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.
Recent Comments