In Oyo State, the sight of school-aged children hawking during school hours is becoming an increasingly common sight, exposing cracks in the education system. From crowded motor parks to busy streets in Ibadan, the state’s capital city, SODIQ MOJIBOLA reports on the widening gap between education policies and the harsh realities confronting families fighting to survive
When 16-year-old Fathia Oladejo was promoted to SS3, it should have marked the final stretch toward finishing her secondary education. However, it marked her entry into street hawking. From crowded motor parks to roadside stalls, Fathia now spends her school hours selling sachet water and drinks, a daily reality that reflects the struggles of many school-aged girls across Oyo State, caught between education and survival.
Her mornings begin before the sun rises, helping her mother prepare drinks for sale and making the long walk to the bustling Iwo Road motor park from their Omileye Street in Itesiwaju Community Layout, Thywill Area- a 13-kilometre distance, which could take more than two hours of arduous trekking. Her family’s financial struggles have made it impossible for her to focus solely on education.
With her younger brother enrolled in Junior Secondary School 1 and her parents working tirelessly to make ends meet, Fathia’s contribution to the family income has become a necessity, not a choice. Every day, she balances the weight of survival with the dreams she once held of completing her education.
Her life took a different turn as soon as she got promoted to SS3. The pressure to raise money for her West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) added to the existing burden of daily survival.
“There were days we hardly ate. We have had to beg relatives before we could feed ourselves,’ said Ms Oladejo, with a look of disgust and conviction to follow a new path in life.
“People were beginning to look down on us; it was really getting out of hand, and we had to do something about it. That was why I decided to join the sachet water selling business,” she added.
Getting to the motor park as early as 7:30 a.m., she had almost sold out her first wares after about 30 minutes of hawking, calling out what she sells to attract potential buyers.
For a moment, she remembered that her classmates would have started learning in class at Gbedeogun Community Grammar School, Thywill, Ibadan, where she is a student of the Art Class.
“I want to go back to school, but my parents are not rich, and that is why I am hawking. I feel hawking is better than begging,” Fathia stated, this time with a conviction that speaks louder of where she has been and the path she would rather take in life.
A few metres away, Fathia’s mother, identified simply as Mrs Oladejo, sells drinks from a larger container, keeping a watchful eye on her daughter as buses come and go. The family was recently evicted from their home in Amuloko, Ibadan, where they had lived with her husband’s relatives while he travelled for business.
According to Mrs Oladejo, the eviction came as the extended family struggled to reduce the number of dependents under one roof. She explained that the pressure deepened when her younger child gained admission into JSS 1. Faced with rising feeding costs, transportation expenses, and other necessities, the family made a difficult choice of keeping the younger child in school while the daughter stayed back to work.
“We are hawking so that we can get money to feed. My daughter had to join me because we do not have the money to send her to school now that she is in SS3. We have to raise money for her WASSCE. Please help us,” Mrs Oladejo said.
She explained that she last hawked about three to five years ago, during another period of hardship. Although she later started a small trade and things briefly improved, the eviction and rising cost of living pushed the family back into survival mode. Today, mother and daughter work side by side on the streets.
Fathia’s story reflects a growing pattern across Oyo State’s children pushed out of classrooms as families struggle to balance survival with education.
More families prioritise survival over education
Another school-aged girl, Peace Ayorinde, sits quietly on a wooden bench outside her mother’s alcohol shop along Gbagi Road in Egbeda Local Government Area of the state.
A white bucket rests on her lap, dotted with a few naira notes as she attends to customers buying sachet and plastic drinks.
It was already 3 p.m., and pupils in uniforms were returning home from school. But for Peace, the school day had passed without a lesson. The noise of the busy market behind her stood in sharp contrast to the quiet classroom she should have been sitting in and served as a reminder of the economic realities that had kept her away from school for two straight days.
Peace’s passion for mathematics has not translated into classroom attendance. Instead, her absence from school tells a deeper story, one shaped by economic pressures at home. Her mother, a trader struggling to make ends meet, and her father, a bus driver, are doing their best in a system that often leaves families like theirs behind.
After spending two days away from school already, Peace said she might not return to class the next day either.
According to her, her mother asked her to hold the alcohol shop while she went to hawk the drinks at a motor park. For Peace, it was simply a way to support her family, a sacrifice that now threatens to derail her academic journey.
With more than 100 students in her class, far above the state government’s 1:30 teacher-student target, the odds are already against her.
Private schools, same struggle
The out-of-school crisis cuts across all school types. School-aged girls in private schools in Oyo State are not exempt.
At Iwo Road Motor Park, Rokibat Adisa, an SS1 student at Choice Mission Private School, sells sachet water and soft drinks daily to ease the financial burden on her mother, who caters for her and her three brothers while her father works in Lagos.
She told DevReporting that her school fees total N15,000, but her daily earnings are insufficient to cover the bill while also helping to support her younger siblings.
“I was sent home from school because I have not paid my school fees. My mother sells alcohol at the bus terminal, and my father trades in clothing in Lagos State,” Rokibat said.
Meanwhile, 18-year-old Kehinde Akande hawks sponges at Gbagi market in Egbeda Local Government Area of the state. The SS 1 student of Life Chosen International School, a private school, is already accustomed to the hawking routine.
According to her, her parents’ financial difficulties in keeping her in school and providing for her siblings have forced her out of the classroom.
She walks miles from home, as she makes her way through the ever-busy Gbagi market.
Like Rokibat, she is caught between the pressure of paying school fees and the need to contribute to her family’s survival.
Similarly, 12-year-old Halimah Olagunju was seen at Gbagi market, laying out oranges for sale under a broken-down trailer.
Gbagi is a bustling textile market frequented by thousands daily. Halima had been sent home from God’s Comfort Private School for unpaid fees.
She sells oranges alongside a family member who identified herself as her sister, while their mother cultivates and sells farm produce. Despite recording daily profits, the family has been unable to meet the N25,000 school fee per term.
For these students, education and survival are inseparable as they hawk not for leisure, but as a desperate measure to stay connected to school, highlighting the widening gap between policy and lived realities on Oyo State streets.
Out-of-school children in Nigeria, Oyo State
Nigeria’s out-of-school population remains one of the largest in the world, and current national figures reveal the scale of vulnerability facing states such as Oyo.
According to a 2022 the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Out-of-School Children Cheat Sheet, “1 in 3 children are out of school in Nigeria: 10.2 million at the primary level and 8.1 million at the junior secondary school level.”
The document further noted that 12.4 million children have never attended school, while 5.9 million left school early. Nigeria alone accounts for 15 per cent of the global out-of-school population, a burden that continues to shape regional disparities and education outcomes.
Yet this national estimate is already being revised upward. The Minister of Education, Olatunji Alausa, was recently quoted as saying that Nigeria now has “a number exceeding 14.8 million out-of-school children,” a crisis he described as “compounded by factors such as poverty, insecurity, and cultural barriers.”
Meanwhile, Oyo State often positions itself as a reform-driven education hub in the Southwest, but emerging data paints a more troubling picture.
A 2024 report on the findings of the Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index (NMPI), produced in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics and UNICEF, shows that Oyo ranks highest in the Southwest for the percentage of out-of-school children aged 6 -15.
The NMPI reveals that 20.9 per cent of children in Oyo State are out of school, more than double the national average of 10.05 per cent. Historical trends reinforce this pattern. Data from the Oyo State Bureau of Statistics (SBS) shows a troubling escalation in dropout figures.
In 2018, the senior secondary age group (15 -18 years) recorded the highest dropout numbers, with 88,645 boys and 94,285 girls leaving school. Younger age groups also showed significant dropout rates: 4 per cent for ages 3 – 5, 10.5 per cent for ages 6 -11, 15 per cent for ages 12 -14, and 23.7 per cent for ages 15 – 18.
These figures contradict state-level claims that out-of-school rates are declining and point to structural weaknesses in access, retention, and transition across schooling levels.
Governor Makinde’s contrary claims
The administration of Governor Seyi Makinde outlines several achievements aimed at reducing out-of-school numbers. According to government records, the new administration inherited 272,847 out-of-school children and enrolled 54,569 children (10,914 boys and 43,655 girls) within two years, a 20 per cent reduction.
The state says it maintains a no-fees-and-levies policy across public schools and has pledged to enact a law restricting children from roaming the streets during school hours. Oyo is also implementing the Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA) programme, a World Bank-supported intervention designed to bridge gender gaps, attract marginalised children and strengthen foundational learning. But the results are yet to be seen.
Gaps persist between policy and implementation
Nigeria’s legal framework for basic education is anchored on the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act, 2004, which mandates state and parental obligations. The Act states unequivocally that “every government in Nigeria shall provide free, compulsory and universal basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age.”
It also requires every parent to ensure school attendance and prescribes penalties for non-compliance. Importantly, it stipulates that services in public primary and junior secondary schools must be free, and any person who charges illegal fees is liable to a fine or imprisonment.
The Oyo State Government announced the removal of educational levies, including a N3,000 charge for senior secondary school students, and the distribution of free report cards to public secondary school students, worth over N23 million. Yet a visit to some schools in Lagelu Local Government Area revealed a different reality.
Despite the governor’s promise to distribute textbooks worth over N2 billion to public secondary schools in the state, some students said the support had been inconsistent.
An SS3 student at Monatan Secondary School, Sunday Dolapo, told DevReporting that the last time her school received free educational materials was about three years ago, when she was in JSS 3.
The rural divide
In the quiet village of Oyedeji, neglect of education is evident at Age Methodist Primary School, where only nine students are enrolled, in a school with a capacity for between 90 and 150 students.
The school, which has five classrooms for nursery and basic classes, could be described as deserted. Alongside the students were two teachers and the headmistress.
A teacher at the school, Yusuf Ololade, explained that he arrives early each day, not to teach immediately, but to mobilise pupils to the school, if not, they would not come to school.
“If we are not early to school, they would have followed their parents to the farm,” Mr Ololade said, adding that, “The significance of education is very low. They don’t take education seriously. Some pupils can be absent because they had followed their parents to the farm since the previous Friday”.
A motorcycle rider, who does not want to be quoted, corroborated this view, noting that villagers rarely leave their farms except on market days.
“People are living here, but you can’t find them at home. They spend most of the day on their farms in preparation for the market day. They go with their children and wives. No one is left behind. These schools are just wasting away. I graduated from one of the schools here, but to date, I don’t have a certificate. The schools are hardly operational.”
Educationists cite parental, social system failures
The Principal of MODAS College, Olomo Anthony, explained that high birth rates, poverty, and a lack of guaranteed employment for school leavers fuel the cycle of street hawking.
“Parents cannot be entirely blamed when the system does not provide adequate opportunities or support,” he said.
According to him, early marriage and irresponsible parenting fuel this menace in society, going further to disrupt schooling, contributing to social dysfunction, and widening inequalities in access to education.
“It is common in Ibadan to see, even by 10 a.m., people roaming the streets and at different joints. Among them are school graduates who could not secure jobs, dropouts, and illiterates without employment,” Mr Anthony said.
Similarly, a teacher at the private school, Shakirat Awosanya, stated that public school students continue to face unexpected levies despite government assurances of free education.
“When the government says education is free, it does not mean there are no costs attached,” she said, noting that some principals impose Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) levies, which are rarely used to improve the schools. She also highlighted that some schools still demand payment for ID cards, which the government provides for free.
To curb these practices, she urged the government to establish a monitoring committee to oversee how collected funds are used. She explained that while some families can afford uniforms or textbooks, many cannot.
Free textbooks and notebooks, provided by the state, often fail to reach students. She revealed that five years ago, a principal distributed only five notebooks per student from government supplies and later asked for the return of the distributed textbooks. Allegedly, he repackaged the notebooks and sold the remaining stock for personal gain.
A social problem from home
Parents in Ibadan say the rising pattern of students abandoning classrooms for hawking or roaming in social gatherings during school hours is rooted in weak discipline at home.
A mother of one living in Gbagi, Titilayo Adebayo, said the responsibility begins with parents who fail to enforce consistent educational routines for their children. She explained that many cases of truancy develop long before schools intervene.
According to her, some pupils simply decide they will no longer attend school, and many parents, already stretched by economic pressure, feel unable to compel them.
“Financially, some parents do calculate and spend just what they can afford. Transportation costs have doubled in recent times. At least, N1,000 can be spent to, and from schools per student, and this can be too demanding for the parents. So, they just ration the number of times that the students go to school in a week or month.”
A private school student, Habibah Raji, said the state also faces a structural burden, as school populations have outgrown available classrooms.
She noted that poverty continues to erode families’ commitment to education, saying some parents no longer believe schooling can lift their children out of hardship.
A guardian, Abdulazeez Adebayo, said many children engaged in hawking or out of school still desire formal education, but their families lack the means to support them.
He urged the government to expand access by reducing costs so that more children can return to the classroom.
‘Government cannot do everything’
Also lending his voice to the conversations around Oyo State education policy, resource gaps, and accountability, the Executive Director of University Press Plc, Ganiyu Adebayo, said although the federal government drives most education policies, many states do little beyond paying salaries and attending to infrastructure when able.
According to him, Oyo State has made visible progress since the current administration took office, particularly in the prompt payment of teachers’ salaries, but systemic gaps remain. He recalled that under the previous administration, the state introduced a N1,000 terminal fee for public secondary school students, alongside a policy under which the government paid for WAEC and NECO examinations.
To ensure seriousness among candidates, students were later required to sit qualifying exams before government sponsorship. The fee, he explained, never went to government accounts but to the schools, where it was used for minor repairs and maintenance.
Mr Adebayo said, “When this administration came in, these policies were stopped, including the payment of N1000 per term by students because I can confirm that that money was not going to the state government account but the school’s account. It was what the school management was using for maintenance and other things within the school.
“The present administration stopped that payment and considered the need to be responsible for whatever the needs of the schools were without necessarily asking parents. That should have been enough motivation for parents to bring their wards to school,” Mr Adebayo noted.
However, he stressed that many public schools still lack basic facilities. “Many schools do not have furniture. Some have collapsed buildings, inadequate teachers, and serious infrastructural deficits,” he lamented.
While some renovation work has begun in recent months, he argued that these upgrades must be consistent to build community confidence in public education.
Education Commissioner dismisses online reports, highlights teacher strengths
The Commissioner for Education, Olusegun Olayiwola in his response described reports circulating online as misleading social media narratives. He cited a case involving a school in Egbeda Local Government where it was alleged that a student was forced to hawk because of school fees.
According to him, the ministry immediately ordered an investigation and requested to see the student, her parents and the school principal, but findings later showed that no student with the name mentioned exists in the school’s register.
In a telephone interview, the commissioner dismissed claims about inadequate teachers in public schools in the state, describing many of the reports circulating as false. Oyo State, he said, has one of the highest numbers of teachers in the country, insisting that the teacher–student ratio in many schools is well within acceptable standards.
He cited a recent surprise visit to Alegongo Community Secondary School, where he said he found that a school with over 870 students had 54 teachers on ground.
“This figure is far better than the UNESCO recommendation of one teacher to 40 students in secondary schools. The situation in the school translates to roughly one teacher to fewer than 20 students. The presence of many teachers helps to reduce indiscipline, hooliganism and violence among students because there are enough staff to monitor their activities.
However, Mr Olayiwola did not respond to questions on the current number of out-of-school children in the state and the measures being taken to reintegrate them into school.
This report was facilitated by DevReporting in partnership with Education As a Vaccine (EVA) and supported by the Malala Fund.