Sexual Knowledge and Teenage Pregnancy among Female Hawkers in Ekiti State, Nigeria

This study investigated patterns of Sexual Knowledge and teenage pregnancy among female in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The study population consisted of female adolescents aged 8-19 years. The samples 113 girls were drawn for the study. Two pregnant girls were interviewed. The sampling technique used was the purposive sampling. The hypotheses were tested at calculated value of 0.000 level of significance for validity. The hypotheses were analysed based on the Pearson chi-square test version of the SPSS. The data generated were analysed using frequency count and percentage for describing the data. The chi-square statistics as well as the in-depth interview were used to make inferences about the data. It was found that teenage hawkers have experienced one form of sexual activity while hawking including unwanted touching (sexual harassment), sexual intercourse, rape, sexual abuse and unwanted pregnancy. Based on these findings, it was recommended that skills and training need to be provided in and outside the school system. Parent, teachers and counsellors should convey abstinence and prevention messages so as to sensitize or discourage early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy of female hawkers. A poverty alleviation programme should also be put in place at the local level to reduce this form of child labour. Protective child right policy should be intensified to reduce child labour in the society. and violence. This study examined the link between sexual behaviour, child labour sexual harassment and teenage pregnancy among hawkers in Oja-Oba market of Ado-Ekiti. Hopefully, the study would create awareness to policy makers as to formulate health policies and programmes

put in place at the local level to reduce this form of child labour. Protective child right policy should be intensified to reduce child labour in the society.

Background
Nigeria's birth rate for adolescents is basically one of the globally highest and the prevalence among female adolescents of sexually transmitted infections including HIV, is rapidly soaring [1]. Available data in Nigeria also indicates that the number of young people aged 10-24 years who commenced premarital sexual activities has increased in the past few years. According to the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), at age 15, 16% of Nigerian girls usually become sexually active. Conversely, 40% of boys start sexual activities at the age of 18 and by age 24, all boys are virtually sexually active [2]. Evidence in Nigeria has also shown that never married adolescents aged 15-19 were sexually experienced. For instance 18% males and 22% females reported being sexually experienced [1,2].
On the whole, in Nigeria in 2013, the age specific fertility rate of adolescents girls was 126 per 1000 and one quarter of girls between the age 15 and 19 years had begun child bearing [2]. No single age group can sustain the negative health outcomes from their sexual behaviours as experienced by adolescents of age 10-19 years. Adolescents in Nigeria do experience a very high burden of reproductive and sexual health problems [3,4]. Adolescent girls contribute about 55% of all abortion cases in Nigeria as a country [5]. The national HIV sero-prevalence figure for ages 15-19 years is 3.6% [6] Early on-set of sexual intercourse is associated with the increase of lifetime occurrence and prevalence of intimate sexual partners, which thereby precipitates the increase of the risk of exposure to sexually transmitted diseases, which include HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancy [3].
Early sexual initiation also increases the risk of exposure to Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection, due to cervical immaturity and the risk of exposure to cervical cancer also increases [7].
Most young people are ignorant of their vulnerability and are therefore exposed to risky behaviours which might be caused by different biological, psychological and social factors [8] .Thus adolescents, who starts having sex early are most likely to have multiple partners and less likely to us condoms thus they are vulnerable to contacting STIs including HIV/AIDS and the risk of teenage pregnancy [8].
Street hawking is basically a general form of child labour in most global south or developing countries of the world such as Nigeria and the girl child is unremarkably involved [10]. The young girl is exposed to unfavourable influence such as rape and sexual abuse in the hands of hoodlums. Again the young boys are not left out as hawking activities gives them an opportunity to engage with social miscreants [12]. For instance, it has been reported that out of every 10 female street hawkers in Nigeria 7 of them have had an experience one of the forms of sexual harassment/abuse or the other with about 17.2% had experience penetrative sexual intercourse [12]. In addition, female street hawkers are specifically susceptible to various forms of vehemence, which include sexual harassment or exploitation by both old and young men in the society [10]. There is therefore the need to guarantee efficacious programmes, which will reach those, who are most vulnerable to sexual exploitation and violence. This study examined the link between sexual behaviour, child labour sexual harassment and teenage pregnancy among hawkers in Oja-Oba market of Ado-Ekiti. Hopefully, the study would create awareness to policy makers as to formulate health policies and programmes aimed at this group of individuals.
Teenage pregnancy is a very common and general social and public health problem in both the Global North and Global South nations of the world [13]. Although pregnancy may be generally regarded as a positive and favourable experience but conversely, teenage pregnancy is of no doubt associated with social, physical and psychological problems [14]. Some of the common complications are that the teenage mothers are more liable to be exposed to post-natal, poor quality of life such as economic difficulties, unfinished education, poor housing and high level of depression. The children from teenage mothers are mostly vulnerable to high level of risk of low birth rate and mortality [14]. Young people have poor understanding of the reproductive process. Others harbour misconception such as the belief that pregnancy cannot occur during first sexual episode and that the use of contraceptives can cause infertility [13][14][15][16]. Sexual harassment or abuse of adolescent female hawkers is really an issue of a great social and public health importance. Indeed, health education, poverty alleviation and protective right policies could help in decreasing its prevalence and the risks associated with it [10].
It is obvious that the adolescents are the future of any society. They are the vehicle for development and social transformation. The awareness about their reproductive health challenges would help to create a better understanding and knowledge of the young peoples' need in view of the social, health and psychological consequence of adolescent sexuality and pregnancy particularly among hawkers.
This study is designed to highlight the magnitude and extent of the problem to help policy makers proffer practical solution. The study would examine the relationship between teenage hawking and exposure to sexual abuse and level of awareness of the health consequence of risky sexual activities among teenage hawkers such as STI, including HIV/AIDS and complications during pregnancy.

Methods
The study setting for this research work was Oja-Oba in Ado-Ekiti. Ado-Ekiti is the capital city, administrative and political headquarters of Ekiti State. It is one of the fastest growing urban centres in Nigeria located on latitude 80 30N and 40 035E. The data for this study was generated from the teenage hawkers in Oja-Oba market in Ado-Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State. One hundred and twenty teenage hawkers were selected from the market. This was expected to give a fair representation of the teenage hawkers in the market. Oja-Oba was chosen because there is a fair number of teenage hawker on which the study was focused. This study was conducted by getting information directly from the respondents before conclusion was made on the study. This study adopted both quantitative and qualitative design methods of data collections. For quantitative design method, the study adopted questionnaire as an instrument of data collection. The quantitative methods were chosen because the two complements each other. The in-depth interview was used to collect detail information and it gave room for the teenage hawkers in Oja-Oba to express themselves.
The sampling method used for this study is the purposive sampling technique of data collection. This is a non-probability sampling method. Purposive sampling method was chosen because it is the best method to use when conducting a market research of this nature. The purpose was to look for teenage hawkers in Oja-Oba within the age range of 8-19 who were actively engaged in hawking. By so doing, those hawkers who fell within the age of 8-19 were given a questionnaire for the study, and those who did not meet the criteria for being in the sample were discarded.
The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software was used in analysing the data collected.
This statistical method was used for proper analysis of quantitative data collected and interpretive techniques through the use of coding. For qualitative data were analysed using content analyses.

Results
In our study, the questionnaire was designed to generate respondents' personal data. The following tables summarize the results.

Source: Field Survey 2018
All participants in this study were female, a total of 120 respondents were initially selected, and only 113 filled and returned the questionnaires.  Table 2 shows the distribution of respondents based on their age. 1.8% of the respondents were between the ages of 8-10, 16.8% were between the age of 11 and 13, and the age group with the highest response was between 14-16 (59.3%), while 22.1% were between the ages of 17 and 19. The total frequency for the ages of the respondents was 113 corresponding with the 100 percent.

Source: Field Survey 2018
From table 4 above, teenagers from nuclear family represented 18.6%. A huge number of the respondents represented by 81.4% were from a polygamous home. It can be inferred from this figure that children from a polygamous home are more likely to be subjected to child labour than those from a nuclear family.

Source: Field Survey 2018
From table 5 above, only 18.6% of the respondents' fathers had one wife, 31.9% had two wives, while the majority of the respondents' fathers represented by 49.6% had more than two wives. It can be inferred that children whose father have more than two wives are more likely to be engaged in child labour than those whose father have only one wife. Source: Field Survey 2018 Table 6 above showed that majority of the respondents represented by 85.8% were attending school, while only few (14.2%) of them were not attending school. It can be inferred from this figure that the reason most of the children engaged in child labour could be to support their poor parents in paying their school fees.

Source: Field Survey 2018
From table 9 above, majority of the respondents represented by 69.9% reported that they had been touched in places that they don't like (e.g breast and buttocks). Only a little number of the girls reported that they had not been touched in places they do not like before. It can be inferred that sexual harassment of the girl child is common in the streets as reported by Okoro & Obozokha [18]. It can be concluded from this evidence that most girls who hawk are more exposed to sexual harrassment by men.

Source: Field Survey 2018
From table 15 above, 9.7% of the respondents reported that they were regular victims of rape, while 15.0% of the respondents reported not often. This suggested a growing number of repeated rape cases among teenage female hawkers.

Source: Field Survey 2018
From Table 17 , 63.7% of the respondents indicated that they use condom with their partner at their last sex, while 36.3% of the respondents reported that they did not use condom with their partner in their last sex.

Source: Field Survey 2018
From table 18, 26.5% of the respondents reported that they did not have sex with any man in the last one month, 30.1% reported that they had sex just with one man, 23% had sex with two men, 13.3% had sex with three men and 7.1% had sex with more than three men in the past one month. It can be inferred from this study that adolescents who starts having sex early are prone to have multiple sexual partner.

Discussion
Street hawking has exposed lot female children to various dangers ranging from poor nutrition, psychological trauma or illness and substance or drug abuse. Also, they suffer various degrees of sexual and physical abuses with the concomitant outcomes. From the findings, the age distributions showed that majority of the victims were of 14-16 age groups.
Basically, in relation with the cognizance of the various dangers associated with unsafe sexual activities, majority of the respondents were of the view that they were not aware that they could be exposed to or contact STIs or get pregnant. On the whole, teenagers, especially the female children really need to receive or have access to pieces of information about the risk of being victim of sexually abuse and also about the help that they can obtain from their social network or protective agencies. This would also in no measure make them to seek help more often. Furthermore, high level of ignorance of teenagers on sexual issues among the female hawkers is typically a reflection of the poor or ineffective quality of or even non-existence of implicitly proper reproductive health education in our various schools and at homes, where such issues are socio-culturally considered as ''secrets''.
Withal, this is a wrong approach as it gives room for unknowing experimentation and unprotected sexual activities among the teenagers especially these unsupervised adolescent female hawkers with the attendant spread of STIs and unwanted pregnancy. In the study, some adolescents' respondents (between the age group of 8 and 19) reported themselves to be sexually active.
The majority of the sexual culprits were adults, who were familiar to the victims in nearly two-thirds of cases. Where cohesion is not applied, some forms of inducement are offered, which may be in form of food, enticing promises, money, useful materials or other gift items or a place of shelter and rest. In the main, majority of the girls engage in street hawking as a result of the high level of vicious circle of poverty ravaging their families and after spending many hours under a very scorching sun on the street, they often get tired and hungry. Consequently, these factors always add up to make them susceptible and easy target possibly as a measure of the degree of care and social attention available to them.
On the whole, majority of the victims of sexual assaults in this study did not report their experience to any one, some of them reported to their girlfriend, sister, guardian or mother. The victims did accept sexual abuse as their fate for fear of being stigmatized. In the study, majority of the victims could not take any further action or step after the incidence but only one of them reported to the police. This is because most of the girls are poorly informed on how and where they can seek or get help.
Sometimes the sexually abused girl is more worried about possible recrimination from their guardian or parents over loss of wares or being blamed for the incidence. Most pregnant teens do not go for medical check-up as regularly, some do not go at all.

Conclusion
Child labour in which street hawking is an edition is a very macroscopical phenomenon in our contemporary society. The finding of this study shows that child labour is largely due to poverty and the underdeveloped state of the country. The finding confirmed that the female teenage hawkers are exposed and vulnerable to many risks of which sexual abuse and harassment is a conspicuous component. Based on the findings of this study, it has been indicated that the victims are mostly uneducated, uninformed and ignorant of the risks and consequences of being sexually abused and also of the assistance they can get. Sexual abuse of young girls raises an issue of great public health importance which calls for policy formulation towards this naïve population. Adolescence is usually too young an age to become a parent in contemporary society. This is largely because raising a child takes patience and resources that are acquired in present day society gradually with age, education and experience which is lacking in most adolescent. This was confirmed by the interview of two pregnant teen in this study whose major source of income comes from hawking. Abstinence education programs encourage young people to wait to have sex until marriage, or until they are mature enough to handle sexual activity and potential pregnancy in a responsible manner. The authors received no funding for this study.

Availability of Data and Materials
Data analysed in this study will be made available by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate
The Ekiti State University's ethical review committee Ekiti State Ministry of Health, Nigeria approved the study protocol. All participants provided signed written informed consents after their confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed. For the few participants included in this study, who were below 15 years of age at the time of the survey, assent and parental consent were obtained before their participation.

Consent for Publication
Not applicable.