For 10-year-old Ojo Ibukun, the journey from Ifangni in the Republic of Benin to Lagos was supposed to be an opportunity to learn a trade. Instead, the move has taken him away from the classroom and placed him on construction sites, where he carries building materials, mixes cement and sleeps at night on cardboard inside an unfinished building.
Ibukun is now an apprentice under a tiler, Kilamuwaye Alexandre, who brought him from their hometown in southeastern Benin Republic to Lagos. While children his age would ordinarily be expected to be in school, Ibukun spends his days working at construction sites in Ilasamaja and returns to an unfinished building when the day’s work ends.
Asked why he was not in school, the boy reportedly responded that he did not attend school.
His experience, documented by The PUNCH, exposes a difficult question confronting informal apprenticeship across Nigeria and neighbouring West African countries: when does learning a trade become child labour, particularly when the child is no longer attending school and is performing physically demanding work?
Alexandre told The PUNCH that Ibukun had expressed a preference for becoming a tiler rather than continuing his education and that his parents had agreed for him to accompany him to Lagos.
The tiler described the arrangement as an apprenticeship shaped by the family’s circumstances, saying the parents preferred that the boy learn a profession rather than remain at home without an occupation. However, Alexandre also acknowledged that Ibukun was too young to be working on a construction site.
The circumstances surrounding the boy’s daily routine make the education implications particularly stark. Ibukun is not merely observing an artisan at work. He reportedly carries materials, mixes mortar and performs tasks on an active construction site alongside adults.
When the working day ends, the same construction environment becomes his sleeping place. The unfinished building reportedly has no mattress, mosquito net or electricity, with the child sleeping on a piece of cardboard on the cement floor.
The case demonstrates how a pathway described as skills acquisition can become disconnected from education when children are placed in workplaces without adequate safeguards.
Apprenticeship itself has a long history in Nigeria and remains an important route through which young people acquire practical and entrepreneurial skills. Informal systems such as the Igbo apprenticeship model have contributed to skills development, business creation and employment.
But the age of the learner and the conditions surrounding the apprenticeship are critical.
A child acquiring a practical skill under safe, age-appropriate and education-compatible conditions presents a different situation from a child who has left school, performs physically demanding work for extended periods and lives at the workplace.
The International Labour Organization defines child labour around work that harms children’s wellbeing and development, interferes with education or involves children who are too young to perform it. Not every task undertaken by a child automatically constitutes child labour; the nature, conditions and consequences of the work are relevant.
Ibukun’s case therefore raises concerns beyond the question of whether he is called an apprentice. His age, the nature of his construction work, his living conditions and his absence from school all form part of the wider child-protection question.
Another tiler working in Lagos, Koku Tosin, told The PUNCH that Ibukun was not an isolated case, saying he had seen other young boys from the Republic of Benin coming to Lagos for similar jobs.
Tosin linked the pattern to economic necessity, pointing to the broader movement of workers from neighbouring West African countries into Lagos, where the construction sector and other informal businesses provide employment opportunities.
Lagos’ construction economy provides work for large numbers of artisans and informal workers, with tilers, masons, electricians, carpenters and other tradespeople moving between projects as developments are completed.
For adult workers, cross-border movement can be part of established livelihood patterns. The situation becomes more complicated when children accompany adults into informal workplaces where their age, educational status, living arrangements and welfare may not be formally documented or monitored.
The Republic of Benin and Nigeria are both members of the Economic Community of West African States, whose free-movement framework facilitates regional mobility. While the arrangement supports trade, employment and family livelihoods, children moving through informal work networks can face additional protection challenges.
Migration itself does not cause child labour. Rather, the concern arises when children moving with adults become part of informal employment arrangements in which responsibility for their education and protection becomes difficult to establish.
Ibukun’s story is therefore also an education story.
A child who spends his school years working on construction sites loses more than classroom instruction. Regular school attendance provides opportunities for literacy and numeracy development, social interaction, structured learning, personal development and access to teachers and other child-protection mechanisms.
When that structure disappears, the child can become increasingly dependent on an informal employer or master for accommodation, livelihood and daily supervision.
Nigeria’s national data show that Ibukun’s experience exists within a much larger problem. The 2022 National Child Labour Survey, conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the ILO and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, estimated that 24.7 million children aged five to 17 were engaged in child labour, while 14.39 million were involved in hazardous work. Construction was among the hazardous industries identified in the survey.
The economic circumstances of families are central to the challenge. The ILO has identified poverty and limited livelihood opportunities among factors associated with child labour in Nigeria.
This means that removing a child from a workplace without addressing the circumstances that pushed the family towards child labour may not provide a lasting solution.
Where parents struggle with income, school-related expenses or access to stable employment, an apprenticeship can appear to offer an immediate alternative. But the short-term economic benefit can come at the cost of a child’s education and long-term development when the arrangement is exploitative or hazardous.
Nigeria’s legal framework provides protections against exploitative and hazardous child labour. The Child Rights Act prohibits exploitative labour and activities that deprive children of opportunities to attend school, while the Labour Act contains restrictions relating to the employment and apprenticeship of children and young persons.
The legal framework also means that describing a child as an “apprentice” does not, by itself, settle whether the arrangement is appropriate or lawful. The child’s age, type of work, working conditions, duration of work and impact on education remain relevant.
Ibukun’s situation illustrates the practical difficulty of enforcing these protections within Nigeria’s large informal economy.
Unlike formal companies with established employment structures, construction sites and small-scale workshops can appear and disappear as projects begin and end. Workers can move from one location to another, while children may accompany masters or relatives without formal documentation.
That makes identification and monitoring considerably more difficult for labour and child-protection agencies.
Nigeria has nevertheless continued to strengthen its policy response. The country validated its third National Child Labour Policy and National Action Plan for 2026–2030 in June 2026 following a review of the previous 2021–2025 framework.
The new framework is intended to strengthen institutions, reduce hazardous child labour and create conditions that enable children to remain in school before transitioning into decent work when they reach adulthood. The process involved the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, the ILO, the National Steering Committee on the Elimination of Child Labour and other partners.
The challenge now lies in implementation, particularly within informal sectors where children may work in construction, agriculture, markets, workshops, domestic settings and other locations outside conventional workplace monitoring systems.
The global picture reinforces the scale of the challenge. ILO and UNICEF estimates released in 2025 put the number of children engaged in child labour worldwide at nearly 138 million, including about 54 million in hazardous work. Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for about 87 million cases, representing nearly two-thirds of the global total.
The agencies have continued to identify access to quality education, stronger social protection, effective child-protection systems and decent employment opportunities for adults as important components of efforts to reduce child labour.
For Nigeria, this means that the response to cases such as Ibukun’s cannot stop at the construction site.
Families need viable economic alternatives. Children need access to education. Apprenticeship systems need safeguards that distinguish genuine age-appropriate skills development from hazardous labour. And informal workplaces need greater attention from institutions responsible for labour inspection and child protection.
There is also a cross-border dimension. Nigeria’s economic relationship with neighbouring West African countries means that people will continue to move in search of work and business opportunities. The challenge is ensuring that children moving within those networks do not disappear from the education and child-protection systems.
Ibukun’s journey from a community in the Republic of Benin to a Lagos construction site ultimately presents a question much larger than one child’s apprenticeship.
It asks whether a society can promote vocational and practical skills development without allowing children to be pushed out of school and into unsafe work.
For a 10-year-old, learning a trade should not have to mean losing the classroom, sleeping at a construction site or carrying the responsibilities of an adult worker. The broader challenge for Nigeria is to ensure that skills development becomes a pathway to opportunity after childhood education, rather than a substitute for it.
