Background
The United Nations Conventions on the rights of the child (CRC) defines a child as a person below the age of eighteen years [
1,
2]. The Convention emphasizes the need for children to be protected from violence, sexual exploitation, and abuse as well as from work exploitation and hazardous jobs [
1,
3]. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) defined child labour as work that is physically, mentally, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and tends to deprive them of opportunities for development and schooling [
4]. Moreover, the International Labour Organization (ILO) defines child labour as work that deprives the child of his childhood potential and dignity or is harmful to his physical and mental development [
3]. It is a well-known fact that child labour impacts negatively on the education of children, often causing them to drop out of school or spend more years in school. Children who engage in child labour are more likely to miss out on school days and lag behind their peers in academic performance. Hence, child labour is an infringement on the right of a child to quality education [
5].
It is important to note that not all types of work done by children are regarded as child labour. This is particularly imperative in low and middle-income countries such as Nigeria where it is a tradition for children to work alongside their parents or guardians [
6]. In 2008, the International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) adopted an operational definition of child labour that includes measurement of working time, age-specific thresholds and nature of work performed [
7]. UNICEF and ILO also developed standard indicators for child labour disaggregated into three age categories, and these include, (i) for ages 5–11 - at least one hour of economic work or 28 h of domestic work per week; (ii) for ages 12–14 - at least 14 h of economic work or 28 h of domestic work per week; and (iii) for ages 15–17 - at least 43 h of economic or domestic work per week [
8]. The Nigerian Multiple Indicator Cluster survey (NMICS) applied this module for the assessment of child labour in the year 2016/2017 [
9].
Child labour remains a major public health issue in Nigerian despite prohibitions in law [
10]. It has been estimated that about 15 million of children under the age of 14 years in Nigeria are engaged in one form of work [
11]. The levels of practice of child labour in Nigeria has been high and varies across zones [
12,
13]. The Northern region is said to be child labour endemic due to the “misapplication of the Almajiri system”. Consequently, the northern region is most affected by out-of-school children [
5]. In the south-eastern and south-south geopolitical zones, many children drop out of school to work as domestic help. In the western zone, many children are involved in street hawking and as domestic help [
13]. Further, some Nigerian children are engaged in an occupation such as mining, quarrying, and agriculture [
14].
In Nigeria, child labour is driven by social, demographic and economic factors such as poverty and loss of employment of parents, rural-urban migration, large family size and cultural norms such as polygamy [
15]. Other drivers include maldistribution of schools, poor accessibility, and high cost of tuition [
15]. More recently, conflicts and terrorism have caused internal displacements of people and damage to school facilities, pushing more children into child labour. Moreover, the mass killings of communities by bandits in northern Nigeria have contributed to creating more orphans and potential victims of child labour [
16,
17].
Studies done in different parts of Nigeria show that child labourers experience problems such as school drop-out, sexual molestation, and robbery [
18‐
20]. The vulnerability of child labourers to poor education and health outcomes threaten the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [
21]. Considerable proportions of school-aged children in Nigeria engage in child labour while they are in school, and the majority of child labourers are in school [
15]. Therefore, child labour impacts school attendance and performance for in-school children.[18,19, 22].
In 2011, the overall National prevalence of child labor was 47% among children aged 5–14 years and 76% among children who were engaged in child labor but were attending school. Enugu state with an overall child labour prevalence of 47.9% with 86% of them combining child labour with school, was found to be among the 20 states with prevalence greater than the national average [
15]. From the information above, it can be deduced that being in school does not rule out the possibility of being a child labourer; majority of child labourers are in-school with the resultant effect of poor school attendance and performance [
18,
19,
22].
Enugu State introduced Universal Basic Education (UBE) into her education system in the year 1999 and despite that the number of out-of-school children aged 3-18 years was 26.5%, 15 years after that initiation of the programme [
23]. The major reason for this large number of school children being out of school was financial in most cases [
23] and many of those in school likely engage in so many economic activities to help them alleviate their financial needs while schooling. Inclusive Education and other programmes were also introduced in Enugu state in 2014 and beyond [
24,
25] to help drive all children to school and also to discourage child labour among school children. These efforts are meant to have reduced the number of out-school-children in the state and also the number of children that engage in child labour while schooling hence the need for this study.
ILO [
26] noticed that much studies have evaluated the impact of child labour and school enrollment while less is known about the relationship between child labour and school attendance. This is because it is easier to elicit school enrollment from household survey than school attendance. This gives confidence that students school environment can be used to study the different forms of child labour and their prevalence in our environment hence this study is rather school-based.
Enugu therefore presents a perfect setting to study the current prevalence of child labour and issues promoting this public health menace in Nigeria. This study will also bring to view the effect of government interventions in the past towards reducing the number of children that are combining schooling with child labouring or dropping out of school due to child labour.
The current study estimates the prevalence of child labour in public secondary schools and underscores the predictors of child labour in this population. This will contribute to existing evidence on the burden of child labour. Furthermore, uncovering the predictors of child labour among schooling children could inform the formulation of policies and design of intervention strategies to reduce child labour.
Discussion
The high prevalence of child labour found in this study suggests that child labour is quite common among school children in Enugu. This is similar to what has been reported by other studies among junior secondary school students in southwest Nigeria [
19] [
27] However, it is almost twice as much as what was reported for the whole State following the 2016/2017 MICS/NICS [
9]. The difference between these findings and that of the current study could be due to the difference in methodology and data collection. While MICS/NICS is a household survey where parents were interviewed, this current study interviewed the children themselves. This is likely to reduce recall bias as well as eliminate the possibility of parental interference and influence. When compared with the National Child Labour Survey, [
9] done in 2018, the prevalence obtained in the current study is also higher than what was reported among in-school children.
Assessment of the different categories of child labour among the respondents revealed that though 90.7% of the respondents carried out domestic works, only 52.1% of them carried it out above the given age-specific threshold while 34.0% of the respondents carried out economic work above the age-specific threshold. Also, 35.2% of respondents worked under hazardous conditions while 8.1% of them were forced to work. The higher prevalence of domestic works compared to economic work could be explained by the common practice of engaging underage children as domestic help in the State, and indeed the country. These children are usually brought from poor households in rural areas and neighbouring states to the urban areas to assist in caring for children, cleaning the house, and cooking. The prevalence of children engaged in economic and domestic activities obtained in this study are comparable to similar studies undertaken in southwest Nigeria [
18,
19,
27] However, the variations could be explained by the differences in the overall economic viability of the study sites. Thus, studies that were done in areas with greater economic viability yielded a higher prevalence of child involvement in economic work in comparison to our study area.
Our finding that over three-quarters of the child labourers fell within the age range of 12 and 14 years is in keeping with other Nigerian studies [
27,
32]. Also, the fact that 61.3% of the child labourers from this study lived with both parents, disapproves of the general view that it is mainly related and unrelated guardians that subject their wards to child labour. From the current study, child labourers living with their parent(s) were mainly involved with economic activities while those living with related and unrelated guardians were mainly involved with domestic activities.
Awareness of child labour among the respondents was below expectation, and barely two-thirds of the children perceived it as wrong. A considerable number of children perceived it as right, and this could explain the finding that many of them expressed satisfaction with the work they did and thought that child labour should be encouraged. This is in keeping with findings from other authors that reported that 54–86% of working children and their parents felt that children should work and that engaging in economic activities has no negative impacts on children [
32,
33]. However, some studies have also reported inconsistent findings where over 60% of parents reported that child labour is hazardous to children, and exposes them to social vices and numerous health risks [
34,
35].
The study revealed an association between child labour and age, tribe, gender, socio-economic status, custodians, family size, number of working children, weekly income of students, as well as family structure, however, only the age of the students (
p < 0.001), class (
p = 0.003), and weekly income made by the respondents (
p < 0.001) were found to be significantly associated with overall child labour. Class: AOR = 2.180 (95% CI:1.183–4.016) and weekly income: AOR = 0.315 (95% CI: 0.175–0.565) were the predictors of overall child labour. Children in JSS 2 were twice more likely to practice child labour than those in JSS3. This could be explained by the fact that JSS3 is an exam class where secondary school students write their lower secondary school external exams (junior Secondary School Certificate Exam). With the high literacy level of the state, caregivers would prefer to engage children when they are not in exam classes than when they are preparing for external exams. Similarly, schools engage students in exam classes in such a way that they return home after work/business hours [
36].
Child labour was also predicted by weekly income made by the child labourers as those who earned over ₦1000 (US$2.7) a day were about 3 times more likely to carry out child labour than those who earned less. This is consistent with the finding that the majority of the economic child labourers in the study worked to support themselves or their parents financially. This is also supported by the findings that about 90% of the respondents have a large family size (greater than 5) with close to 70% of them having to train more than 5 children. In addition, more than 50% of the households fell within the poorest and very poor wealth quartiles. Other authors have also reported that low socioeconomic status, poor family background, and large family size are associated with child labour [
20,
27,
37]. Furthermore, child labour has been reported to increase with decreasing level of parental education and socioeconomic status [
27].
This study is limited by the fact that the psychological state of the children may have affected their responses and this was not determined in the research. However, this study has given an overview of the pattern of child labour in the Enugu metropolis. A larger study that can compare urban and rural areas of the state may give a clearer picture. Also, a qualitative study will help get a detailed understanding of the experiences of these child labourers both in their workplaces and in the hands of their caregivers.
Conclusion
The prevalence of child labour is high among junior secondary school children in public schools in the Enugu metropolis. The majority of these child labourers are engaged as domestic workers, and a significant number of them spend over 43 h a week working at home and performing tasks that are considered hazardous for their age. The predictors of child labour were the level of study and weekly income earned from the economic activities.
This study should be replicated in rural areas and other states in Nigeria to help compare the findings. We recommended further studies on the relationship between child labour and the academic performance of students. Policy draft, review, and implementation of the existing ones should be made to help address some of the issues noted in this study. Awareness creation on the consequences of child labour is urgently needed.
The establishment and sustainability of education programs such as the Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme will reduce the cost of education for the parents and guardians thereby improving school attendance and reducing child labour. Government, non-governmental agencies, and interested policy actors should double their efforts and increase their focus and campaign against child labour to fast track the implementation of legislation against child labour.
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