POVERTY AND GIRL CHILD LABOUR: AN EXAMINATION OF JAAGI, KPAKI AND MUWO WARDS OF MOKWA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, NIGER STATE

Abstract

The multifaceted nature of Poverty makes it definition elusive. It has varied perspectives and connotations given by different individuals and scholars. It is a situation of inadequacy or complete absence of resources in terms of basic necessities of life such as food, cloth and shelter. Poverty can be relativity confined to individual household within a community where majority lives in affluence and it can be community based where its manifestation affects almost everybody in the community. It is against this backdrop that this paper conceptualized poverty under the purview of general connotation, poverty as deprivation and poverty in psychological perspective. The paper investigated the relationship between parental poverty and girl child labour, relationship between illiteracy and girl child labour and evaluated government poverty reduction programmes in the study area, using 300 respondents randomly selected. Face to face interview, focused group discussion and observation are the mythological choice of this paper. Simple percentages and tables were used as the tools of analysis. The paper was guided by three casual hypotheses and the result revealed material poverty, social cultural values, proximity to three major transportation routes and absence of government interventionist programmes of poverty reduction as the causal factors responsible for girl child labour export from the study area. By implication this paper suggested aggressive human capital development, infrastructural development, investment in the occupational equipments of the people as the solution to girl child labour export.