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For 18-year-old Chinonso Obasi, it is survival first before any other thing. As a Senior School, SSII pupil, he dropped out of school, to stay with his father in a traditional clinic, and to also work to support his mother so that his family would not starve. He shares his travail and desire to go back to school with Chinyere Elizabeth Okoroafor.
THE living condition is bad enough. Family of six children and father and mother in a dingy shop, converted to a room, is the life anyone who had a choice wouldn’t want to live. But that is Chinonso’s reality. Every morning, the 18-year-old wakes up to the shrieking crow of a cockerel, maybe two, in his neighbourhood. The pattern in his home, as he describes it, is more or less regimental and pitiable. His mother, father and the last child in the family sleep at the left corner, right under the wooden hanger, while the other four children share a mat by the right corner, opposite their elder sister and baby, whose mat is covered with an old duvet. He, on the other hand, gets his night’s sleep on a brown mat, spread on the floor just outside the ‘room’.
Once awake, he usually sits in front of a tailor’s shop next-door to gaze at the rising sun and watch early risers go about their business on the long, gully-ridden street. At moments like this, his mind often drifts to the one wish he’d love accomplish in life, school. More than anything, Chinonso would like to go back and finish his secondary education. Then, he’d like to go a step further and study business administration in a university, and then own a transport business. Even by merely expressing his wish in words brought a peculiar glow to his face, like someone who had just been shown a clip of his beautiful future.
”It makes me feel like God is going to direct a person that will help my situation. Dreaming, somehow, seems like the only place left to escape the nightmare that is my reality,” Chinonso says rather softly in Igbo language. A native of Isu Eda in Afikpo Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Chinonso, perhaps because of the situation he finds himself, is the hardworking type. He doesn’t like to wait for his siblings to complain of hunger before making something available for them. As a result, he’d pick up any job, provided it is legal, to make sure that hunger is killed in his family.
Chinonso’s neigbourhood of Jazz Avenue in Iba New Site, Ojo, Lagos, is not such a bad area. Unlike normal shops, the front of his family’s ‘apartment’ is permanently locked, while an entrance door is built at the back with a shade and a little space that serves as veranda. A short distance to the far right, is a deep hole, covered with a large zinc, where human waste is improperly disposed. Nearby, behind plantain trees, is an improvised bath; and not too far from the veranda is a little shade, where firewood cooking takes place. Aside these, the compound looks well-kept and calm, indicative of a quiet family. A larger part of the compound is utilised for growing various plants and green vegetables, but smell of burnt refuse and filth still breezes in every now and then.
In spite of everything, Chinonso is grateful and proud that his family has a roof over their heads. ”If you find yourself in poverty, you don’t have much choice, you manage whatever you have with joy; you keep getting up every day and try to make the best of it.” He reasoned. Having dropped out of school two years ago, Chinonso belongs to the vast and invisible tribe of out-of-school teenagers reeling in poverty and hustling for daily bread in a most unequal society like Nigeria.
But Chinonso did not just drop out of school. His father’s illness and an urgent need to stand as a father to his siblings caused it.
”I was in Iba Housing Estate Secondary School, an art student in SS2, when my father woke up one morning and couldn’t feel his right hand and right leg anymore. We were all devastated. You know that when a person is hit by stroke, he is practically unable to do anything physical anymore. My mother quickly took him to our hometown for traditional medication. After some weeks, she called to say that my presence was needed urgently. She said taking care of my father alone was too much for her and that my grandmother was too old to support her. So I rushed to the village to join them. That was the day I decided that school should wait, until things got back to normal and I’m able to continue.” He says.
In the village, Chinonso’s story wasn’t a pleasant one. The one week he waited for his grandmother to come back from the village where his father was been treated before he could finally join them was the first time he truly experienced hunger. With little or no food, he managed to survive until his grandmother returned and took him to the village called Owutu, in Ebonyi State.
”From the junction, to where my father was receiving treatment is very far; it is a very long bushy road – with no house whatsoever until we got to the traditional medicine man’s place. When I got there, my mother decided to come back to Lagos to take care of my siblings but my father declined. My aunty, who was looking after my siblings, had nothing much to offer in terms of finances, having lost her job much earlier; and my elder sister had left home to God-knows-where. I assured my father that I could take care of him but he insisted that my mother stayed, arguing that I alone would not be able to take care of him or withstand the pressure. After sometime, I decided to go back to our hometown, because there was no food at the medicine man’s place; it was only when grandmother brought food for us that we ate, ” he recalled.
Back in his hometown, Chinonso said he went in search of any available menial job, just so he could support his grandmother in providing food for the family. After a while, an uncle of his visited and advised him to follow him to Aba to hustle for jobs with better pay.
”That sounded attractive and I quickly accepted. At least I would be able to send some money to my father and also raise enough money to pay my transport back to Lagos to look after my siblings.”
At Aba, his uncle, who is a bricklayer introduced him to carrying blocks and mixed sand at building sites. Chinonso managed the job, until he was able save enough money to pay his transport back to Lagos. To his relief and delight, he met his siblings healthy and in one piece. Back in Lagos, his topmost desire was to immediately return to school and continue from where he stopped, but then, there is an urgent need for the very basic need of food. He and his siblings have to feed and in the temporary absence of both his parents, he knew he occupied the unenviable position of head of the family and has to look for means of feeding them.
His words, ”There’s nobody in my family who could take care of us or who was strong enough to go out and hustle for us to feed. I didn’t know how to take hunger to school, I didn’t know how to learn with empty stomach; and I didn’t know how to stay hungry all day and night without any hope for food. Also, there was no money to buy textbooks and other school materials. So I decided not to resume school, so hunger would not continue dealing with us and push us in to irresponsible acts.”
In the absence of a better job, Chinonso started where he left off in Aba, taking up labourer’s jobs at building sites, and wherever he found one. With this, he was able to feed and support his siblings who were still going to school.
When his parents returned to Lagos, he made a move to go back to school but the stark reality, as it stared at him in the face, was that it will cost a lot of money, which was not yet available. As much as he longed to go back to school, he knew he was still trapped in poverty.
Quite like the teenager whom the responsibility of adulthood has suddenly come upon, Chinonso reflects, ”Helping my mother to hustle for our daily bread is a struggle that never seems to end and whatever we make is just never enough. I still want to finish secondary school, write WAEC and go to university.”
Since his parents came back to Lagos, his mornings has more or less been a routine of going to the nearby Iyana-Iba market to buy wares for his mother and then out to forage for menial jobs- any kind. “I usually feel pain after carrying blocks and mixed sand at building sites, so I have slowed down on that. I don’t hustle like I used to, so now I have time to sit freely with my mum and chat and help her with her petty business.”
Looking down timidly and biting his nails, Chinonso, says he looks forward to financial help from any magnanimous Nigerian or organisation, so he could return to school. With the rigours he’s already gone through, he already figures that education is the only tool with which he could chase poverty from his life permanently. He admires the successful businessman/industrialist, Aliko Dangote and hopes to emulate his success, when he finally gets the chance to explore his love for the transport sector.
Chinonso’s story is just one out of millions of children battling with overwhelming poverty globally, most especially in the underdeveloped and developing countries. It is a situation that calls for urgent intervention from governments of the various countries, as the figure keeps increasing. According to UNICEF, more than 10 million Nigerian children are out of school and living below the poverty line. But if government promises of social welfare is anything to go by, Chinonso should have little problem getting back in school and pursuing his dreams. But unfortunately, things have not been that easy. Like many before him, he is a school drop-out, battling hunger, lack and doing odd jobs for survival. More disturbing is the fact that however hard he works, it is just not enough.
Reflecting, Chinonso says he keeps praying that things get better in Nigeria, hoping that that will also affect his situation positively.
”Sometimes I get emotional and angry at my situation and the situation in Nigeria,” Chinonso says. ”The struggle never seems to end; it is so frustrating and I wonder why. I pray that the government makes things better, so that we could have hope, at least enough to help me reach my potential.”
Any hope in sight?
The question therefore arises: Is there really hope? Is there any help for children like Chinonso, who are caught in between suffocating poverty and struggling to survive out there?
Maybe there is. In President Buhari’s 2016 budget speech, he did amplify his campaign promise of social welfare programme, which targeted an estimated 25 million vulnerable Nigerians. Even at that, such promises aren’t novel. From the National Poverty Eradication and Empowerment Programme (NAPEP) by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, to the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) by immediate past President Goodluck Jonathans regime, and even beyond; there have always been lofty ideas and programmes in this regard, except that none has been able to meet up with the formidable challenge. None has clearly helped in keeping out-of-school children in school or providing hungry children with food. That 110 million Nigerians still live below the poverty line is a monument to the abysmal failure of these various policies and programmes.
Chinonso’s reality
Chinonso and his mother at the moment are combined breadwinners of the family. Even though he makes very little from his unskilled efforts, which barely lasts a day or two, it remains critical for the family’s survival. Meanwhile, his mother, who hawks abacha, an Igbo appetizer also known as African salad does not make much either. She, along with Chinonso, has to do everything she can to support the other children who are in school and her husband, Mr. Obasi, who has still not fully recovered from the stroke and so cannot work or contribute financially to the upkeep of the family.
“There is hardly anything left to save; money is usually spent as they come and it’s never enough to meet up with our needs. And I wish it wasn’t such a struggle to get help.” He reflects further.
But still, Chinonso hopes someday to go back to school. Even as he approaches his 19th birthday, he remains focused and hopeful.
”I haven’t given up my dream yet. I just keep wishing and hoping that one day, my wishes will ride on a horse and fly,” finished off Chinonso, whose name literally means ‘God is near’.
The post ‘I dropped out of school to save my family from starvation’ appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.
