SURVIVAL STRATEGIES OF STREET CHILDREN IN AKWA IBOM STATE, NIGERIA
Abstract
This study investigated the survival strategies of street children in Akwa Ibom State. Six research question and 3 hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted a survey research design. The population of the study consisted of all street children aged 5-18 years in Akwa Ibom State. A sample size of 150 street children was chosen for the study from the target population using convenience sampling technique. The instrument titled ‘‘ Survival Strategies of Street Children Questionnaire (SSCQ)’’ was used to gather data for the study. Correlation analysis was used to calculate the reliability of the instruments and the overall reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained which indicated that the instruments was deem adequate for the study. Various statistical method were used for data analysis. Research questions one, two, three, four and six were answered using simple percentage, while Mean and rank was used to answer research question five Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was employed to test all the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result obtained from the analysis revealed that majority of Street children in Akwa Ibom State were mostly males, between 11 – 15 years and with little or no formal education, staying in the urban areas. The parents/guardian of these street children were relatively young and with poor educational background and unskilled occupation leading to a low socio-economic status. The most common reasons for children to leave their homes to stay on the streets were poverty, physical abuse, divorce and witchcraft stigmatization. Most of the street children were in the category of children that live permanently on the street. Poverty, physical abuse and unemployment were the major factors that contribute to streetism among children in Akwa Ibom State. The mostly used survival strategies by the street children were begging, scrap picking and scavenging. Test hypothesis revealed a significant positive relationship between demographic characteristics of the children and their involvement in streetism. Significant positive relationship existed between personal characteristics of parents/guardians and children involvement in streetism. The third hypothesis testing showed a significant positive relationship between demographic characteristics of the street children and their survival strategies. The researchers recommended that the state government should evacuate street children from the street to rehabilitation centres to forestall the breeding of future criminal amongst others.
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