, 12-year-old Rachael smiled shyly with a heavy hammer in her hand. Alongside other children, she used the tool to manually crush stones for sale as gravel.
One would easily mistake the Junior Secondary School Student for an adult, perhaps because of the arduous task of breaking stones. Despite working under the scorching sun in a quarry at Suleja in Niger East District the whole day, the income is meagre for the scores of women and girls who work there.
“If I do not sell broken stones, how would I eat or send my children to school,” she told PREMIUM TIMES.The quarries are teeming with mothers and young girls. The women break huge rocks into ballast which they sell to builders.For the single mother of one, it does not matter how physically demanding the work is, as long as it helps feed her only child, and the five children of her younger brother, now late, in her custody.
“At times, we even buy on credit. After breaking and selling the stones, we go back to give them their money and hold on to the little profit from it. Nigeria plans to have 70 per cent of its adult population in the formal financial services sector and 10 per cent included in the informal sector in 2020, the apex bank said.
“With that, I sort the educational needs of my children and their feeding. Most of us do monthly, daily, every five days and every market day ‘adashe’ and it has helped us,” she said.The widow said she has raised her children by participating in the thrift contribution and other traditional means of raising and keeping the money.
Far more rewarding than prostitution... Our slay queens must learn hard work pays... Eventually.
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