Elderly Nigerians take on gruelling work amid children’s neglect

Absence of children as a result of death or abandonment is making the elderly jump on menial jobs to survive. They see it as a lifeline and last resort amidst ineffective pro-elderly policies in the country, BABATUNDE TITILOLA reports

Seven days a week, Muibat Ilori walks three kilometres through the busy streets of Magboro in Ogun State to a small open space beside an estate to sell vegetables.

Except on Sundays, she displays her vegetables as early as nine in the morning when schools have started and closes not earlier than eight in the night.

At 73, Ilori does not see herself stopping anytime soon. The money she makes as a vegetable seller – roughly 2,500  naira per day after she has removed the capital to reinvest in the business – is her only income.

In a country hit by inflation and scarcity, it is not enough for Ilori. But does she have a choice? “I have two children,” Ilori told Sunday PUNCH.

“They left Ogun State for Lagos State to find a better life when they were youths. They only visit during the Sallah and New Year festivals. They are not living comfortably too, so I am the one sustaining myself.”

Up until 2019, Ilori survived on the generosity of kind-hearted neighbours who felt sorry for an abandoned old woman. During an encounter with a good Samaritan, she confessed that she was tired of relying on people.

The good Samaritan then spoke with the leadership of an estate in Magboro to allocate a small space on the estate’s mini-market for her to sell vegetables.

With the contributions of neighbours, she started her vegetable business. Since then, she has become less dependent on people.

“It is not enough but I am happy. I can say I have my own small money I can spend when I need to instead of waiting for people to give me money,” she said.

Ilori is just a fraction of older adults who are thrown into a life of struggling. To make ends meet, they embrace menial jobs like local construction work, street hawking, commercial driving, and housekeeping.

For two weeks, Sunday PUNCH spoke to several older people between 60 and 73 years of age in Ogun, Lagos, Edo, and Oyo states.

Some chose to do manual labour to keep up with rising living costs or to compensate for the lack of social security systems. Many said it is impossible to find better jobs elsewhere since they are within the retirement age range.

Many of them reported low wages, long working hours, and health complications related to their jobs. They expressed concerns about not being able to save adequately for retirement, leaving them feeling like they had no other options.

Despite the challenges, menial jobs offer older workers an escape route to offset expenses and continue to live.

Older adults’ fight for survival

According to its 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index survey, the National Bureau of Statistics said 63 percent of persons living in Nigeria are multidimensionally poor.

Similarly, the World Bank Group in its 2022 Nigeria Poverty Assessment, said four in every 10 Nigerians live below the poverty line; $2.15 per person per day, with poverty concentrated in rural areas and the Northern part of the country.

“It is clear that much needs to be done to help lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty, including boosting health and education, bolstering productive jobs, and expanding social protection” said World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, in 2022.

Reports further showed that older people make up a very small part of the Nigerian population. The average life expectancy in Nigeria and other African countries is the lowest globally, trailing by at least 10 years behind the global life expectancy.

Much to their surprise, many of these older people are thrown into a life of struggle immediately when they hit old age. The age that should usher in rest and comfort for the remainder of their life becomes a time when the fight for survival is renewed since they have no one to depend on.

At this point, a few rely on pensions and the benevolence of their children. The situation is, however, not the same for older people who have no children, whose children are dead, or who have been abandoned by their offspring.

Many of these adults who find themselves in this situation have turned to menial jobs – a type of work in which people earn pennies by working as labourers in an unorganised system.

Findings by Sunday PUNCH revealed that these elderly people can be found hawking in the streets, construction sites, local markets, and roadside tents trying to make ends meet.

State contractor turns commercial driver

In late 2007, 64-year-old Omotola Otitoju started struggling to survive as a mechanic along the Obafemi Awolowo Way in Ikeja, Lagos State.

“My mechanic business crashed after Babatunde Fashola came in as governor. Before then, I was contracted by the state government during Bola Tinubu’s tenure to repair and manage the vehicles used by security agents called Operation Sweep.

“They said I was not involved in politics so they terminated my contract. Everyone knew I was working for the government, so I was not getting any other job. I could not pay the annual rent for the workshop so they collected the space,” he stated. “I did not want to beg for food, so I became a commercial driver.”

There are not many qualifications needed to drive a vehicle for commercial purposes as there are thousands of Lagosians always in a rush to meet appointments.

Before Otitoju started driving, he made several calls, sent texts, and submitted applications to different people and places with the hope of getting a job as a mechanic, even if it was on contract.

He never heard back, and finally moved on to embrace his newly found career in driving.

For Otitoju, he must earn at least N1,500 daily, but with the current reality of inflation in the country, he knew he would need more than that for his family to survive.

A decade later, the Kogi-born was still surviving on the profits of driving people to their destinations. However, little did he know that prolonged sitting and accumulated stress would almost take his life.

Saved by a whisker

After 10 years of driving, Otitoju got an offer to drive the mini-Lagos bus called First and Last Mile bus which was established by the Lagos State Government in 2021 under the First and Last Mile Bus Scheme.

Every morning, he would resume to the office by 7:30 am, sign in, and take the shuttle bus to pick up passengers.

By 5:30 pm, he would close for the day and return the bus. However, when he cannot meet the target amount which he must deliver at the end of the day, he has to work beyond his regular hours to meet up.

“Because of my age then, they did not allow me to drive for longer hours. Other drivers started as early as five in the morning and closed at night. Driving is stressful. I always try to rest,” he told Sunday PUNCH.

About 15 years after the 64-year-old became a commercial driver, there was no hope of retiring soon as his children are yet to be independent.

One morning in January 2024, he was rushed to the hospital after he passed out during one of his routine drives.

“That day, I did not know what happened. I met myself in the hospital. The doctor attending to me said I had a cholesterol problem, typhoid, and malaria.

“I spent four months in the hospital and spent hundreds of thousands of naira. I could not work, talk or do anything. I was being carried around. They said I had cholesterol complications and I had too many fats in my body,” the sexagenarian told this reporter.

He said he did not know if his breakdown was caused by the driving but was sure that he had never experienced anything like that in all his years.

Asked about his children, Otitoju said they are still young and can barely fend for themselves and talk less of him.

“My wife died a while ago and I became the only one taking care of my children. My eldest child is 25 years old,” he said.

On the afternoon of September 18 when he shared his story with this reporter, Otitoju had just used his afternoon prescription.

“I am yet to fully recover and on mandatory treatment. People still help me because I am not financially strong and my children are not independent,” the man said in a low tone.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said workers in physically intensive jobs tend to have poorer health than other workers.

“There is convincing evidence of some working conditions negatively affecting health,” the group said.

The National Senior Citizens Centre, an agency in Nigeria established under the National Citizens Centre Act of 2017 to “identify the needs of senior citizens and to cater for them.”

According to its vision, the centre works to ensure an inclusive society where every older person can live a dignified, healthy, and secure life with an opportunity to continue to participate in what they value and to access appropriate care in any place of their choice.

On February 10, 2021, former president Muhammadu Buhari approved the National Policy on Ageing for Older Persons in Nigeria to improve the security, independence, and care of older adults in the country.

“We seek the approval of the policy to guarantee an improved quality of life for senior citizens in Nigeria, and strengthen the traditional support for them,” the former minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq, said during the Federal Executive Council Meeting with the president.

“To guarantee adequate and sustainable income, security, and healthy ageing, to ensure that fundamental human rights of older persons are upheld and protected and to develop a functional data management system for effective research, planning, monitoring, and evaluation of ageing programming,” Farouq was quoted while explaining the purpose of the policy.

“If I stop, I’ll be unable to feed”

There is scarcely definitive data on the participation of aged Nigerians in manual labour. What exists is a series of reports that have revealed an often invisible working class.

Despite the discovery that older adults are neglected to survive in the harsh Nigerian demography, little intervention has been made.

Meanwhile, decades of low wages, persistent inflation, and increasing high costs of living have prevented old people’s ability to save in old age as they used to be able to while they were young.

Since the average retirement age is 60 or 35 years in service, some older Nigerians are expected to rely on pensions. Those who do not expect pensions are left to secure their means of livelihood somewhere else. In the absence of children, manual jobs are the way out.

Reports showed that there is an increasing need for older people to work longer than the retirement age. Even workers who expect pensions are building other sources of income that will allow them to live conveniently after retiring.

“I cannot afford to rest,” 66-year-old Olayinka Ojetunde told Sunday PUNCH. “Even though I have retired, I have to find other things to do to survive because you cannot trust whether a pension will come or not.”

The retired primary school teacher from a government school in Oyo State said her children are doing fairly okay but cannot completely rely on them to enjoy the basic things in life.

“They send money when they can but there are some ‘small-small’ things you will need and telling them you need money will not yield any results,” the sexagenarian said.

Before retiring, Ojetunde was able to build a small shop in front of her house. She does not have funds to stock the shop yet, but she was able to save enough to purchase palm oil and other kitchen ingredients to sell to neighbours and passersby.

A psychologist, Idris Abayomi, told this reporter that older adults engaging in menial jobs to survive comes with psychological impacts. He explained that senior citizens who still exert physical and mental strength to work to earn a living would often experience mental breakdowns.

He said, “The psychological impact may be positive. One is that engaging in manual labour helps them to socialise. One major challenge older people face is being lonely. So, finding an activity to do helps them maintain social interaction and gives them a sense of purpose.

“But on the negative side, there is depression. Older people don’t have the energy of a youth. So, thinking about working in their old age when they should rest will bring in depressed feelings. It is especially worse when they cannot choose when to work and how much work they want to do.”

Abayomi said they will face stress to meet up with the job demands. According to him, working for hours only to be paid a meagre sum does not help their physical and mental health.

“They need to eat good food and take necessary medications. Low income cannot help,” he added.

What experts say

A geriatrician, Olayinka Ajomale, said there are increasing numbers of older adults who suffer as a result of abandonment and death of their children.

He said, “In social gerontology, we say that a lot of what you experience in the course of growing up will determine how your old age will be. Whether educated or not, a person can be very successful in that they will have no issues when they grow old.

“However, people who lose opportunities in their youthful days for whatever reasons may find it difficult to survive when they grow up. So, youthful days determine what happens in old age. But generally, it is quite unfortunate that people in their sixties and above have to go through manual labour to survive.”

The social worker said both the society and the government have not made adequate provisions to make life bearable for older persons.

“There are two sets of workers in this country. One is those who work in the organised private and public sectors. These workers are pensionable. The second set is those who work in the unorganised sector like market women, fishermen, carpenters, etc. These people do not have pensions.

“So, when a fisherman who has worked for 30 years becomes too old to go to the waters to fish, what happens to him? The same thing happens to a local groundnut seller who becomes too old to make groundnuts. How do these people survive in their old age when they do not have expectations from the government or the society?

“Many of these people may not have children who are financially buoyant to take care of them. Then, they become a part of marginalised groups like widows, persons with disabilities, and internally displaced persons,” he explained.

The founder of the Centre on Ageing Development and Rights of Older Persons, identified simply as Ajomale, noted that the idea of parents investing in their children for old age security is losing its value.

Ajomale said, “There is a mindset that we need to depend on our children to survive in our old age. So, sending them to school or enrolling them to learn a trade is an investment.

“The current situation in Nigeria today shows that even the children cannot take care of themselves. They graduate only to start struggling to get jobs and get paid well. How would they take care of their parents when they haven’t taken care of their own families?

“Children migrating for greener pastures also makes the elderly very vulnerable. If parents are facing this, it will be worse for elderly people with no children. There is also the issue of abandonment where children outrightly abandon their parents despite investing in them,” he added.

An advocate for social security for older people, Samuel Babajide, said the condition of thousands of older Nigerians who are left to survive by themselves is worrisome.

Speaking with Sunday PUNCH, Babajide said, “You will be surprised how many of them are living on borrowed time. Many are living with one medical condition or the other and they can die anytime. This should be a concern for society and the government too.”

“Govt has duty of care”

A professor of Economics at Covenant University, Olasupo Alege, said the government has a responsibility to take care of older people, adding that it is abnormal for an old man to carry blocks or hawk the streets to survive.

He said, “There are some people who are fortunate but not all. Even those who can care for themselves while they are working can no longer do that because of old age. Many of these elderly people have served the country in one capacity or the other. So, even when they are no longer part of the working class, they are still part of the population.

“In developed countries, once you traverse a particular age-line, you become the responsibility of the government. This is because they have been monitoring you since you were in the working class, so they know that you paid all necessary taxes and other dues.

“Even during inflation, their governments make policies to adjust the money they get so that they continue to live conveniently. But in Nigeria, what we have is palliatives, which is not impressive.”

Alege noted that the care of older people is an interest that advocates should pursue in order to make the Nigerian government become more aware of its duty to provide security and care of its senior citizens.