Without guidance and care, they took to the streets for abode and survival. HANNAH OJO writes on the weird experiences of street children and the dangers they are exposed to.
They roam the streets without hope of a permanent abode. They take wherever they find themselves at the time night falls as home. It could be the inside of an abandoned vehicle, the top of a pedestrian bridge, the frontage of a shop or the underneath of a flyover. They pay to have their baths in public conveniences or do so in open space before sunrise. Although they differ in terms of age and intention, they are united in the fact that they are street children confronted with horrifying social problems.
Tunde Bakare is already 18, but one would take him for a child on account of stunted growth. Looking dirty and unkempt, Tunde, who completed his secondary education at Model College, Ikorodu, Lagos, last year, said he was forced to the streets because of a cruel fate that befell him.
He said: “I came here because I don’t have parents. My mum died during my early years in secondary school, while my father also died after an auto accident he had in 2013. Now, I work as a bus conductor, alaaru (head loader) or agbero (motor park tout) to fend for myself. I sleep wherever I find myself at nightfall. If my mother were alive, I would not be out here.”
Tunde, who kept his toothbrush in his pocket for fear that his peers might steal it, said he trained as an auto mechanic but had to quit because his boss preferred to keep and exploit him long after he was due for graduation.
Tunde, who refused to be photographed, said: “I was due for graduation but my boss would not let me go because there was nobody to finance the ceremony. Sometimes, I could handle a job worth N5,000 only to receive N200. I couldn’t survive with that, so I called it quits. Out here, I make between N1,000 and N1,500 daily. I feed with some of the money and keep the balance with a Hausa man in the market. I want to sit the Joint Matriculation Examination (JME) and go to the university.”
Ordinarily, Daniel Maxwell, a 16-year-old indigene of Abia State, should have no business wandering about the streets. Daniel, who also works as a head loader in Oshodi, told our reporter that he had only been on the streets for two weeks.
He added: “My friend who introduced me to this place has been here for two years. Sometimes we wake up at 4 am to have our bath in open spaces and canals. I have not experienced much cold but mosquitoes feast on my body inside the Danfo bus at Challenge Bus Stop where I usually pass the night. Some boys have also been prodding me to take Indian hemp but I have promised my mother that I will never smoke.”
Given the way he conducted himself, it was easy to believe that Daniel was not yet given to the rough life of his fellow street dwellers. But how much longer he can withstand the pressure on him to toe their line remains a matter of conjecture. For now, his immediate ambition is to raise the sum of N35,000 he says he needs to write the West African Schools Certificate Examination (WASCE) “in a special centre.”
With the death of his father in 2007, Daniel, the second in a family of six children, left school after he was asked to repeat a class in a public secondary school he attended in Gbagada area of Lagos. With the aunt he was staying with out of town, the stress of going to school from Ikorodu where his mother stayed was daunting. He followed the advice his mother gave him to quit school at SS2 and work to gather money to sit WASCE in a private school.
Daniel said: “My mother stays in Ikorodu and I cannot be coming from there to Gbagada. I cannot go to another public school because Lagos schools do not accept transfer. My father’s family left my mum with six children. Government also demolished my mum’s shop in Alaba Suru where we were staying before she relocated to Ikorodu.”
The lad said he hoped to be on the streets only for a short period within which he hoped to raise the money he would need to continue schooling.
According to a UNICEF statistics, physical abuse accounts for 27 per cent of children who are forced into the streets. The figure includes Somto Ibe, a child that had fled to Lagos from their home in Anambra State after breaking a glass cup. His father had unleashed massive beating on him with a horsewhip, while his mother kept mute. “My Mum didn’t say a word as he beat me. I ran from our home in Onitsha and jumped into the back of a vehicle that was coming to Lagos,” Soft spoken Somto recalled.
He recalled that he had sustained injuries from the beating unleashed on him by bigger boys. The street, he said, seemed to be taking a tough toll on him with fresh scars on his body.
Asked if he would be willing to reconnect with his family, Somto stared into the empty space unsure of an answer. As the probing continued, he simply walked away.
At another part of the city, a recreational centre near a motor park on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, were some boys in their late teens and early 20s, many of whom had developed hoarse voices and darkened lips from as a result of smoking. Their reeked with alcohol and their teeth were stained and dirty. It was evident that they had given personal hygiene a wide berth for long. They looked like a pack without hope or ambition as they wandered around in torn clothes weather-beaten bathroom slippers.
Not able to meet their basic personal needs from the meager sums they make carrying loads for passengers at the park or occasionally working as bus conductors, they also engage in anti-social acts like picking pockets and snatching phones. Adebola Street is regarded as their popular fun spot where they watch movies, smoke Indian hemp and romp with fellow street girls who have taken to prostitution. Some of the girls were discovered to have been used as debt bonds to pimps.
At 14, one of them named Qudus Ibrahim had started smoking Indian hemp. He expertly held a wrap of the substance in his hand, puffing into the air with reckless abandon. Surprisingly, he came across as an amiable teenager in his manner of approach. Asked if he would like to go to school, he said no.
“My father is a policeman but we have family issues. I am here to hustle and work on my own. I am what God decided that I would become,” he said in a manner indicating that he had resigned to fate.
But some of the teenagers are not as care-free as they appear on the surface. Some of them share in the fears that are usually associated with their lifestyle. “Smoking igbo (Indian hemp) can cause one’s brain to scatter, but we cannot stop smoking. It is the devil’s handiwork,” one of them said laughing.
A social worker, Mrs. Taiwo Olowoyeye, who also runs a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) believes that most of the street kids are products of broken homes.
She said: “Most of them are neglected children. Also on the streets are children who cannot find their ways back home. Others are children from extremely poor homes who had to come on the street to search for job and shelter. In the process, they engage in child labour, substance abuse and even prostitution.”
She added that street children are at a great disadvantage because being homeless denies them the right to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, moral and social development.
Despite the fact that police often raid the hideouts of these kids, some of them told our reporter that they always bribe their ways out of the nets of law enforcement agents.
With the high number of welfare homes in Lagos, one cannot but wonder why so many of these children roam the streets. Upon a visit to the Lagos State correctional centre for boys in Oregun, our reporter was directed to the Ministry of Youths and Social Development where the Public Relations Officer was not available for comments. Repeated calls and text messages sent to her phone also went unanswered.
Mrs. Omotola Rotimi, a chartered mediator and Director of the Office of the Public Defender (OPD), which has helped to reconnect many street children to their parents, called on parents and guardians to take proper care of their children. She advised them to come to the government if they needed assistance rather than expose their children to danger on the streets.
She recalled that the OPD had helped in placing many children in the custody of the state. “There was a case where we rescued a boy on the street and by the time we went back to the family to find out what was going on, we discovered that the boy had lost his father as a baby and had also lost his mother. The only person left for the child was the grandmother. When we went to interview her, the woman was already paralysed and had to be taken to the village, so there was nobody to cater for the boy. He was hungry and could not go to school.
“In that kind of scenario, we had no choice but to put the child in protective custody. We cannot arrest the grandmother for child neglect because she was lying ill and there was nobody to take care of the boy.”
She, however, warned that the case of parents who are negligent and would not take proper care of their children could be taken to the family court where they would be prosecuted for child neglect.
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