Features
Streetlights and Shadows: The Invisible Children of Lagos
Lagos, Nigeria, At 6:15 a.m., while most children prepare for school, 10-year-old Blessing darts between danfo buses at the Ojota traffic junction, a tray of sachet water balanced on her head. One misstep and a speeding keke or danfo could end it all. But this is her daily reality as part of the Lagos Street Children
“I wish I could go to school,” she could have said softly in her heart, eyes scanning the swarm of impatient commuters. “But mummy says we need to eat first.”
In the hustle and roar of Lagos, children like Blessing are fading into the background, forgotten casualties of poverty, parental desperation, and systemic failure. While the city races forward, its youngest citizens are left behind, their rights trampled beneath its grinding gears.
A busy early morning moving traffic in lagos
Children Raising Themselves
From Ajegunle to Agege, from Makoko to Mushin, thousands of children are living adult lives in child bodies. They hawk, they beg, they scavenge. Many have never seen the inside of a school compound talkless of inside of a classroom.
There could be a Musa, 13, who has lived under the Ojuelegba bridge for nearly a year. Abandoned by relatives after his pa
A child living an adult life
rents died in a mysteriously in a fire, he survives on scraps and the occasional N100 he earns washing windshields in traffic , “I don’t remember the last time someone called me by my real name” he whispers to himsslf ,” he says. “They just call me ‘area boy’ or ‘Junior boy.
According to Chioma Nwosu, Coordinator of Child Lifeline Lagos, “Many of these children want to go to school. They are not lazy. They are not criminals. They are survivors and we owe them more than sympathy.”
The Law That Sleeps
In 2007, Lagos State domesticated the Child Rights Act, promising protection from abuse, exploitation, and neglect. But nearly two decades later, the streets tell a different story.
A young street begger been arrested
“Despite the existence of the Lagos State Child Rights Law, implementation is weak,” says Nkiru Okonkwo, Child Protection Advisor with Save the Children Nigeria. “There’s no point having a law that doesn’t walk the streets with these children.”
Indeed, UNICEF estimates that 1 in 5 Nigerian children suffers severe abuse before the age of 14. In Lagos, the figure is likely higher, masked by silence and societal indifference.
READ ALSO: 19-year-old UTME candidate commit suicide after scoring 190 in JAMB
The Cost of Survival
Parents like Blessing’s mother often defend their choices. “I didn’t bring her to suffer,” she says, standing in her one-room shack in ghetto area of lagos . “But who will feed us? The government? My neighbours?”
The hard truth is echoed by Dr. Tunde Ojei, Advocacy Lead at Human Development Initiatives (HDI):
“The streets of Lagos are not just busy; they are brutal to children. Every child selling water in traffic is a testimony to our failure as a society.”
Flickers of Hope
Despite the grim picture, a few organisations are pushing back. sos-childrens villages Nigeria has rescued and supported hundreds of vulnerable children in Lagos in the past year, providing education, family tracing, and reintegration.
the NGO’s Country Director, says:
“We see children trafficked into Lagos from other states weekly. They end up in domestic servitude, markets, or worse. It’s not just a poverty issue , it’s a protection failure.”
Sos children united
At a slum school in lagos, 19-year-old Ifeanyi, once a street child himself, now teaches literacy and hygiene to 40 children every week. “We are the proof that street kids can become something,” he says, smiling. “But someone has to believe in us first.”
A City at a Crossroads
Lagos is a city of contrasts, towering wealth and crushing poverty, dreams and despair. But its future lies not in its skyscrapers, but in children like Blessing and Musa.
Until the law protects them as loudly as the traffic endangers them, and until society sees them as more than street hawkers or ‘area boys’, Lagos risks raising a generation in the shadows.
And shadows, as we know, don’t build nations.
Child Rights at a Glance – Lagos State Law (2007)
• Right to education
• Protection from abuse and neglect of Lagos Street Children
• Prohibition of child labour and street hawking
• Access to healthcare and shelter
• Right to be heard in matters affecting them
Do you know a child at risk?
Call the Child Protection Hotline:
Or report to the Lagos State Ministry of Youth & Social Development.
Report Child Abuse or Neglect:
Lagos Ministry of Youth & Social Development
