Hawking is the new game in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital. In most streets, kids are seen jumping like acrobats in the middle of traffic to sell wares, jewelries, books and edible items such as snacks, popcorn, gala, cashew nuts, peanuts, beverages, ice-cream.
Most of the hawkers are between the ages of five and 25 years and they hawk from morning till evening. Sometimes, accidents are inevitable. Most vulnerable of these hawkers are young girls, who sometimes are lured to the houses of men on the pretext of patronizing their goods, which in most case lead to sexual assault and consequentially unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases, capable of ruining the child’s future.
However, in recent times, Rivers State Government has clamped down on hawking when the State Environmental Sanitation Authority banned hawking in all the major streets of Port Harcourt, including Obiakpor local council of the state.
Some of the residents who spoke with The Guardian hailed the move saying, “street hawking was discouraging children from attending school,” while few others who opposed the ban of hawking by pre-teens argued that it was the only alternative for the children to assist their poor parents.
Hear Mr. Golden Daniel, “for me, I feel the ban of hawking in Port Harcourt is nice because the children have refused to go to school. If you look at your time it is school hours and if not for the ban, you would have seen hundreds of them hawking all over the streets. The idea of going to school is completely out of their mind.”
Lucky Fineborne is in support of street hawking because, according to him, most of the hawkers are orphans or children from poor parents who do not have alternative means of livelihood. He reasoned that the ban on hawkers might force the youths into indulging in nefarious activities, including armed robbery, kidnapping and snatching of bags; stressing that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.
Fineborne, however, opted that if government should provide jobs or skill acquisition centres for the hawkers to learn a trade, the idea of banning hawking would be a welcome development.
Another commuter who opposed the ban, Mrs. Favour Nduh, observed, “what made the children to hawk in hold up is because the state government has demolished their houses and shops, and their parents are stranded and jobless without homes. So, they have no other alternative than to hawk.”
Attempts to speak with some of the hawkers proved abortive as most of them ran away on sighting the reporter, but one of them who refused to mention his name said, “my father is dead and my mother’s shop was demolished last year; we are seven in number and the others are still very small. I am the eldest. I am doing this business to help my mother. I don’t know what next to do now.”
When contacted, spokesman of the Rivers State Environmental Sanitation Authority (RESA), Olalekan Ige, said the ban was an implementation of the law that set up the authority in 1999. He explained that part of the law setting up the agency states that there should be no selling of goods and items on major streets of Port Harcourt, including Obiakpor local council.
While describing hawking as ugly, Ige said Port Harcourt was once regarded as the garden city of Nigeria, in reference to its state as being very clean, but he regretted that hawking has constituted a lot of challenges while trying to keep it clean.
“Most commuters and motorists who usually patronize these hawkers dispose the remnant of what they purchase on the road and that litter the environment. We have people who sweep the road every morning and before 12 noon, everywhere is dirty as if they have done nothing. We have refuse contractors who evacuates refuse every morning and before 12noon everywhere is littered. These are our challenges and we feel we cannot continue like this,” he added.
Ige also pointed out that there are several skill acquisition centres in the city and that almost all the 23 local council areas in the state have a skill acquisition centre set up by the state government. He, therefore, urged the hawkers to either choose to go to school or go and learn a vocation, warning that anyone caught hawking would be taking to sanitation court, where the judge would determine whether he/she would be sent to prison or pay a fine.