A recent raid by Nigerian Army troops on a ‘baby-making’ factory in Abia State highlights the country’s rising child trafficking and child labour crisis. But the federal and state governments are characteristically inattentive to the burden. Reports across the country indicate that children are being subjected to various forms of child labour, including commercial sexual exploitation and use in armed conflict, quarrying, and artisanal mining. The authorities should rouse from their slumber and tackle this burgeoning crisis before it worsens to uncontrollable proportions.

The Abia incident was troubling. On June 5, the troops from the Army’s 14 Brigade, Ohafia, following an intelligence report, raided a private compound at Umunkpei Nvosi in Isiala-Ngwa Local Government Area. There, they discovered a thriving baby factory whose operators were, much like livestock farming, keeping, and grooming young girls to make babies for profit. The troops rescued 22 ladies, 21 of whom were pregnant, and two babies –a boy and a girl. One Katherine Ngwanma, a 34-year-old chef at the facility, was arrested.

According to the International Labour Organisation, no fewer than 15 million children are engaged in child labour in Nigeria, about 21 percent of Africa’s total. Residents said the Abia factory operator was selling babies to criminal agents for ritual purposes and to others for child trafficking. Although Governor Alex Otti and his wife visited the facility, stronger measures need to be taken by the state and federal authorities to stamp out this evil business.

Child trafficking and abuse are prevalent despite public outcry after each reported incident. In Nnewi, Anambra State, a 25-year-old mother of twins viciously beat a nine-year-old live-in maid and broke her bones because the child mistakenly dropped one of her babies while carrying them. Videos of the battered girl with her eyes almost blinded circulated, attracting much public anger. The victim disclosed that her ‘madam’ beat her regularly with wire, cane, and this time, with a pestle. She also did not attend any formal school for the years she had lived with the lady. This is cruelty and a violation of the Child Rights Act that makes education compulsory for children from age six to 15.

Parents and guardians should stop giving away their children as maids or houseboys for measly wages, as this makes them accomplices to crime. Also worrisome are reports of increasing kidnapping, indoctrination, and deployment of under-age children as child soldiers by Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists, Fulani herdsmen/militants, and the bandits terrorising the North-West and North-Central states.

The world celebrated the 2023 Day Against Child Labour with the theme, ‘Social Justice for All: End Child Labour!’, on June 12; Nigeria should key into this, and join the Global Coalition for Social Justice,which has child labour elimination as one of its objectives.

Children under the age of 16 cannot be legally employed under the CRA in any capacity, including as housemaids or houseboys. Such children are often victims of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and other deprivations, including lack of access to quality nutrition and education.

The rights to health, education and protection have been adopted as universal basic rights sealed by international treaties to which Nigeria is signatory. Also, the 1999 Constitution explicitly guarantees these rights and charges the various governments with the duty of protecting and enforcing them.

According to the ILO’s ‘World of Work Report,’ over 160 million children, or one in 10 worldwide, are in child labour, many in dangerous conditions. Its conventions on minimum age, on child labour, and providing all children with legal protection against all forms of child labour, should be vigorously enforced in Nigeria.

The United Nations notes that Africa ranks highest among regions; it has 20 percent of its children in child labour, and with 72 million, in terms of the absolute number of children so engaged. The Asia-Pacific region ranks second highest in both these measures — seven per cent of all children, and 62 million in absolute terms.

Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission has repeatedly called on the government, parents, guardians, and employers in the agricultural, construction and mining industries to desist from all forms of child labour in line with the extant labour laws.

Recently, the commission drew public attention to the constitutional provision that “no person shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour,” arguing therefore that children, who are the most vulnerable group,should be adequately protected as stipulated by the basic law.

The Nigeria Labour Congress has also called for policies to bridge the economic inequality gap and provide jobs to address the increasing rate of child labour in Nigeria and across the globe.

There should be new and more effective strategies beyond the knee-jerk responses of state governments to tackle the menace. Nigeria pledged in 2021 to ‘empower’ 600,000 rural and urban vulnerable households through its social investment programmes to contain child labour in granite quarrying, rice farming, artisanal gold mining, and cocoa farming. It has had limited success. Besides, it is too little, given the figure of 15 million child labourers in the country.

To meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 of eliminating child labour by 2025, many countries have adopted diverse policies: Nepal’s government in 2018 sealed an agreement with the country’s 1,100 brick-making factories that employed about 300,000 children to stop recruiting children; Egypt has partnered with the business community, civil society and international agencies, while Colombia has opened hotlines and a plan to address inequality, which it believes aids child labour.

Nigeria should follow suit; there should be national, regional, and state-level programmes, accompanied by close collaboration between all tiers of government to achieve this target. All states should strictly domesticate and enforce the CRA and apply the full weight of the law against child abusers.

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