Hit by biting inflation, indigent children sacrifice education for families’ survival

The steadily increasing economic hardship and inflation are not just making life uncomfortable for the rich but are slowly grinding the poor to dust.

They are being gradually stripped of the little social and economic securities they once could afford, reports Sunday PUNCH.

At 8 am daily, while his mates must have settled into their classes and are ready for the first lesson of the day, 17-year-old Boluwatife Israel is settling in at a building site with his head pan and work tools to earn the day’s pay as a mason.

It was not always like this for the teenager. Life took a sad turn for Boluwatife in 2023 when his father, a mason, fell ill and could no longer work. Initially, the family managed, but rising inflation rendered his mother’s efforts insufficient, forcing Boluwatife to leave school and take up menial work.

“I was in SS2 when I left school last year,” the Abuja resident told our correspondent.

“My father was a mason but when he fell sick, my family decided that I needed to stop school to help out so that we don’t go hungry. I make N3,500 per day as a mason. I get anxious any day I do not get any job to do because that means there will be no food for us to eat at home,” Israel said.

Despite slim hopes of returning to school, Israel dreams of winning a scholarship. For now, his family relies on his meagre earnings to survive.

In the past year, rising inflation has made it increasingly difficult for poor Nigerians to maintain any semblance of comfort. The economic pressure is driving more children, like Israel, out of school and turning them into child labourers against their will to take up the roles of their parents to support their families.

The International Labour Organisation describes child labour as any work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.

“It refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and/or interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work,” the ILO explained.

As inflation rises, experts fear there will also be a rise in child labour. Contrary to the promise of allowing the poor to breathe, the poor are being suffocated with burdens too heavy to bear.

A sociologist and former vice-chancellor of Ekiti State University, Prof Olatunji Orubuloye, noted that a larger population of the Nigerian society was made of youths within the zero-to-18 age bracket who in normal circumstances were meant to be dependent on their parents or guardians for care.

“This is the period where they are supposed to be under the tutelage of their parents. Most of them, if not all of them, are not expected to engage in productive enterprise. They are a dependent population who should depend on their parents for livelihood survival and all they need to do at that age.

“Whatever affects their parents or dependents will have serious implications for their survival and their livelihood,” the economist warned.

Mother’s torn choice between survival, education

That was the precarious reality that Obiageli, a single mother of two, found herself in.

When she could no longer raise the N18,000 she needed to enrol her son into JSS2, she was left with no choice but to withdraw him from school. This was even as she had yet to offset the last term’s school fees.

The Abia State-based woman, who ekes out a living by frying potato chips and lives in a single room with her children, lamented that with the escalating economic hardship, she could no longer afford to juggle all the responsibilities that motherhood had shoved on her alone after her husband abandoned her.

Previously, a day’s labour could provide a day’s meal, but recently, she has struggled to earn enough for each day and was seriously considering an extra hand to make just about the same amount of money she used to make daily to feed her small family.

But that came at a price. Obiageli told our correspondent that she was tempted to withdraw her son from school to join her so she could make more money just so they could eat and stay alive. She was hard-pressed between asking her son to join her in the business so they could make enough sales to see a day’s meal and sending him to school.

“This thing put me in deep thought, thinking about how I would have to withdraw the children from school because I cannot afford to pay their school fees. I thought to myself, as I was uneducated and untrained growing up, how would it be that I would birth these children and leave them to end up like me in this world where education is everything?

“If you had seen me then, you wouldn’t recognise me. We cannot afford to eat three square meals a day, it has become really hard. Everything is so expensive. It was my benefactors that eased things for me,” she said.

Despite being plunged further into penury and multidimensional poverty, Obiageli reasoned that poor Nigerians like her and her children were already used to suffering.

Four days for schooling, one for trading

As traders settled into their different stalls and spaces in Magboro market on Friday morning, the designated market day for the Ogun State community, 14-year-old Tolulope occupies her umbrella-covered space in the market.

Unlike her peers who were taking school lessons for the day, Tolulope’s day was spent selling okro, pepper and soup condiments to help her family make ends meet.

When our correspondent approached her, the dark-skinned girl spotting an ambitious afro was quick to indulge our reporter trying to convince her to buy some moulds of okro she had set up from the heap she was determined to sell off before the end of the market day.

The teenager said she stopped going to school on Fridays as her uneducated parents had mandated that she set Friday apart to help the family in the market.

“My parents know I am here on Fridays. I have been doing this for some time now to help my parents and siblings. Because Fridays are our market days here, I don’t go to school. It is the only day I miss school,” she explained.

The teenager, who attends a private secondary school in the area, added that she was not bothered about missing lessons on Friday because it was just one day and that she would make up for it with the other days.

Tolulope is not alone in this category. There are other children like her who often have to stay in the market till evening or till their stock is sold out. She and others like her endure immense stress and fatigue just to be able to help their families improve their finances.

Nigeria’s multidimensional poverty rate

The 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index of the Nigerian Bureau of Statics found that 63 per cent of Nigerians (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor.

The multidimensional poverty index measures the several factors in which a person is deprived, not just by money.

“A poor person can suffer multiple disadvantages at the same time. For example, they may have poor health or malnutrition, a lack of clean water or electricity, poor quality of work or little schooling. Focusing on one factor alone, such as income, is not enough to capture the true reality of poverty,” the multidimensional poverty peer network highlighted.

The NBS, in the report, revealed that “poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations”.

Inflation is further widening the social gaps between the rich and the poor by making the poor poorer with less access to little comforts.

Inflation in April stood at 33.69 per cent, according to the NBS, up from 33.20 per cent recorded in March 2024. This represents a month-over-month increase of 0.49 per cent points in the headline inflation rate, according to the Consumer Price Index report, the NBS stated in a report on May 22, 2024.

The inflation rate in April 2024 was also 11.47 percentage points higher than in April 2023, where it stood at 22.22 per cent, showing a significant rise of the headline inflation over the past year.

Surge in child labour

Despite Nigeria’s continuous struggle with child labour and the consequent ills, an economist with the Nigerian Economic Sumit Group, Dr Ikenna Nwosu, predicted that there would be a further surge of child labour due to inflation.

“There’s already a rise in child labour and there will be more both in the North and South. It is already prevalent in the North where you’d see children begging for money; in the South, you’d see children who should be in school helping their mothers to sell things on the streets.

“Many of them are in traffic selling one item or the other when they should be in school. Some are on construction sites; some are already into prostitution at the age of 15 or 16, or even younger. It is already prevalent so when you say it will rise, yes, it will,” Nwosu said.

He pointed out that beyond that, there were consequences of inflation-backed poverty on children.

“There will be out-of-school children because parents cannot afford to pay fees, and malnutrition will be on the rise because the children are not feeding well. Parents will not be able to afford healthcare for their children. Another social impact you’d see is that young girls will be forced into early marriages, the economist added.

These consequences add to the burden that Nigeria grapples with as one of the top countries with the most out-of-school children, the highest number of internally displaced persons and the highest number of internally displaced camps.

Poverty up, nutrition down

Prof Orubuloye remarked that there would likely be a drop in the markers of development of children, especially of the poor, with nutrition being a major consequence.

“Many of the children are deprived of the benefits of basic nutritional foods which they ought to consume; when they don’t get properly fed, that has some implications for their physical, and mental development.

“A large number of children will suffer infant or childhood mortality. Even when they can survive, because they have not been properly fed as children, it will affect their growth, emotional stability and ability to absorb what they are taught in school and this is very serious,” the sociologist added.

A professor of Health Economics at the University of Benin, Nwabueze Achime, observed that the productivity of a nation was tied to the health of its citizens. He also noted that the health of the youth population was an important part of a nation’s ability to be productive.

Parents withdrawing children, group laments

The fourth sustainable development goal of the United Nation is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education but with poverty shrinking indigent families income, this is threatened.

Moreso, private schools which contribute an enormous quota to making education accessible to all is being threatened by the withdrawal children from such schools.

A group of low-fee-paying private schools in Nigeria, under the aegis of the Association for Formidable Educational Development, has raised the alarm over the withdrawal of pupils from schools by their parents due to economic hardship.

The President of the association, Emmanuel Orji, told our correspondent that despite the member schools of the association providing education to under-served, hidden and poor communities in the country, there had been reports of parents withdrawing their children and wards from such schools.

“I get reports from different member schools that people are dropping out and leaving schools and it is not their choice. They are leaving schools because of the inability of their parents to pay the fees, same with the schools.

“I know of two schools that couldn’t continue because children had dropped out and they could no longer afford to pay teachers. Even for the pupils, when children are not eating well, learning becomes difficult. Times are tough, parents are not able to meet up,” Orji said.

He added that the withdrawal of pupils from the affected schools had also taken a toll on the management of the schools.

“When parents are taking such a decision, it will have a direct impact on the school enrolment, vis-à-vis the income of the school so the capacity of the schools begins to drop. I think, at the moment, we are at a crossroads when it comes to economic issues.

“We have heard of one palliative or the other but the majority of the poor families are not getting it. So, to cushion the effect of this, the government needs to reach out through the leadership of some organisations such as association heads and owners of schools to the indigent families if we want to make something meaningful out of it,” he added.

‘Parents opting for lesson centres over schools’

As the burden of inflation affects all spheres of life, the number of out-of-school children which UNESCO in partnership with the Global Education and Monitoring Report put at 20.2 million could see a further increase.

The Lagos State Chapter President of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, Yusuf Alaka, said private schools which cater to 80 per cent of basic education in Nigeria were being overlooked and overburdened by the government.

Alaka stated that a new pattern where pupils resort to attending lessons instead of schools to avoid paying school fees had been observed.

“A lot of students have even left school and are now attending coaching centres. Now, you find out that once it’s the second term, those in SS3 turn to lessons rather than paying school fees for the second and third term.

“According to our last statistics, over 13,000 pupils dropped out of schools in a particular local government in Lagos. It is alarming. You will find out that the number of pupils who are supposed to resume each term no longer do that. Children are dropping out of school to take lessons outside and when they cannot pay for the lessons, they are kept at home,” Alaka said.

“The government has been giving palliative to other economic sectors but none has been done to the private education sector which is handling 80 per cent of the basic education in Nigeria.

“Our annual due to the government has been increased, the government needs to look into this,” he added.

Education becoming second option – NAPPS chairman

The Chairman of the National Proprietors of Private Schools, Otubela Abayomi, said education was gradually becoming a secondary option to poor families who now focus on basic needs alone unlike before.

“A lot of schools have reported children withdrawing from schools as well as teachers. For the pupils, some are moved to public schools making them overcrowded while some have withdrawn from schools and are looking for alternatives like skill acquisition. Education is gradually becoming a second option to feeding, housing and clothing,” he added.

The Nigeria Labour Congress has been in an audacious battle with the Federal Government to increase the minimum wage of civil servants. However, a professor of Economics at Lead City University, Willams Akerele, said the move, if achieved, would only benefit civil servants whereas others who are unemployed or underemployed would still be left behind.

“What will be the fate of those that are not covered? The NLC should make sure that the condition of living for everyone is enhanced,” Akerele added.