Over 5,000 Child Labourers Work In Abeokuta – NGO

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Over 5,000 child labourers work in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, a child rights group, Child Protection Network, said on Monday.

The CPN also said there had been an increase in the number of street children in different parts of the state.

The group’s coordinator, Mrs. Peju Osoba, said this while speaking at a sensitisation workshop organised by the state Ministry of Information and Strategy in conjunction with the United Nations Children’s Fund to mark the 2013 Day of the African Child at the Nigeria Union of Journalists Hall, in Abeokuta.

Osoba said 50 per cent of the shops in major markets in the state capital had been found to engage child labourers.

“There are child labourers in 50 per cent of shops in major markets of Abeokuta, Lafenwa, Kuto and Omida, and 25 per cent of these shops are owned by the elite, especially civil servants and/or their spouses.

“There is an emerging trend of increasing number of street children in different locations in Ogun State. CPN is working with over 100 of them in Lafenwa alone. There are over 5,000 child domestics in Abeokuta alone,” she said.

Osoba noted that the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, recently released a report stating that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children.

The CPN coordinator stressed that every child worker in Nigeria “is highly vulnerable to abuse, irrespective of where he or she lives and with whomever.”

Osoba explained that Ogun was the first state in the country to domesticate the Child’s Rights law in 2004 but expressed regret that the law was not completely passed.

She therefore appealed to the Ogun State House of Assembly to expedite action on the passage of the Child Rights Bill and called on the state government to make education free and effective.

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