Girl Child: The Danger Of Street Hawking
The Bible says “Lo Children (girls) are the inheritance of the Lord and the fruit of the woman is His reward” – Psalms 127:3.
Street hawking by children especially girl child has been a common thing in most parts of the undeveloped world. This is not anything good. This practice will not only have negative effect on girl child, but also destroy their future.
Before writing further on this piece, let’s define the terms, child and hawking. Who is a child? A child according to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Edition 8 is defined as “a young human who is not yet an adult” while hawking is “offering goods for sale from street to street or door to door”.
Many parents send their girl child to hawk wares for various reasons ranging from poverty, tradition to supplementing family income among others. However, this exposes the child to dangers.
The girl child will leave home 7am and returns as late as 9pm. And they hawk under different weather conditions. Some of them whose guardians or parents beat and starve for not making enough sales even hawk under the rain.
These children are the leaders of tomorrow, if these girls which will be future leaders of Nigeria are found on the street hawking when supposed to be in school, what will be the fate of Nigeria in the future?
The risk facing girl child hawkers in Nigeria is indeed alarming, even for adult. These children hawkers are exposed to reckless drivers, ritualists and rapists.
There are several cases involving girls as young as ten who are sexually active and who trade in sexual favour for money alongside whatever commodities they are marketing. The consequences of these acts include unwanted pregnancies, illegal and unsafe abortions, sexually transmitted diseases and psychological trauma. The street has nothing to offer a child hawking save frustration.
Early in the morning, even at cool weather condition, these children are seen on the street wandering like sheep without shepherd.
The future of girl child hawkers is miserable. At the end of the day, the girl child hawkers will graduate into prostitutes, armed robbers etc.
These children constitute valuable human resources needed to drive the economy of Nigeria, they are potential doctors, engineers, administrators, journalists, etc. the consequences of abandoning these children to a cruel fate of hawking is too terrible to consider. Let’s not forget that the counterparts of these endangered Nigerian children in other nations of the world are being groomed into informed and educated citizenry. By allowing girl child hawking to continue unchecked in Nigeria, we will be endangering the social-economic future of this country.
Nigeria needs girls that will grow to responsible women for proper nation building. A mother is usually also a wife, and has the management of a family and a direct influence over her children; if her influence is of the negative then the society is in trouble. She is responsible for the nursing and upbringing of her children; for their physical constitution and growth; their exercise and proper sustenance in early life. A child left to grow up deformed, puffy, or arrogant will be an object of societal vices.
Why a girl child should given all it takes to be trained as a responsible woman is that a woman is directly or indirectly responsible for her child’s habits; including cleanliness, orderliness, conversation, eating, sleeping, manners, and general propriety of behavior.
Girl child should not be engaged to work outside the family to earn a living or to support their family’s income or hawk on the streets again to avert the impending danger. ###
Edith Nse Friday
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