CHILD’S HAWKING AS A COPING STRATEGY AMONGST THE POOR AFRICAN FAMILIES IN NORTH EASTERN NIGERIA: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

¹Abdul-Mumin Sa’ad and ²Fatimah Abdul-Mumin Sa’ad

¹Professor of Sociology/Criminology and Provost Federal College of Education, Yola

²Department of Educational Foundation and Administration School of Education, Federal College of Education, Yola

E-mail: amsaadj@yahoo.com; fatimahsaad1@yahoo.com

Abstract: Sociologists consider family as one of the five very important social institutions in any society which if affected negatively the whole society suffers. For example, one of the primary functions of the family is to produce and reproduce persons, biologically and socially. Secondly, anthropologists have often supposed that the family in a traditional society forms the primary economic unit. Thus, for the African society to remain healthy and positively functional the family unit must remain appropriately intact.  Unfortunately, this very important institution in Africa is facing serious challenges that threaten its existence and therefore the existence of the African societies. It appears that the doom day is being held back only by the resilience of the African families which adopts various coping strategies with their various strengths and weaknesses. For example, one of the serious challenges the African family is facing is poverty. And in north-eastern Nigeria, child hawking, which is a form of child labour, is one of the major coping strategies. This paper therefore examines in an exploratory manner the type, nature, extent and the worthiness or otherwise of child hawking, which is very common in North-eastern Nigeria. It is very clear from our findings in this study that child hawking was being used in north-eastern Nigeria to supplement the incomes of parents and/or guardians of the child hawkers. Child hawking therefore was a form of coping strategy for families of child hawkers involved in it in this study. Notwithstanding its benefits as an income supplementing strategy to families of hawkers, child hawking is not a worthwhile coping strategy for two major reasons found in this study. First, it is a form of child labour, which constitutes a child abuse in itself, and; secondly, it exposes the child hawkers to various child abuses such as beating by bullies, verbal insults from people, sexual harassment, attempted rape and rape, attempted abduction and abduction, etc. We also found that child hawking exposes the child to other dangers such as Traffic accidents and such other bad behaviours as hooliganism, drug abuse, pick pocketing, indiscriminate sex/fornication and prostitutions.  The paper then concludes with well informed recommendations on how best to deal with the problem of child hawking generally and in north-eastern Nigeria in particular. The recommendations revolve around poverty eradication and the need to rigorously implement the Child Rights Act and Convention as well as the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act.