J. O. ARANSIOLA
acted laws to protect the rights of the Child. For instance, The
Parliament of the Republic of Ghana (1998) enacted the Chil-
dren’s Act 560 1998, while The Parliament of Kenya (2001)
enacted children’s Act 8 in 2001among others.
In line with these developments at the global and continental
levels, the Federal Government of Nigeria (2003) promulgated
a Child Rights Act in 2003 and there are many programmes
emerging for the support of street children in Nigeria. These
programmes include the provision of support in the area of
feeding, clothing, housing, medical care and education. These
events marked significant landmarks in ameliorating the prob-
lems of street children in the country.
In Nigeria, remand homes which is one of the units under the
Social welfare department is the government agency dealing
with children’s problems and since the promulgation of the
Nigerian Child Rights Acts 2003, the unit had been saddled
with the responsibilities of addressing the needs of delinquent
children including the street children in Nigeria. The unit has
major offices in all the state capitals across the country with
other offices in all major towns across the federation. There are
also some NGOs and Civil Society organisations working to
support the street children across many cities in Nigeria.
Despite all these efforts, the problem of street children seems
unabated while it is becoming a permanent feature of the Nige-
rian societies. While efforts have been made to assess the chal-
lenges leading to increase in the number of street children
(Aransiola, Bamiwuye, Akinyemi, & Ikuteyijo, 2009; Fitz-
gibbon, 2003), the coping strategies of the children on the
streets (Aransiola & Agunbiade, 2009; Malindi & Theron, 2010;
Mizen & Ofosu-Kusi, 2010; Oduro, 2012), the network of sup-
ports from street children’s perspectives in Nigeria (Aransiola
& Agunbiade, 2009; Faloore, 2009) and the attitudes of these
children to the supports available for them (Aransiola & Akin-
yemi, 2010), there has not been any effort to assess the prob-
lems and limitations confronting the stakeholders in providing
supports for the children. Therefore the focus of this article is to
assess the problems and limitations confronting the stake-
holders in providing adequate, attractive and sustainable sup-
ports to the children with a view to identify workable and sus-
tainable policy options. The objectives of this article therefore
are to:
1) Examine the problems and challenges of all the stake-
holders in providing support for street children in Nigeria; and
2) Identifying possible policy options in the light of inabil-
ities of the stakeholders to adequately support the children.
Methods
This study was conducted in Lagos, Kaduna and Port Har-
court located in three different locations with different cultural
orientations in Nigeria. The study was carried out in the cities
of Lagos, Kaduna and Port Harcourt, which are three of the
locations where street children are largely concentrated in Ni-
geria. The selected cities reflect the three main cultural diversi-
ties in Nigeria. Lagos is located in the south-western part of
Nigeria on the narrow coastal plain of the Bight of Benin. Al-
though, predominantly a Yoruba town, there is no other ethnic
group in Nigeria that is not found in the city being the comer-
cial heart of Nigeria and street children were physically present
across different areas of the town.
Kaduna town was founded by the British in 1913 and later
became the capital of Nigeria’s former Northern Region from
1917 to 1967. It is one of the most important political centre and
important commercial centre in Northern Nigeria. There were so
many quranic schools in the town just like a typical Northern
Cities and street children from these schools and other sources
were in their thousands on the street of the town. On the other
hand, Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, is the heart of the
hydrocarbon industry and is responsible for a huge chunk of the
nation’s foreign exchange earnings. The town is Nigeria’s sec-
ond busiest seaport and has a busy international airport with
regular links to all parts of the country and major cities of the
world. It is the second largest commercial and industrial centre
in Nigeria. Street children were also physically present in the
town in their thousands and this has been constantly linked to the
activities of the oil industries which have led to high poverty
situation among its inhabitants.
In each of the selected cities, the government agency as rep-
resented by the Social Welfare Department, Non-Governmental
Organisations, Other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and
the Community members were focused as key stakeholders.
Although the street children themselves are important key
stakeholders, they were not focused in this study because their
assessments and attitudes towards the supports networks avail-
able for them have been covered in earlier articles (Aransiola,
Agunbiade, Ikuteyijo, & Bamiwuye, 2009; Aransiola & Akin-
yemi, 2010 respectively). Five Key Informant interviews were
conducted in each of the cities selected for this study. These
include two key government officials which were combined
with observations of the facilities in the remand homes and
three civil society organization leaders such as a church leader,
an imam and a lawyer. In each study location, three (3) NGOs
were purposively selected based on the services they render for
the street children and semi-structured interview were con-
ducted with at least one representative of each of the NGOs.
The interview guide comprises of the NGOs’ their mission
mandate, reasons for supporting the streets children and the
kinds of supports they provide for the street children. It also
includes questions on the sources of their funding, the facilities
they have and the problems they encounter in supporting the
street children. Six Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were
conducted in each of the communities with different categories
of community members namely; opinion leaders (male and
female) (two), adult (male and female) (two), and youth (male
and female) (two). Each FGD group will have eight to 12 par-
ticipants. Each FGD included between 8 and 12 participants.
The FGD participants were selected in the same neighbour-
hoods with the street children in order to ensure that data were
collected from community members who have adequate knowl-
edge about the children.
The qualitative data collected using Focus Group Discus-
sions and in-depth interviews were analyzed using content
analysis carried out with the help of the Text Base Beta Com-
puter software. Data were carefully edited before importing it
into the computer software. The data were then coded and
sorted thematically according to the research objectives. The
data from the content analysis were then presented using the
ZY index tables.
Characteristics of the Stakeholders
The characteristics of the stakeholders included in this study
are described here. The FGD participants’ age across the three
locations ranged between 25 and 75 years and included opinion
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