2 Setting the agenda for happy childhoods

The foundations for a universal standard of childhood were laid down by observers of the suffering of children in the First World War who wrote the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted in 1959. This Declaration was a blueprint for a global ideal, stipulating a series of rights for children that were separate from and supplementary to those of adults. As this century has progressed, successive international instruments and human rights events have gradually advanced their understanding of the special attributes and needs of childhood. Measures like the United Nations International Year of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child have given larger scope for self- representation and self-advocacy than the Declaration (Boyden, Reference Boyden, James and Prout2015). They are more evidently focused on particularly disadvantaged groups— those suffering exceptional circumstances such as war, abandonment, or abuse. Significantly, the norms and ideals upon which this model of a carefree, safe, secure, and happy childhood are built are culturally and historically founded on the social concerns and priorities of the capitalist countries of Europe and North America (Boyden, Reference Boyden, James and Prout2015).

Highly selective, stereotyped perceptions of childhood— of the innocent child victim on the one hand and the young deviant on the other — have been exported from the developed world to the developing world. This has provided a pivotal point for the development of both human rights legislation at the international and regional level and social policy at the national level in a wide range of countries. It has been an obvious goal of children’s rights experts to develop in international law a universal system of rights for the child based on these norms of childhood (Boyden, Reference Boyden, James and Prout2015). The present UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) comes closer to this goal than any previous international mechanism. The UN as the ultimate arbitrator of the value of liberal democratic rule globally, has a strong interest in dispersing to the poor countries the ideals and codes of practice developed in the public sector in industrialized nations (Boyden, Reference Boyden, James and Prout2015).

Adopted in 1989, the UNCRC is a key source in child rights governance; it prescribes the civil, economic, social, cultural, and political rights of children and establishes a legal framework for their protection. Three decades after its adoption, the human rights of children as expressed in the UNCRC have gained hegemonic status in policymaking and inspired a wide range of political and social practices as well as knowledge production on children and childhood (Holzscheiter, Josefsson and Sandin, Reference Holzscheiter, Josefsson and Sandin2019). The UNCRC governs at a distance through the normative soft power of its reports, guidelines, general comments, programs, standards, and meetings of various kinds. While its regulatory powers at the level of individual states are limited, it has been very influential in shaping local policies. The drafters of the UNCRC created a set of standards that is now deeply embedded in the governance of international relations, which is exemplified by the creation of several international and regional human rights institutions, conventions, and policies. Children’s rights have become an explicit tool, not only to protect children from oppressive practices, but also to govern, standardise, and control children and childhoods.

In the context of its creation, the UNCRC opened new avenues for thinking about the rights of children regarding culture, gender, and ethnicity, addressing inter alia issues like harmful traditional practices, freedom of religion or the right of children to privacy (Holzscheiter, Josefsson and Sandin, Reference Holzscheiter, Josefsson and Sandin2019). It also formalized and standardized the understanding of childhood and rights of children, thereby disregarding how culture, class, ethnicity, or gender shape local perceptions of for example traditional practices like child marriage. This globalization of a specific idea of childhood assumes some type of universal experience for all children. In the UNCRC, the same rights are given to all children across the world, irrespective of their contextual circumstances. Through the UNCRC, children’s rights are accordingly made universal. This status of universality has become a significant precondition when justifying claims for and defending the rights of children globally (Quennerstedt, Reference Quennerstedt and Freeman2012). This is the case, even though rights expressed in international convention must undergo a ‘cultural journey’ when they are put into practice in society (Quennerstedt, Reference Quennerstedt and Freeman2012).

A dominant strand in contemporary research on children’s rights has been focusing on the implementation and monitoring of universal standards for children’s rights set out in the UNCRC. At its inception, many scholars contended that the UNCRC’s west-centric human rights ideals presented serious barriers to constructive cross-cultural dialogue on child rights governance in many parts of Africa (see Kaime, Reference Kaime2005; Rwezaura, Reference Rwezaura1998; An-Na’im, Reference An-Na’im2000; Van Bueren, Reference Van Bueren, Gilliam and Leslie2016). Much of the debate incited by incidents of violence against children depicted these incidents as a conflict between ethno-religious tradition and westernisation or modernisation. Modernity, discussed in opposition to culture, is a concept which, in African history, is connected to the colonial experience and has developed more distinct local features that emphasise the approval or disapproval of certain cultural norms (Platte, Reference Platte2004). However, the 1990s was a revolutionary decade for human rights in most African countries (Thompson, Reference Thompson1992). A major reason for this was the adoption of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) by the Organisation of African Unity. The ACRWC was a radical departure from ‘African cultural traditionalism’; it represented a significant shift in African political thinking on the contentious subject of the relevance of the human rights ideal to African children (Thompson, Reference Thompson1992). Article 21 of the ACRWC adopts the language of the UNCRC by expressly prohibiting child marriage and the betrothal of girls and boys and enjoins the taking of effective legislative action to specify the minimum age of marriage to be 18 years. As a result, 18 has been established in many constitutions and domestic laws in Africa in accordance with the international treaty provisions. However, despite the domestication of the UNCRC and the ACRWC, many governments in Africa are struggling to report on and fulfil provisions that are at best barely understandable and at worst irrelevant to their local context.

Certainly, the UNCRC has nurtured some very noteworthy achievements in children’s welfare. For one thing, it makes governments directly accountable for children in ways they have never been accountable. However, as a theoretical and conceptual framework, the fact that the global model of the UNCRC draws primarily on Northern thinking cannot be ignored. Even with broad acceptance of this treaty, the likelihood that the childhood ideal of the Convention may not always be better for children’s welfare than the childhoods of other cultures linger on (Stephens, Reference Stephens1995). This issue is compounded by the fact that some of the strident efforts to enforce the Convention focuses on whether states are complying or meeting their obligations rather than whether children are better off because of the Convention. For example, in 1992, the tabling of a Bill in the U.S. Senate to ban imports made with child labour provided a rare opportunity to investigate the effects on children of an attempt to impose global childhood standards. The ILO, with support from UNICEF, directed a study of children involved in the production of garments for export in Bangladesh (UNICEF and ILO Studies, 2004). The industry was observed to be a vital income source for the families of child workers, many of whose fathers were either unemployed or not financially contributing to the household due to marital breakdown and remarriage. It provided jobs for women and girls especially, this being very noteworthy in a Muslim society where opportunities for females to obtain socially acceptable paid work outside the domestic sphere are very few (UNICEF and ILO Studies, 2004). The children would mainly undertake light finishing work.

While the U.S. legislation was never passed, the mere threat of the Bill led to thousands of children being removed from the garment sector, as many as 40,000 to 50,000 children were laid off. It was reported that children took to the streets and put together petition. The study revealed that dismissed garment children were worse off than children still in the industry in several ways. None were attending school, and many children were involved in activities such as pushing carts, brick chipping and rickshaw pulling which are more hazardous than garment work (UNICEF and ILO Studies, 2004). It was also reported that a considerable number of children were forced into sex work as a result. Children outside the garment industry suffered both acute and chronic illnesses at rates four times those of the children inside and ate less food, which was of poorer quality (UNICEF and ILO Studies, 2004). Though it was widely accepted that the removal of children from the industry was desirable and in line with international standards, it is obvious that the best interests of the garment children in Bangladesh were not served by an intervention based on a set of assumptions far removed from the children’s reality. This underlines that there are no short cuts in realizing children’s rights, and that applying solutions which have been developed elsewhere and in a different context can make a mockery of the underlying intentions of the UNCRC (Boyden, Reference Boyden, James and Prout2015).

In the same way, the depiction that child marriage is a social problem in need of regulation relies on an assumption that childhood is a universal concept, and that adolescence is a separate phase of development. However, the experiences and discourses of childhood, adolescence and marriage cannot be presumed to be similar across culture, place, and time (Bunting, Reference Bunting2005). Girls’ diverse experiences and backgrounds challenge an essentialization into one classification of ‘child bride’. For example, in many societies, the choices made by a 17-year-old girl are not identical to those made by a 10-year-old girl. Therefore, an approach centred on a uniform marriageable age of 18 may ignore the multiplicity of childhoods. Ignoring the socially structured nature of childhood will have overwhelming effects on children and women (James, Reference James and Panter-Brick1998). It risks aggravating, not alleviating, the fundamental social problems confronting girls within localised contexts.

3 Obstacles in the export of an ideal childhood

Innovative responses to the problems of childhood that are sensitive to context and meet the needs of children— that they themselves identify— are rare. However, critical, and oppressive responses, involving elements of containment and correction are all too common. Due to the rights lobby at the forefront of the global spread of norms of childhood, international children’s rights lawyers and scholars largely ignore the evidence that the conception of childhood is intimately tied up with cultural values and the outlook of any given society. This section seeks to understand what cultural representation indicates about the contemporary politics of childhood in Nigeria. Without sensitivity to context, the move to set global standards for childhood and common policies for child welfare can be categorised as just another project of the civilizing mission that was disconnected from peoples’ lives. I have chosen to focus on the social construction of childhood in contemporary and colonial Nigeria to illustrate how universal perspectives on childhood may be far from the enlightened step projected by its proponents. Childhood as a phase of life is not a western invention but what did not exist in Africa is the idea of childhood tied to a rigid chronological age. Before discussing the implications of the colonial introduction of age as an organizing factor for childhood, it may be useful to pay some attention to the frames within which childhood takes in contemporary Nigeria. The following section highlights the discontinuity between the protective ideologies of child welfare embodied in both international rights legislation and the social, economic, and cultural realities of countless children in northern Nigeria.

3.1 The ‘child’ in context

African societies are largely designed around the lives of its children (Rwezaura, Reference Rwezaura1998). Across the continent, children represent continuity with customs and present-day traditions devised to ensure children’s survival and prosperity. They are also considered in many African cultures as essential to family survival, in that they help preserve household economies through their cheap labor at home, in trade, farming or other family food-processing activities (Howard, Reference Howard2013). The notion of a completely dependent child who is nurtured, clothed, educated, and generally raised at the expense of parents is an idea that is foreign to the traditional African setting (Ncube, Reference Ncube and Ncube1998). While childhood may be described as short-lived in Africa, compared to Western Europe, its short length has not reduced its cultural or political significance (Kaime, Reference Kaime2009). Traditionally, African beliefs and practices are embedded on the principle of communalism where society is made up of groups of people connected by inter-personal bonds with common values defining and directing social relationships (Fayemi Reference Fayemi2009). This communalistic attitude imposes a range of duties and obligations on the child, not only towards direct family members but also the wider community.

Most traditional African societies do not use age as social standard for differentiating children from adults. West African cultures are known to have distinctive markers for developmental transitions. For example, historically in traditional societies in Ghana, the transition to adulthood was marked by marriage which usually took place immediately after puberty and marked the attainment of adulthood, particularly for girls (Obidoa, Reference Obidoa2018). In some African societies, transitions from childhood to adulthood were properly demarcated by certain ceremonies. In other West African societies, an uninitiated person would remain a child in the eyes of the community regardless of age (McNee, Reference McNee2004). A child generally becomes an adult through a long process of ritual and social transformation by the community. And so, only after this process of inclusion, socialization and ritualization can children advance into adulthood.

In northern Nigeria, the relationships between parents and children are determined primarily in accordance with entrenched acceptable standards of behavior grounded in behavioral norms of respect, avoidance, and affection (Yeld, Reference Yeld1961). The same applies to the relationships between children and other members of the extended family. Until the age of seven or eight, male and female children are attached to their mothers (Yeld, Reference Yeld1961). After this age, they are required to take part in the adult activities of members of the compound of their own gender. Children in this society experience a physical freedom that no other group in society has; this includes the ability to roam in and out of the houses of friends, relatives and sometimes even strangers in search of playmates, to purchase goods, sell items or to relay messages (Schildkrout, Reference Schildkrout2002). There are many important implications of this, including the learning experience children gain by observing many aspects of the community that they will later be excluded from as adults. In this context, the shift from childhood to adulthood really comes about when the liberty to move inside and outside houses, between the male and female domains is limited (Schildkrout, Reference Schildkrout2002). This transition brings about the full assumption of adult sex roles, and as reflected below, it occurs differently for boys and girls. In this way, adulthood denotes separation and avoidance between ‘male and female in all non-sexual activities’, while childhood is a phase in which these borders are insignificant (Schildkrout, Reference Schildkrout2002, p. 362).

3.1.1 Girling the subject

Girlhood in northern Nigeria is not easily defined. The life of a girl is a multifaceted social construct and any attempt at defining and demarcating it is inevitably difficult. Unlike infancy, girlhood is a social concept, not a biological category (Postman, Reference Postman1994). As a social institution, it comprises of actively negotiated social relationships which girls experience in the early years of their lives (Kaime, Reference Kaime2009). The elements that characterize the life of a girl in northern Nigeria’s social system are not formally taught, they are progressively internalized and reinforced through cultural beliefs, values, and perceptions. Social training and interaction in childhood shapes and strengthens this largely ‘unconscious process’ (Callaway, Reference Callaway1984, p. 433).

As previously stated, the ultimate defining principle of childhood is its separation from adulthood, even if in a somewhat modified form for girls. Boys are permitted to be ‘little boys’, but girls are raised to be ‘little women’ (Callaway, Reference Callaway1984). As reflected in Figure 1 above, the status and identity of girls are made visible through their appearance that are enhanced by cultural jewelleries and clothing to improve their beauty. They are dressed to replicate adult styles; although they may only be 8 or 10 years old, girls wear gold jewellery, eye make-up, and often paint their lips (Usman, Reference Usman2010). They are raised to be womanlike, to envision themselves as wives and mothers and are viewed as symbols of beauty, peace, love, and unity between tribes through marriage (Usman, Reference Usman2010).

Figure 1. A picture of A’ishatu Yola from (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015).

The content of this female sex-role cuts across socio-economic class, personality differences, and educational levels. Female sex-roles exist in most societies, but in northern Nigeria, this disposition is extreme, thorough, and methodical. The girl-child begins to be allocated domestic duties around the age of three, by age six she is dressed in imitation of adult women and begins to be viewed as a future wife, and by the time she is between ages twelve and fourteen, she is married, after which she enters seclusion which leads to her confinement to female quarters for the rest of her life (Callaway, Reference Callaway1987). On the other end, boys are culturalized into believing that they are superior to girls. They are encouraged to engage in child-like activities, but also persuaded to only play with boys, to separate themselves from girls, to be indifferent about domestic chores, and to be independent from their mothers (Callaway, Reference Callaway1984). This process solidifies the difference in status between boys and girls.

Girlhood in the family is especially important and it takes place under specific conditions. It is impossible to properly understand the meanings and significance of girlhood if it is not set in the context of family and kinship. In northern Nigeria, the rights, and duties of girls in the family are linked to stages in development of her life cycle. Aspects of a woman’s life cycle emphasize her position in relation to men, her reproductive status as well as her approximate age. This is usually reflected through language, songs, poems, proverbs, and anecdotes. An Hausa woman’s life is divided into different categories: jinjinya (female infant), yarinya (girl), bera (pre-nubile girl), buduruwa (a girl whose breasts have started growing but who is not yet married or a maiden or virgin), mata aure (woman or wife), bazarawa (divorced or widowed), or tsohuwa (old woman) (Schildkrout, Reference Schildkrout2002; Barkow, Reference Barkow1971).

As a bera and buduruwa, a girl’s primary task is to help in the household chores and to hawk the craft of the married women of her compound (Barkow, Reference Barkow1972). They have the freedom to wander in and out of people’s houses to buy and sell goods and to look for playmates. Barkow (Reference Barkow1972) asserts that the life of a buduruwa is a happy one because at this stage, her main task is street hawking and household chores; these are her most enjoyable labour. The transition from the pleasant life of buduruwa to that of mata aure or married woman is abrupt; from her unrestricted wanderings around the community and the market, she quickly transitions to a life of seclusion in the home of her in-laws. For an overwhelming majority of girls in northern Nigeria, it is almost unimaginable to desire to be anything other than a wife or mother (Wall, Reference Wall1998). Girls are often told ke mace, gidan wani zaki, (after all, you are a woman and you are going to someone else’s house) (Sa’ad, Reference Sa’ad1981, p. 31). Notably, the Hausa term for ‘woman’ and the term for ‘wife’ are the same- mace (Wall, Reference Wall1998, p. 348).

3.1.2 Girlhood: agency and work

To understand the social construction of girlhood in northern Nigeria, it is important to assess the interaction of people of different ages and the advancement of individuals from one age group to the next. In this section, I argue that any change in the roles of children that come because of setting a minimum age of marriage at 18 will have far reaching consequences, not only on children but possibly on the whole structure of the Hausa family. As previous mentioned, a core ideology in UN human rights documents, around which official versions of childhood pivot dictates that children are demarcated from adults due to their vulnerability. This traditional view of socialization regards adult behavior in society as an autonomous variable and emphasizes the dependence of children on the older generation. However, overstating the dependency of children on adults often ‘blinds us to the dependence of the older generation on the younger one’ (Schildkrout Reference Schildkrout2002, 344). The working life of girls in northern Nigeria reveals how the variety of work girls are involved with affects the social age of children and contribute to the organization of everyday life for adults. I am of the view that gendered roles in northern Nigeria cannot be demarcated as they are without children performing certain roles that are distinct from but complementary to adult roles. In analysing these issues, I am concerned primarily with the relations between girls and mothers and the autonomy and agency exercised by girls in northern Nigeria. I refer to the cultural practice of kulle as it provides a productive space to confront these concerns.

As previously mentioned, among the Hausa, transitioning from childhood to adulthood demanded severing relations between men and women in all non-sexual activities, but these restrictions were less significant in the world of children (bera and buduruwa). Only children had the right to carelessly roam in and out of people’s houses. For married women and girls, severing relations between men and women is enforced through the practice of kulle (Pereira, Reference Pereira2005). Kulle, meaning ‘confinement’, ‘imprisonment’, ‘seclusion’, also referred to as ‘purdah’ is a cultural practice that places stringent restrictions on the interaction between men and women (Schildkrout, Reference Schildkrout2002). Married women and girls in purdah do not generally leave their compounds except for the purpose of attending marriages, funerals and visiting relatives or close female friends. Therefore, since most girls in northern Nigeria marry between age twelve and fourteen, they are secluded to the ‘female quarters of their compound’ all their lives (Callaway, Reference Callaway1987, p. 31). If a girl is married as young as ten, she may not be expected to assume certain responsibilities like cooking, until puberty begins, but she enters kulle and loses the freedom she enjoyed as a child. The compound becomes the girls’ world.

The puzzling nature of seclusion, and the confusing social division that it produces gives unmarried girls the kind of freedom and independence that is usually not expected of children in other societies. Since married women in kulle are unable to go out during the day, it is their young unmarried daughters, budurwa, who are sent on errands, transmit messages, and sent to the market for the hawking of goods (Callaway, Reference Callaway1984). Even though they may have demanding household tasks, the girls engage in street hawking for their mothers, and are relatively free until they are married and subsequently secluded (Schildkrout, Reference Schildkrout2002). At an early age, girls learn to bargain, to keep accounts and the importance of financial independence for women. A young girl immediately comprehends that this income is not to be shared with her father or brothers and that it gives her mother dignity and respect not attainable in other ways (Callaway, Reference Callaway1984).

The significant amounts of money women earn while secluded is only possible with the assistance and support of pre-pubertal girls who are very active at this work; they buy the materials, transport, and sell the final products at the market. They may commence hawking as early as 7 a.m. and end at 5 or 6 p.m. (Nasir, Reference Nasir and Ostien2007). They experience physical stress from the daily long distant walk to the cities and are occasionally lured into prostitution (Nasir, Reference Nasir and Ostien2007). They encounter all forms of male harassment, intimidation, and sexual, emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse. Usman (Reference Usman2010, 725) notes that an eleven-year-old in a focus group interview commented:

When the men continue making such comments without addressing the price and quantity of nono and fura purchase, we consider that a bad signal that they are not “true” customers but have a different motive. We then insist by asking them how much worth of our product they want, but they ignore us and insist on their compliments which often may lead them touching us in inappropriate places. At this point we lift out calabashes and leave immediately before we are harmed.

The presentation of girlhood in the context of seclusion serves an important purpose; it marks the transitory status of girls before they take a significant step into adulthood, marriage. The above excerpts explain the strength and fortitude girls as young as eleven years are expected to have to privately deal with the consequences of street trading. The goods and services market girls are exposed to at incredibly young ages govern the process of becoming independent. The marketplace emancipates girlhood from traditional mechanisms of socialization and control inside the family (Chisholm, Reference Chisholm1990). It also marks the close of certain life phases offering parental and familial protection. This system has the effect of removing children from the private domain of the family into confrontation with new rules of behavior drawn from a social code that is possibly different from that functioning within the parental home.

Taking up adult entrepreneurs’ responsibilities very early accelerates girls’ emotional development and so by the time they are of marriageable age, Hausa girls have understood the physical and social world they live in and from which they will withdraw in differing degrees upon marriage (Bivins, Reference Bivins2007). Unlike most children in other societies, they have mapped out the social networks of kinships and friends, understood the formal and informal hierarchies of their families and society, and should have a practical education that will ‘stand them in good stead’ throughout their marriage (Bivins, Reference Bivins2007, p. 91). To the casual observer, life as a girl in this context seems challenging. However, it can also be assumed that the knowledge girls acquire hawking goods, running errands, listening, and sharply observing life in their community assists them in making an ‘adult’ transition to married life. It equips them with the skills needed to manage the resources and personalities in their first homes as brides. As we will see in succeeding sections, since 1977, there have been a few efforts to control hawking by young girls, but the practice persists in present-day Nigeria, as will certainly be visible to any traveller in northern Nigeria.

Given the deeply entrenched nature of social practices in this region, any change in the domestic lives of girls will give rise to profound changes in other cultural institutions and in broad cultural patterns in general. And so, it is important to acknowledge the ways new paradigms could create significant tensions between parents and children. Children are instrumental in maintaining the present definition of female roles and the different cultural systems used to uphold this definition. Culturally neutral ideas of childhood diminish children’s claims to their own social membership and contribution within their communal and family struggles. Consequently, setting the age of marriage at 18 could affect every other aspect of a girl’s life that provides meaning. Addressing childhood concerns in this way creates ineffective laws that disqualify children from their social world; it basically removes them from it. It is in this context that efforts to introduce reforms affecting the lives of girls must be evaluated. In addition, the institutionalization of modernized ideals of childhood in northern Nigeria is not merely a question of its significance to children. By setting standards within legislation, northern childhood will not only be erased within the purview of law, but this new modernized model becomes the standard to be used to judge other actors in northern Nigeria. Guardians, parents and specifically mothers could be recast as child abusers, and their child rearing practices indicted as falling short of certain standards.

4 Development discourse in Africa: the institutionalization of age as an organizational category

The present concern about setting the age of marriage at 18 is linked to wider secularization anxieties tied to Nigeria’s colonial experience. My analysis in the succeeding sections reveals that setting the age of marriage at 18 and prescribing an ideal model of childhood for northern Nigerian children may purely be echoing “colonial paternalism” (Burman, Reference Burman1994, p. 241). This aspect of history is important because we will see that the universal subjecthood of the African child was an imposed and not a claimed status, which was conferred upon the child by salvationists (George, Reference George2014). As such, present day contested ideas of a universal childhood illuminate the colonial implication of hierarchical distinctions of race, gender, class, and generation within programs of universal subject making in the colonial era and beyond (George, Reference George2014). The colonial-imposed boundaries between adult and child in certain regions in Nigeria functioned to create a universal image of childhood. This imagery led to the application of ‘inappropriately homogenized and culturally chauvinistic’ developmental models (Burman, Reference Burman1994, p. 243). Models that were subsequently reproduced and employed by agencies and institutions in regulating childhood in postcolonial Nigeria. The adoption of this colonial model resulted in modern Nigeria failing in its protective duty towards children because the model does not address the complex social forces that apply at the local level. Therefore, in exploring ways to address child marriage, the historical constructions of childhood, its impact and its reproduction in modern Nigeria should not be overlooked. Overlooking these standards could easily be the subtle side of cultural imperialism.

There is no better place to commence tracing the emergence of childhood in modern Nigeria than with the ‘institutionalization of age as a basic organizing category’ (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015, p. 6). The introduction of novel government mechanisms along with their underlying ethical principles during the colonial period saw the emergence of new legal and political differences between African children and adults and a parallel restructuring of the developmental, moral, and social disposition of the African child. In precolonial Nigeria, a child was defined according to the culture of each ethnic group; however, colonialism imposed a unitary standard for distinguishing between a child, a young person, and an adult (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015).

Chronological age was institutionalized as an aspect of power relations and a marker by which society gaged progression in life. Compared to the variable precolonial emphasis on the fulfillment of social responsibility as the marker of maturity, under colonialism, age as an organizing category was inflexible (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015). Public programs, policies, institutional reform, as well as legal and social practices were all tied to age. The laws precluding children from engaging in sexual activities below a certain age, from engaging in specific forms of labor, from partaking in political processes, from working in specific jobs and from criminal prosecution were all informed by rigid biological constructions of age. Aderinto (Reference Aderinto2015, p. 6) asserts that if colonialism overlooked ethnic diversity in forming an ‘artificial state called Nigeria’, it also denigrated pre-colonial notions of childhood among several ethnic groups by attempting to standardize the experience of childhood.

The young as a group were not legally defined until the 1940s. Before this period, in the various decrees, there was instead a general category called ‘children’ with inconsistent age limits. The Alien Children Registration Ordinance of 1878 was the first colonial regulation to detail children’s experiences as colonized subjects. This ordinance instituted a significant innovation to the idea of the child. It marked childhood and children’s social needs as ontologically distinct from adulthood and adult needs (Abosede, Reference Abosede2006). Integral to this concept of childhood is that children are immature, weak, and susceptible, therefore, they must be protected from themselves and from others who may cause them harm. Consequently, in certain regions, children were relegated to schools, hospitals, playgrounds, and young offender institutions (Kaime, Reference Kaime2009). More specifically, the state’s involvement in girls’ lives through legislation inserted their experience into the legal record and marked them clearly as a sexually endangered population (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2014).

The most comprehensive legislation introduced to protect children was the Children and Young Person’s Ordinance of 1943 (CYPO). The phrase ‘young person’ first emerged in this legislation and section 25 clearly created two groups- a ‘child is under 14 and a young person is over 14 and under 17’. This legal delineation of childhood was significant for two reasons: first, it influenced the definition of childhood in other statutes and directed prosecution of crimes against children; second, it ascertained the eligibility and the type of rehabilitation programs for victims of child abuse. However, beyond legitimizing the protection of children, the dichotomy established by the CYPO also introduced the ‘science of childhood development’ (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2014). By maintaining that adulthood did not come before the age of 17 years, childhood became defined in strictly legal terms. At age 17 years, the Colony Welfare office (CWO) believed, an individual was emotionally, physiologically, and mentally competent (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2014). However, the CYPO’s definition of a child was not an absolute; overtime, a few changes were made to this definition. The definition of a child was continuously contested despite efforts by the British to impose a rigid dichotomy between a ‘child’ and ‘young’ person.

5 Encountering colonial modernity: producing the desirable girl

Many of the cultural conflicts between Western and local cultures in colonial Nigeria between 1900 and 1958 concerned issues relating to women and girl’s roles and sexuality, making women and girls a principal site of the political struggles between Western culture and the culture of the colonized (Aderinto Reference Aderinto2014). Child marriage, girl hawkers, female genital mutilation, virginity testing, polygamy, are all noteworthy points of dispute and attempted mediation between Western culture and the different African cultures. In these conflicts, local practices are depicted as backward and barbaric in contrast to the progressive nature of Western culture. Political elites often reacted by constructing these very practices as sacred and longstanding traditions that were constitutive of ethno-religious values, and as practices associated with the religious place of, and respect for, women. The purpose of this section is to highlight how colonial constructions of girlhood are essential to larger geohistorical forms of violence produced by ideas of what it means to be ‘developed’. Today, we view most economic activities that involve children as “unsafe” “unethical,” or “uncivilized” partly because it exposes them to physical, mental, and other dangers. Child labor invokes ideas of child exploitation; we believe that the best place for a child to be in the mid-afternoon is in the classroom or on the playground. We are inclined to think that the more children assume roles as breadwinners or financial contributors to their household, the less they experience “real” childhood (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015, p. 11).

Children have always worked in every African society. But as discussed below, under colonial rule, the activities of children as “workers” began to take on new meaning in part because of new perceptions tied to the notion of ideal childhood (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015, p. 11). We will see that the types of welfare services provided in colonial Nigeria reflected the concerns of the rulers rather than the needs of the ruled. In this section, I explore the campaign referred to as ‘the girl hawker project’ which unfolded from the 1930s to the 1950s during the time of British rule which was between 1901 and 1960. I discuss this campaign because, during this period, girl hawkers were ‘symbolic of cultural practices, whether these were positively or negatively valued’ (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2014, p. 74). Focusing on the transformation of girlhood, this section seeks to understand the different ways girls were symbolically constructed; I uncover how the meaning of girlhood structured policies around children and struggles between local practices and British culture. At the core of street hawking regulation were very fundamental questions about the nature of the girl and her relationship to society, the state and modernity. As a special issue of governmental concern, girl hawkers confronted colonialist notions of the child as well as their efforts to impose girlhood, a particularly gendered variation of childhood, onto their lives (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015).

The girl hawker project was a combination of institutions and beliefs collectively used to direct state and community action for developing a strategy focused on removing girl hawkers from the streets and re-shaping local perceptions of girls to conform with modernized conceptions of girlhood (Abosede, Reference Abosede2006). The impact of street hawking regulation on childhood from the 1930 to the 1950s cannot be overstated. First, it provides room for asking questions about the shifting conceptions of childhood overtime. Second, the colonial welfare policies launched in the 1940s influenced and shaped the first generation of political leaders, welfare, probation, and police officers. Postcolonial Nigeria’s welfare services also kept intact juvenile regulations and similar institutions and policies were put in place during the 1960s (Osifodunrin and Aderinto, Reference Osifodunrin and Aderinto2012). As previously highlighted, these inherited colonial institutions have failed to advance child protection in a way that is sensitive to the complex religious and cultural forces conditioning women and girl’s experiences.

In literal and figurative ways, girls ‘functioned as subjects of contestation’ between the colonial state, its subjects, and elites (Abosede, Reference Abosede2006, p. 2). The girl-child was an object of scrutiny and thus elicited an array of nationalist desires. She was a contested figure, ‘an image, either an object of celebration or of attempted control’ (Weinbaum, Reference Weinbaum2008, p. 78). She became a person in need of regulation by the state, social reformers, and missionaries, as well as national elites. The policing of girls was carried out through representational governmental projects and social development schemes. The street hawking campaign is an example of this. As previously highlighted, hawking is fundamental to the domestic economy in both precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial times. It is a means of selling and delivering items across and within local communities. The income it generates limits the hardships experienced by the mothers and grandmothers for whom girls hawk.

Like child marriage, hawking was viewed by colonial administrators as dangerous, not just because it subjected girls to sexual exploitation, but also because it allowed them to be extremely sexualized. Even though public narratives reflected the state’s failure to properly protect its imperilled children, the bigger issue was the changing character of hawking, an established way of raising and educating children, financially supporting the family, and transferring skills from one generation to another (Abosede, Reference Abosede2011). In addition, street hawking violated core values of modern childhood like dependency, vulnerability, powerlessness, and innocence (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015). The transformation of girlhood through hawking practice was conceived as a modernization strategy that would play a critical role in maintaining and promoting modern womanhood in the nation for years to come (Abosede, Reference Abosede2006).

The colonial framework for regulating street trading was primarily directed at the South-west region of Nigeria. In 1946, the colonial administration commenced implementing the street hawking provision of the Children and Young Person’s Ordinance (CYPO) passed in 1943. The CYPO was modelled upon the Children and Young Person’s Act of 1933, a law that was foundational to juvenile justice policy in England until the 1960s. A significant innovation of this statute was that it empowered the state to rescue children from “dangerous home surroundings” and severely increased the probability that the state would actually do so (Bailey, Reference Bailey1987, p. 8). Following passage of the law, where parental control was unsatisfactory, it was more likely than before to result in the state stepping in (Bailey, Reference Bailey1987). The CYPO introduced new questions about child welfare policies, as it tried to create new social categories like the ‘modern girl’. For the first time in Nigeria’s history, girls were to be managed through a distinct set of procedures and legally grounded institutions (see Lawal, Reference Lawal, Falola and Salm2004). The policy barred all children under the age of 14 years from selling goods on the street and from ‘playing, singing or performing for profit’. Girls between ages 14 and 16 years were subjected to further limitations determined by the time of day, the vicinity and region where the sale was carried out.

It is important to note that unlike general “market trading”, in most of Nigeria, street hawking was a “female gendered activity” (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015). Therefore, although the language of the regulations was largely gender neutral, the law was still understood to be aimed at placing a strategic ban on hawking by girls. The number of girls arrested for street trading was greater than the number of boys arrested for criminal offenses and street trading violations put together (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015). In response to street hawking by girls, a similar legislation was enacted in northern Nigeria. The Kano State Petty Trading Control (Amendment) Edict of 1988 prohibited hawking by girls under the age of 16 years. Like the CYPO, the decree was also intended to ‘protect young female children from moral danger and exploitation’. Instead of viewing the problem as being rooted in patriarchy and male dominance, the law focused on arresting the girls themselves and taking them to court, not by prosecuting the men who abuse young girls. Secluded Muslim women and the young girls on whom they rely for their trade were the main victims of this legislation.

Girl hawkers were different things to different observers. On the one hand, some observers viewed girl hawkers as simply vessels of cultural ideals and essential contributors to their families and the larger economy (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015). On the other hand, girl hawkers, unlike boys or women who hawked, were very sexualized in the imagination of certain observers who assumed that hawking encouraged and enabled sexual trading among some girls while it made other girls susceptible to sexual assault (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015). However, the campaign against girl hawkers was not only limited to the sexual dangers girls were potentially exposed to. Public condemnation of street hawking also aimed at controlling girls’ social interactions and public display (Weinbaum, Reference Weinbaum2008). The domesticity ideology underlying child marriages seems to be an unwritten feature of street hawking regulations. Limiting girls to the home context, engaged with preparation for a life of domesticity, seemed to be both a ‘matter of necessity and of unwritten policy for the juvenile welfare system’ (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015, p. 219). As workers in the public domain, girls challenged elite gender standards that positioned women in private domestic spaces. Walking the streets with goods and cash in hand, girl hawkers could not be described using modern ideals and terms like vulnerable, innocent, powerless or dependent (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015). Their female gender made this even more challenging. At a certain point, “regulation advocates” proposed that there was an adequate number of boys in the city to take over the job of girl hawkers and so there was no demographic need for girls to street trade (Abosede, Reference Abosede and Aderinto2015). This domesticity ideology motivating juvenile girl reform reproduced and preserved a gender ideology that regarded men as the normative breadwinner, while women were homemakers.

Like child marriage, the street hawking campaign reflects a clear battle for control over children. The “rhetoric of modernity” was strongly exhibited in colonial systems that viewed civilization as the pathway to the development of the African race (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015, p. 8). The lives of children became a marker of modernity, African development, or the lack thereof. As such, the regulation of childhood would justify and require cultural intrusions and impositions. Transformations in childhood and transformations in colonial rule were closely tied. Policies reflected modernist colonial ideologies of individuality and autonomy; ideas that would eventually lead to a restructuring of people’s perceptions and understanding of childhood. Therefore, the more colonization was recognized as a force for social change, the more childhood was transformed in all spaces, including neighbourhoods, playgrounds, and maternity wards (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015). From the late 1920s, manuals on childhood and child rearing practices began to flourish as newspapers dedicated special columns to modern ways of raising children (Aderinto, Reference Aderinto2015). Issues such as the best meals and products for children, how children can be prepared for adulthood and the content of school curricula, were used to push forward a specific idea of childhood.

The history of colonialism makes it possible to understand how northern Nigerian states currently view social reform as a developmentalist agenda rather than a protective agenda centring on the well-being of children. Beyond the need to improve services and provide infrastructure, the colonist state sought to improve people’s lives directly. The objective of improving people’s lives in ways that would be tolerable and accepted by both natives and colonists was resolved through a focus on children for new forms of regulation. In this way, like current UN human rights documents, endangered children became the primary focus of the colonial state. Beyond simple improvement, children presented an even bigger opportunity for the colonist state. The state demonstrated a “bolder will to save” children from danger, from themselves and most importantly from their communities. By urging a direct relationship with children as the future and hope of the state, the colonial state grounded its legitimacy in its position as a “source of salvation” (Aderinto Reference Aderinto2015, p. 206).

The prohibitionist regime within UNCRC dovetails with the colonialists’ modernisation project that sought to ‘produce new social categories’ by homogenizing the experience of childhood through institutionalizing age as a basic organizing category. The street trading regulations discussed in the previous section were part of complex mechanisms that served the coming into being of the “universal child in Africa”. To be saved by the developmentalist state, the girl had to be remodelled from an unrestricted, autonomous working girl into a dependent, innocent, and modern child. That identity also had to be balanced with a notion of femininity that favored and emphasized women’s domestic activities over their public activities. Historically contested ideas of childhood and girlhood in relation to constructions and deployments of vulnerability and techniques and ideologies of salvation as political discourses are observable in the current ideology in UN human rights documents, around which official versions of childhood pivot. Therefore, an assertion that a legislation setting a minimum age of marriage at 18 in northern Nigeria could be a developmentalist effort to progressively advance a new culture of girlhood may not be entirely unfounded.

6 Conclusion

The social construction of childhood, specifically girlhood, is an ongoing process that has evolved through the pre-colonial era, colonization, decolonization, and nation-building in Nigeria. Childhood in Nigeria is a complex interlocking set of beliefs, policies, social structures, and the everyday actions of adults and children. In this paper, I argued that the discontinuity between the protective ideologies of child welfare embodied in both international rights legislation and national policy and the social, economic, and cultural realities of numerous children in non-western societies is marked. I have shown some of the ways in which research in history, sociology and social anthropology can highlight differences in the construction of childhood. I also contended that an understanding of childhood as a social construct requires attention to the ways in which the Western construction of the child was co-produced with colonial temporal structures. By reflecting on history, I showed that that colonialism in Nigeria brought with it ideas of appropriate expectations of adolescents and young adults including a view of children “as in need of protection and care” (Bunting, Reference Bunting2005). Setting itself up as the only caregiver and advocate of children’s rights, the colonial administration sought to structure the various stages of childhood by using age as an organizational category. Even though advancing equality for all children using age as a marker is persuasive, different competencies and incapacities connected to childhood in various parts of Nigeria are numerous, and often suggest conflicting ideas of childhood. In addition, the reality of oppression for girls is such that simply raising the age of marriage may not reduce the prevalence of child marriages. Consequently, while I am concerned primarily with child protection, a comprehensive analysis of the legal, political, and historical dimensions of child protection strategies is necessary to arrive at sustainable solutions. Otherwise, efforts to reduce child marriages will be constrained by limited views that neglect an analysis of the internal and external systems of control accounting for the continued oppression of girls. More important still, some of the measures for child protection— often promoted on humanitarian grounds— have the effect of isolating children further from their family and community and increasing their economic and social disadvantage.