Foster parenting seen fuelling education inequality, child labour in southeast

It was a chilling and cloudy harmattan morning at Amaba in Abia State when children dread to go to the stream, his mother called Chibuike Chukwu for a heart-to-heart talk.

Chubby, as his mother fondly calls him was confused about what his mother was up to; “Mama, what is it that you want us to talk about this morning”, he asked, curious to know why the sudden and emergency meeting.

“I want you to gather your dirty clothes, and go to the stream and wash them because you will be traveling to the city to live with your uncle in two days,” she explained beaming with smiles anticipating her son to reciprocate.

Chijioke Emenike, Chibuike’s uncle from his maternal side, who lives in Lagos just got married and was planning to return to the city with his new wife.

In Nigeria’s southeast region, parents are happy and ever willing to release their children to either their siblings or other relatives for foster parenting, besides, it serves as an apprentice mode of skill acquisition.

Erinma, Chibuike’s mother, assured him that he would be enrolled in a school once he got to the city because Chijioke had promised to ensure he completed his primary education and even sponsor him to a higher institution.

However, on getting to Agege-Lagos, Chijioke took the boy to his shop to join him in selling fairly used clothes and introduced him as his new sales boy.

Chibuike was forced to abandon his education at age five to pursue a career in trading. Chibuike represents thousands of youngsters from the southeast forced to abandon their education because their foster parents did not enroll them in schools.

In the southeast, it is common for families to foster children informally as a way to ease the economic burden on parents and give children from poorer families a chance to improve their lives.

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According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) survey on child labour about 24. 6 million children 5 to17 years old (39.2 percent) are in child labour in the country; of children in child labour, 60.8 percent (14,990,674) are in the 5-11 age group, 20.8 percent (5,1million) are in the 12-14 age group and 18.4 per cent (4,6 million) are in the 15-17 age group.

“The southeast has the highest child labour rate at 49.9 percent,” the report showed. The survey was conducted by the NBS to assess child labour and forced labour in Nigeria for the year 2022.

Stakeholders from the region described the situation as a cultural thing whereby children are taught entrepreneurship and a communal way of bonding amongst the people.

Ike Chilaka, an engineer explained that foster parenting is part and parcel living style of the people; however, he maintained that it was not necessarily meant for child labour.

“Having children to live with relatives to learn a trade is not child labour by our culture; it’s an apprentice mode of learning a trade.

“We have a communal system, hence, foster parenting is endorsed, but it’s not meant for child labour as the case may be. I think the economic hardship is behind the surging number of foster parenting and in turn child labour,” he noted.

Friday Erhabor, the director of media and strategies at Marklenez Limited said it is ideal to differentiate between two types of child labour as it is erroneously used today.

“The first type is children that assist their parents in their preoccupation off school hours. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Some of us did that when we had to go to the farm to assist our parents after school hours or hawk for our parents.

That didn’t in any way affect our results in school; rather it shaped us for future life. The one I frown at is the one where children are not enrolled in school but are forced to earn a living for their parents or foster parents. That is not only wicked but criminal and it constitutes a clog to school attendance as children are deliberately kept out of schools to labour to earn money for their parents,” he said.

Experts argue that many parents erroneously embrace foster parenting as a window to ensure their children are given quality education.

“But whether this fostering is beneficial or harmful depends on how much the host families are willing to support and invest in the fostered children,” they say.

Research has shown that the relationship between fostering and school attendance is such that fostered children were less likely to attend school than children who were not fostered.

Children fostered by wealthier households were the least likely to attend school compared to their non-fostered counterparts. This disparity, experts say fuels inequality in education.

And if not nipped in the bud would become a clog to the country’s quest to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4, which targets equitable education. The African Union declared 2024 the Year of Education, further highlighting the importance of ensuring all children on the continent attend school.