The Adamawa Children Leaving School for Labour

*Alfred Silas just turned 18. 

He has been in commercial farming for five years. Working on people’s farms for daily wages from the age of 13, he prides himself on a recent promotion to farm manager, one that comes with many responsibilities and a higher wage. 

Lately, he wakes up by 6:00 a.m., hangs his hoe on his shoulder, and strolls to the farm while his younger ones prepare for school. 

A resident of Imburu village in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, Alfred is a final-year student at the Government Day Secondary School, Imburu. While his schoolmates all over the country are preparing for the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO) that will qualify them for admission into a university, Alfred hasn’t been in school for about a month now. 

He will also stay out of school for months to come because a different path has been paved for him, a path he accepts with honour. 

Unlike many teenagers in his community who abscond from school to engage in farm labour for quick cash, Alfred was pressed into commercial farming by the weight of family responsibility. From the start of every rainy season in June to the harvest period in September, an average of three months, he stays out of school to work in rice fields. 

“I put school on hold during every farming season so that I can work on people’s farms, earn money, and contribute to household expenses, and besides, my younger siblings are relying on me to take care of them,” he told HumAngle with a distant smile.

Alfred believes his parents don’t make enough money, so when they brought the idea of commercial farming five years ago, he jumped at the offer and has since grown into it. He explained that he had been contributing to household expenses from the age of 13, and now that he is older and has assumed the role of a farm manager, his contribution to household expenses has doubled. 

If he weren’t doing this work, Alfred said, he would like to be in school so he could study to become a doctor like he always wanted. 

While his hard work yields fruits to make ends meet, HumAngle observed that the wages are little compared to what he and many children from other rural communities in Adamawa deserve. 

Farming between lessons 

Seventeen-year-old *Philip Pwanidi is also a final-year student at the Government Day Secondary School in Imburu. 

Philip wakes up as early as 4:00 a.m., and then treks for about 30 minutes from home to the outskirts of the community where the farm he labours on is located. 

“I try my best to balance commercial farming with school,” he told HumAngle. 

“The first thing I do when I get there is turn on the generator so that it can power the water pump, then I head back home and dress for school.”

He stays in school for an average of two hours (8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.). The school grants an hour of refreshment break from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., so Philip rushes back to the farm in his uniform. There, he changes into his work clothes and carries on with farm labour. 

HumAngle spoke to another teen who does commercial farming in a neighbouring community called Zangun, a fertile land under the Numan Local Government Area (LGA) where urban dwellers come to set up farms and hire locals to manage and cultivate. Fifteen-year-old *Betty Godwin is a junior student at the Government Secondary School in this community. 

She has just been contracted to work in a rice field alongside some older women. Betty comes to the farm around 7:00 a.m., works for five hours and takes a break at noon. Then she resumes around 1:00 p.m. and finishes by 3:00 p.m. 

Currently, her work involves transplanting rice in a waterlogged field, and payment is made daily, at the end of every working hour. 

More work, less pay 

It’s been a year since Alfred became a farm manager for his contractor, who doesn’t live in Imburu. While he supervises other young workers in cultivating the lands, he also works. 

Alfred explained that he went to work on the contractor’s rice farm at least five times a week last year, from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. 

He didn’t get a dime until after three months. 

“My contractor said he was going to pay me at the end of the harvest season, and I agreed. So the planting season to harvest season took three months, and that was when I got my pay,” he said.

Alfred received the sum of ₦100,000 and a bag of rice as compensation for his three months’ labour of over 10 hours daily.

“We harvested over 100 bags of rice. The farm is big, as you can see,” he said,  pointing at the vast land surrounding him. 

He also added that during the harvest, he stayed on the farm for over three days without bathing. He ate there and had to keep awake because his role also included serving as a farm guard.

The harvest period lasted for three and a half days, after which Alfred went home. Now, he has been contracted for the same job with the same terms. He commenced his 10-hour daily labour in June and will be settled in September. 

Philip and other children who are into commercial farming in Imburu are paid ₦1,000 or ₦1,500 per rice bed. 

“If you’re working on two beds a day, that’s ₦2,000 or ₦3,000,” he said.  

Philip explained that as children, they don’t get the chance to negotiate because their payment is fixed. He stressed that it’s nearly impossible for him and the other kids to work on two or more beds in a day, so they mostly do one bed.

He said it takes an average of five hours to cultivate one bed due to its size, and since he’s farming between lessons, he cultivates a bed daily.  

“Sometimes, I come here around 10:00 a.m. and leave by 4:00 p.m. I take out ₦500 from my daily earnings to buy food, and then I go home with ₦1,000, but it’s not even up to that amount all the time because the work always leaves us fatigued, so we buy pain killers, which cost like ₦200, and then go home with ₦800,” Philip said. 

Philip also stated that it’s quite difficult to work daily. “I get tired, so I skip a day or two,” he said. He shows up an average of four times a week and makes about ₦6,000. If he takes out the ₦500 he spends on feeding daily, he smiles home with ₦4,000 a week. He is proud of his earnings, and he is saving them as pocket money.

For adult commercial farmers, the situation is different. In Imburu, HumAngle gathered that adults are paid an average of ₦3,000 daily despite cultivating the same bed size as the children. 

Children like Philip are worried by the pay gap, but he says he has no choice but to accept what he gets.  

“There are so many of us [children] lining up to do this work, and sometimes, if you don’t show up on time, there’s always someone to take up your place. The contractors don’t negotiate. You take it or leave it,” he said, emphasising how competitive it can be. 

Most of the large-scale farmers who are the contractors come from urban centres like Ngbalang, Numan, and Yola. 

Despite working the same 10 hours as older women on the same rice farm in Zangun, Betty is paid ₦1,000, while the women get triple the amount. For instance, 35-year-old Pwataksino Hakuri, Betty’s co-worker and commercial farmer with four years of experience, told HumAngle that she receives ₦3,500 at the end of every successful day. This shows a disturbing wage gap. 

The Child Rights ACT of 2023, a legislation that protects children and young adults in Nigeria, frowns at the engagement of children in any form of labour that is harmful to their development. While the minimum age for employment is 15 years, it was stated that the work must not interfere with the children’s education.

The ACT also condemns all forms of exploitative labour, as some of the provisions state that no child must be employed as a domestic help outside the home or domestic environment. No child must lift or move anything heavy that might affect their physical health or social development, and no child must be employed in an industrial setting that is not registered as a technical school or similar approved institutions.

While the lack of implementation of the Child Rights Act is a major concern, inflation and poverty, among other reasons, were identified as reasons for the growing child labour and continuous exploitation of children in Nigeria.

HumAngle interviewed Joniel Yannam Gregory, a large-scale farmer in Adamawa State. With a major focus on rice farming, he has grown maize, cotton, guinea corn, sweet potato, and soya beans on a large scale across several local government areas in the last four years. 

Speaking on the exploitation that children face from large-scale farmers, Joniel said, “They are cost-friendly. I mean, children can accept whatever pay that is given to them at the end of the day without complaints.” He also added that children give less trouble to the farmers and demand less welfare, as they are not fed on-site by the contractors like adults.

“Children can also work and agree to receive their pay at a much later date than adults who have bills to pay and will want their payment instantly,” Joniel said. 

Addressing the pay gap, Joniel said it’s mainly due to the absence of a definite payment plan between farm contractors, labourers, and managers.

“However, it is also pertinent to note that, even if there are no definite payment plans, the amount of work done by the labourers and the size of land worked on are strong determinants of how a person is paid, whether he’s a child or not,” he said.

Despite the wage gap, Betty is satisfied with her payment. “I live with my grandmother. She’s old and can’t do anything to generate income, so at the end of every day, I take what I make to her,” she said. But she wants to be in school.

“I want to be a nurse. I don’t like this work. I don’t like missing school, but I have no choice,” she said, emphasising the strain of survival. 

But education is free

At the Government Day Secondary School in Imburu, the school administrators are worried about the declining number of students during every farming season. In an interview with HumAngle, Satina Phineas, the school principal, said the situation is worsening. 

“Before, the students in this community usually skip school during every rainy season, but now that irrigation farming is becoming a trend, they also skip school during the dry season,” she said.

Satina said the hustle for quick cash has caused a lot of children to derail from school despite the government’s provision of free education in the state. 

In  2019, Ahmadu Fintiri, the Governor of Adamawa State, announced free education across all public schools in the state. This has since taken effect. Students across primary and secondary schools only pay a token as a parent-teacher association (PTA) levy. Even WAEC and NECO fees are sorted by the government. 

According to the principal, students pay the sum of ₦640 per term as PTA levy, which amounts to ₦1920 each school year.  “The government has cleared their fees. The teachers are here, but they don’t show up,” she lamented.

She also stressed that some of the students get dressed from home but don’t go to school. They go to the commercial farms, then change into their work clothes when their parents think they are in school. She added that the school sanctions defaulters, but despite continuous efforts, the situation remains the same. 

In Zangun Primary and Secondary School, the classes are scanty. 

Onisimun Myakpado, the assistant head teacher at the primary school, explained that the management went as far as organising a workshop to sensitise parents in the community about the relevance of education. 

“The parents contribute to the absence of children from the school because some of them send the children to go and work on these farms,” he said. 

A fact sheet on Nigeria’s education, developed in 2023 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), shows how rural and poor children in Nigeria at all levels have below-average school completion rates in comparison to urban and wealthier children, whose completion rate is above average. The report further states that while 90 per cent of children from the wealthiest quintile complete senior secondary education, less than 16 per cent of children from the poorest quintile do so.

“Education is the only thing parents can give their children as a lifetime inheritance,” said Satina. “If these parents don’t support their children to take advantage of the free education scheme, then they are cheating themselves.”

Esther Simon* is a 41-year-old woman from Imburu. Some of her teenage children are into commercial farming. According to her, commercial farming is an option for the children in her household who have no passion for education and don’t do well at school.

“It’s better if they go to the farm and hustle for money since they don’t do well in school,” she told HumAngle.

Esther also has little faith in the educational system and is worried about the unemployment rate in the country. “I know people who drop their certificates and venture into farming because there is no work, so it’s not entirely a bad thing if the children are into commercial farming,” she said.

However, she acknowledged that formal education and commercial farming combined will equip one for a better future.

“It will be great if we have a system here that allows the children to go to school during the day and then do commercial farming in the evening or during weekends,” she added. 

*The asterisked names are pseudonyms we have used to protect the identities of the sources.