LeidenASA Seminar: Children’s Education and Inclusive Development in Nigeria. Exploring Multicultural Preferences for Redistributing Economic Obligations through Law

Read Dr Adegbite's presentation.

Dr Adegbite's research focus is on Nigerian laws and their interactions with international agreements on children’s rights and inclusive development. Unlike children’s rights laws, international developmental agenda accepts children as individuals with capacities to benefit and contribute to economic growth. While both structures agree on the role of education in human development, the former de-emphasizes the children’s economic capabilities, while the latter seeks to maximize all potential within efficient human right standards. Most works have argued on children’s rights to human capital development through education, but due to ideological discrepancies in the conception of childhood, child labor and also the caretaker’s insistence on recognition on the basis of affection, not many studies have attended to structures of law that protect children’s rights to education with little regard for their economic freedom. Within existing jurisprudence, this work examines the Nigerian statutes and Yoruba Customary Law on child education and economic empowerment.

Dr Adegbite's study utilized the Capability Theory on child empowerment. Primary and secondary sources of law were used to explain the marginalized status of productive Nigerian children. A cursory overview of international age laws revealed that all children are vertically marginalized by reasons of young age. However, this standard does not preclude those other children that are horizontally distanced from their counterparts due to further vulnerable circumstances (poverty). Therefore, the research sought ways by which Nigerian laws may be refocused to enable a standard similar to what obtains under the European Social Charter. The goal is to ensure that African children are not left behind; stuck in universal discrepancies and uncertainties. All children should not only have the right to education within practical curricula that suits their peculiarities, they should also have their economic freedom. Recommendations prefer frameworks that align the essence of education with children’s work to structures that prioritize one for the other.

Please be aware that, as a (sandwich) lunch will be served, registration is compulsory.