This study shows a high prevalence of child labour among students in public secondary schools in Enugu State, Nigeria (71.7%). This prevalence was higher than the national and Enugu State prevalence (50.8%, 37.8% respectively) of child labour obtained in MICS/NICS survey 2016/2017.[7] It was also higher than the prevalence obtained in the year 2000 by the National Child Labour Survey [6] where about 6 million Nigerian children were involved in child labour and 59.4% of them were in school. However, the prevalence is lower than the UNICEF obtained prevalence of child labour among in-school children in Enugu in 2011 where 86% of the students were found to practice child labour.[12] The variation between the findings of the MICS/NICS survey and mine is expected because MICS/NICS is a household survey where parents rather than the children themselves were interviewed. School-based study gives a wider view since it brings children from different family characteristics and with different work experience together.
This result is comparable with some other school-based studies in Nigeria. It’s similar to the prevalence of child labour in Igbo-Ora, a small town in Oyo State where child labour was assessed among junior secondary school students and obtained to be 72.5%.[17] It is also comparable with 64.5% obtained as the prevalence of child labour by Fetuga et al [15] in Sagamu Local government area (LGA) of Ogun state in 1995 where child labour was assessed among primary and secondary school students aged 5-17 years.
Assessment of the different categories of child labour among the respondents revealed that though 90.7% of the respondents carried out domestic works only 52.1% of them carried it out above the given age-specific threshold while 34.0% of the respondents carried out economic work above the age-specific threshold. Also, 35.2% of respondents worked under hazardous conditions while 8.1% of them were forced to work. The prevalence of economic activities obtained here is far lower than 82.8% obtained by Fetugan et al [15] in Sagamu, Ogun state Nigeria and also lower than the finding by Adegbenro [18] in Ile Ife, where 85% of the school children traded at a shop and 76.3% carried out street hawking of goods.
On the other hand, the prevalence of domestic work (52.1%) is slightly lower than 65.7% obtained by Owoaje[17] in 2011. The higher prevalence of domestic works compared to economic work could be related to the fact that Enugu is a state with a high number of civil servants who would engage the services of domestic workers commonly called ‘’house helps”. These children are mainly brought from the rural, hinterlands as well as neigbouring states and in most cases, are under age for the size and type of work they are required to do. Differences in economic activities between states may explain the differences in economic work prevalence obtained by the different studies. Thus, studies were done in Ile Ife and Sagamu with greater economic activities yielded a higher prevalence of economic work when compared with that obtained in this study.
With the recent improvement in education intervention such as free education for children up to Junior Secondary school, school-aged- children tend to attend schools which saves money for the parents, the rate of involvement in economic activities, therefore, is expected to drop. Majority of the working children in Igbo-Ora [17] worked in their parents’ shop while the majority of the working children in this study carried out unpaid domestic work but among those who carried out economic work, a majority also sold in their parents’ shop while many others involved in different economic activities to either support their parents or themselves financially.
About 78% (188) of overall child labourers fell within the age range of 12-14 years. This can explain the predominance of domestic child labourers. This compares with the finding in Yenagoa by Ekpenyong et al [19] where younger children were more involved in street selling (9-11 years and 12-14 years). Also worthy of note is the fact that this study revealed that the majority of child labourers lived with both parents (61.3%) and more of those living with parent(s) practiced more of economic child labour while more of those living with related or unrelated guardian practiced domestic child labour.
Awareness of child labour among the respondents was not too good with up to 29% of the children not being aware of it. Among those who had heard about it, only 64.8% perceived it as wrong. This means that more than 35% of the respondents perceived it as right and this can explain the fact that 79.5 % of the students were satisfied with the work they did and that more than 32% of them thought that child labour should be encouraged. This is in keeping with the finding by Omokhodion et al [20] in 2005 where 54% of working children in Ibadan market think children should work and the finding in Yenagoa [19] where 86% of children and parents on the market area agreed that street trading had no negative impact. This finding shows the difference between perception among parents and the child labourers themselves as 66.19% of parents interviewed in Nnewi perceived child labour as hazardous while the rest thought it was beneficial to the family.[21]
The study revealed association between child labour and age, tribe, gender, socio-economic status, custodians, family size, number of working children, weekly income of students, as well as family structure, however, only age of the students (p<0.001), class (p=0.003), and weekly income (p<0.001) were found to be significantly associated with overall child labour. Class: AOR=2.180 (95% CI:1.183-4.016) and weekly income: AOR = 0.315 (95% CI: 0.175-0.565) were the predictors of general child labour. Children in JSS 2 were twice more likely to practice child labour than those in JSS3. This is expected because JSS3 is an exam class where secondary school students write their first or lower external exams (junior Secondary School Certificate Exam). With the high literacy level of the state, caregivers would prefer to engage children when they are not in exam classes than when they are preparing for an external exam. Similarly, schools engage students in exam classes in such a way that go home very late when they can no more carry out much work and, on many occasions, they can only work by weekends and on free-days.
Weekly income predicted child labour and children who earned over 1000 naira a day were about 3 times more likely to carry out child labour than those who earned less than 1000 naira. This shows that the money made in the business was a great attraction to the work. This can be explained by the finding that the majority of the economic workers worked either to support themselves or their parents financially. This is supported by the findings that about 90% of the respondents have a large family size (greater than 5) with close to 70% of them having to train more than 5 children. In addition, more than 50% of their households fell within the poorest and very poor category of the Wealth Index quart. These findings are in line with the findings by Fetugan [15], Ugochukwu et al [22], and Obioho [22] that low socioeconomic status, poor family background as well as large family size were associated with child labour.