage of the children in the labour market are of primary school age.

“Their inability to attend schools would greatly undermine their future education opportunities. Therefore, for effective elimination of child labour there is a need to support the vulnerable families with safety nets and also educate the parents on the consequences of force child labour.

“The rising child labour rate in the Metropolis in spite the call for the ban of child labour is seriously disturbing as it has adverse effect on primary school enrolment.”

The El-Kanemi Memorial Foundation further stated that its study collaborated with other studies that found a significant relationship between poverty and forced child labour in the less developed countries.

“The results of the main findings indicate that about 43 percent of the child labour force is made up of children between the ages of 11 and 13 years. This implies that substantial amount of school-aged children out of school as result of the child labour,” the Foundation said.

“Similarly, the larger proportion of the income generated through child labour are utilized within households, that is, are spend for the benefit of the whole family. This suggests that the children are forced to engage in the economic activities to augment family income as the household heads earnings capacity is low.”