Dreary lives of Jalingo’s kids quarry workers

But some of the boys said they come from large, polygamous families and they have to fend for themselves. One of such boys is little Musa Abubakar who is just nine years old but treks a distance of two kilometres from Mayo Gwoi to the quarry site everyday to crush stones and earn a paltry […]

But some of the boys said they come from large, polygamous families and they have to fend for themselves.

One of such boys is little Musa Abubakar who is just nine years old but treks a distance of two kilometres from Mayo Gwoi to the quarry site everyday to crush stones and earn a paltry N150.

Leaning on the wooden pillar of the zinc shed where the boys take their break and looking morose, Abubakar, recalled how he broke his index finger the first day he came to work in the quarry. He thrust out the bruised finger at our correspondent and said with a confident voice that he will get back to work as soon as the wound heals, saying that was his only means of livelihood. He said he cried when he accidentally hit his index finger with the hammer that he was given to crush stones with, but said he has put that behind him now and wants to begin to earn his daily bread. But the blood-clotted and dirt- soiled wound had no sign of treatment and the poor boy said he is an almajiri and has nobody to take him to hospital or dispensary for medical care.

Abdullahi Umar is 13 years old and while he is waiting for his father to take him to a mechanic workshop to do apprenticeship there, he cannot just sit at home idle and partake in the meager meals that his mother prepares for the family. He has to earn his food.

“I want to be a mechanic but I am still waiting for my father to take me to a workshop to do apprenticeship there. This is not a job I can do for the rest of my life. I am doing it now just to buy food for myself,” Umar said.

He said he has never been to school before and at the age of 13, he does not consider it wise going to start primary one. “I would have loved to go to school but I never had the opportunity and I cannot go and start primary one now. I think it is better I learn a trade. That is why I have chosen mechanic because this job of crushing stones is too hard and it is not something one can do for the rest of one’s life. I earn N200 here every day just to feed myself,” he told our correspondent in Hausa.

For 15-year-old Bashiru Idris who has been crushing stones for the past four years, it’s been a hard and boring life but he has to feed himself. “My father is a trader. He sells vegetables in the market and he earns just enough to pay our school fees and feed my younger ones so I have to find my own food,” he said.

He is a year two student in the Junior Secondary School at Hassan Secondary School, Jalingo and comes to work at the quarry only in the afternoons when school is in session. Yet he earns up to N300 everyday he comes to work and had saved up to N5,000 the previous year. “Last year, I was able to save N5,000 which I used to buy sallah materials for myself. So I don’t have any bad feelings working here. It is a means of survival for me and that is what I think everyday I come to work. I don’t agonsie about the pains I go through.”

Kaigama Isa is another boy who crushes stones and scathes his fingers to scrap a living. He is an SS one student of Science Secondary School, Jalingo and has been working in the quarry for the past five years. He appeared to be the foreman there because of his experience and command over the boys. He said he gets up to N500 everyday and he saves the money to pay his school fees, saying he wants to be educated and work in government so that he can initiate and implement policies that can take care of indigent children.

He said he lives with his parents in Agwan Television, a settlement behind NTA Jalingo, but his parents are poor and the children are too many. So, most of them have to work hard and fend for themselves. He however, hopes that if he finishes secondary school, he will find another job that is more rewarding so that he can further his education.

For Jibrin Suleiman, a 12-year-old boy, it was sibling rivalry that drove him to go and work in the quarry. “I came to start work here just three weeks ago because my parents are poor and I need money to buy clothes, books and sandals. We are many in the family and if my father buys sandals for me today, my other siblings too will insist he buys the same for them. So you can see that it is not easy for my father who is a petty trader. So I have to find a means of supplementing his efforts,” he said.

But not all the boys who work in the quarry are proud of what they are doing. Some of them felt quite ashamed of themselves when our correspondent approached them. They left the stones they were crushing and ran away.

Sunday Trust gathered that the quarry has existed for the past 10 years and the woman who owns it has been exploiting the boys. When our correspondent sought to speak with the woman whom the boys simply called Amarya, she declined, saying neither a journalist nor government will give her money so, nobody should disturb her work.

Cases of child abuse and child labour abound in Nigeria but Nigeria is a signatory to the Convention on Rights of the Child.

On 20th November, 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), while the OAU Assembly of Heads of States and Governments adopted the African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (CRCW) in July 1990.

Nigeria has signed both international instruments and had ratified them in 1991 and 2000 respectively.