Solutions to Child Labour in Nigeria proffers Solutions to child labor. This is a humiliating challenge in Nigeria, the fact that it is ignored.
How to Stop Child Labour in Nigeria
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Child labor is an unjust act of exploiting children through a form of hard or forceful work, depriving them of childhood rights and interfering with their ability to attend a school or live a happy and normal life. This has been ignored in Nigeria.
Child labor is mentally, physically, socially, or morally harmful. Children have been forced out of their childhood to adulthood by the unfair imposing of responsibilities upon their shoulders.
Children have been taken out of school to military barracks in some countries and in Nigeria especially, children stop going to school just because they have to assist their parents on the farm and other activities that deter them from academics and other childhood benefits.
Sometimes, child labor is often mistaken for entrepreneurship. When a child decided to take up a line of business for self-dependence or to meet a need, it is called ‘Entrepreneurship, but when he or she is forced against his will to work, that’s child labor.
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Solutions to Child Labour in Nigeria
Here are Solutions to Child Labour in Nigeria:
1. There Should Be Constitutional Laws Against Child Labour
In order to stop child labor, strict laws should be brought into play with consequences attached to defaulters. It is not enough to give laws but to attach consequences to defaulters of the laws.
In Nigeria, it is common to find people who are under the age of 18 to get into hard labor just for survival. The law should not exempt such children, especially in cases where the parents of such a child are still very much alive. Every child has a legal right to enjoy childhood and not to be transited early to the labor market.
2. Government Should Tackle the Problem of Poverty
A major cause of child labor is simply insufficiency of funds to cater to the needs of the family which is in one order called ‘poverty’.
No matter how bad a situation is, you’ll never see the children of a rich or average man on the streets hawking goods or even working when they are not of age.
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Most parents who send their children to hawk will not have done so if there was sufficient capital to start their business on a large scale. The children now act as a marketer for whichever product they are given.
The government should try as much as possible to set up structures that will drastically reduce the poverty level in the country and before you know it, child labor will be a thing of the past.
3. There Should Be Free Education As Well As Free Meals In Schools For Children
Free education should be backed up with free meals. Free education should address the needs of parents who are financially incapable of sending their children to school.
When meals and uniforms are given freely to children, there’ll be no cause for parents to deprive the children of the opportunity to attend school. This will drastically reduce child labor in the country.
Education is not just a platform for enlightenment, it is a pathway through which child labor is driven out of a nation.
On education, parents should also be sensitized on the harmful effect of child labor, making them realize that if child labor continues, the country will merely be recycling the past without giving the children the opportunity to live a new life void of the harmful effect of untimely forcing childhood out of younger children.
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4. There Should Be Absolute Disregard For Institutions That Encourage Child Labour
People should stop patronizing companies and institutions that adopt child labor in making more profit. These institutions rarely employ people of age, they rather employ those that they can underpay, those who won’t be able to stand up for themselves if cheated.
They use the strength of these youngsters in exchange for very little. If all Nigerians can stop patronizing them, they would soon be out of business and would not be able to perpetuate their evil deeds.
The government at all levels should also ensure that they radically monitor companies to ensure that children are not hired as slaves to work for less than they humanly deserve.
5. Participation In The Fight Against Child Labour By Every Nigerian is one of the Solutions to Child Labour in Nigeria
It all begins with us too. Everyone who owns a company should not employ underage children to work there. And in turn, they should try to pay their staff well.
A well-paid worker will perform greatly. He will not underperform in whatever capacity. He will do his best to make sure that the company grows higher and higher. Children cannot do this. Pay your staff well and don’t join the queue of people who will prefer more for little.
Let your profits reflect in the much you pay your staff. Remember that no company whose remuneration is good ever lacks capable hands to do the work.
It is the job everyone. Everyone needs to stand up against child labor. You see something, say something. When underage children bring goods and services for their patronage, stand up against the act.
You should not buy from them either. When you see someone sending an underage child to go hawking, report the case to the relevant authorities. This will make children feel loved and catered for in the community where they find themselves.
Be ready to give out your wealth of advice to the children around you. Should you see a young child with something the parents cannot afford, inquire to know. This is to be sure the child is not working somewhere just to get stuff.
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You may not have the opportunity to live in a place where this disastrous activity is carried out, but you can as well give your money to those NGOs and charity organizations who give out help and orientation to families in order to curb child labor.
When you do this, you indirectly fight child labor in your own capacity. Everyone will not always be in the field, some people will hike and watch their money affect the change they want to see in the nation.
You never can tell what your little donation could do for the growth of the nation. It doesn’t have to be much, just give the little you have and see these organizations put it judiciously at work, better than you may have done if you were to go to the fields to help.
Those are practical Solutions to Child Labour in Nigeria. We hope Nigerians give a thought to these!
