Between Adetoun and the Sweeping Woman -By Zayd Ibn Isah

A video of rights activist Adetoun scolding a woman for going out to sweep with her eleven-year-old daughter recently trended on social media. Surprisingly, it didn’t sit well with most Nigerians, who in turn scolded Adetoun for recording a woman and her daughter who were simply trying to make an honest living to put food on their table. Many Nigerians were of the opinion that even if the woman had violated the Child Rights Act by going out with her underaged daughter to sweep, there were better ways to correct or address the issue without filming her and posting it online. To them, what Adetoun did only amounted to clout chasing and a violation of their rights to privacy.

Now, the essence of this article is not to further chastise Adetoun for her actions—as she has owned up to her mistake and even gone to the woman’s house to apologise—but to address the “Adetoun” in all of us. The advent of social media has created an avalanche of emergency journalists competing with the mainstream media over who will break the news first—so much so that even when faced with situations requiring urgent intervention, they would rather pull out their phones, record the unfolding event, and rush to post it on social media for likes, shares, and engagement.

Take, for example, the brutal killing of the late Professor Dora Akunyili’s husband, Dr. Chike Akunyili, in Anambra by the so-called unknown gunmen. During an interview, one of their sons, Obumnaeme Akunyili, revealed that he found out about his father’s death on social media. How devastating, and how utterly insensitive.

Even while his father was lying in a pool of blood, still breathing, onlookers did nothing. They didn’t just stand by and watch—some went as far as recording his final moments and posting the videos online. Imagine if they had used the time spent filming to rush him to the nearest hospital. Perhaps he might have survived. Even if it was his time to die, would it not have been better to let him at least die in the care of professionals, rather than on the roadside, under the cold lenses of strangers’ phones? Sadly, there are countless examples just like this.

I was particularly pained by how Dr. Chike died. This is the man who made the home comfortable for the late Professor Dora Akunyili while she was in the trenches, fighting the menace of fake drugs. Dr. Chike himself dedicated his life to saving others as a medical practitioner, and yet, when it was time for his own life to be saved, those he had made sacrifices for stood by while he breathed his last.

And what about more recent cases? What about the case of Adetunji Opayele, fondly known as TeeJay, who tragically passed away after being struck by a car while riding his bike?
TeeJay was knocked unconscious upon impact with the vehicle, which belonged to and was driven by one Biola Adams-Odutayo. In a better society, emergency medical care would have saved TeeJayʼs life. Unfortunately, witnesses who rushed to help by pleading with Biola to assist in taking TeeJay to the hospital were met with a most ridiculous excuse: she allegedly refused to step out of her vehicle because she didn’t want blood to stain her car. To top off this insanity, Biola stayed on a phone call for over 30 minutes while TeeJay lay on the ground, fighting for his life. After several failed attempts to find a vehicle willing to help TeeJay, he was taken to two hospitals that refused to admit him. When he was finally admitted into one, he passed away shortly after midnight.

And what, also, about the case of the pregnant woman in labour who tragically passed away after allegedly being denied treatment at a hospital due to her inability to pay a ₦500,000 deposit? There is a heartbreaking video of the ordeal this woman went through, which was recorded by her husband, Akinbobola Folajimi, before gaining widespread attention on X (Twitter). In the video, the expectant mother is seen inside a car with her husband, visibly weak as he desperately tries to keep her conscious by repeatedly calling her name and urging her to stay strong for their children.

These cases expose a glaring inadequacy of empathy in our society which runs alongside a severe failure of our systems to prioritise human lives. It might be that actual human lives have no value in Nigeria, and that is a disquieting fact to admit. In the centre of all this, even in matters of life-and-death, lies the tendency to reach for a phone. While Biola was on a phone call for 30 minutes as TeeJay struggled for his life, Folajimi chose to record his dying wife in her moments of agony. If Folajimi had even gone live on social media to inform his compatriots about his predicament at the private hospital with his pregnant wife, and also plead for help, maybe a Good Samaritan would have offered to offset the hospital bill. Instead, he posted the recorded video of his wife’s predicament after she had died to call out the hospital for refusing to treat his wife without a deposit of 500,000 naira. What was there to gain? Medicine after death?

In Adetoun’s case, she should have simply educated the street sweeper on the implications of her actions. There was no need to pull out a phone to record the humiliation she meted out. It’s quite possible the woman had no knowledge of the laws relating to child labour, or perhaps the daughter had volunteered to help her struggling mother ease the burden. And honestly, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that—because an eleven-year-old girl is not too young to sweep, wash plates, or handle other light chores. Following her mother to sweep the streets when school wasn’t in session doesn’t quite qualify as hard labour to warrant such outrage. Many of us did far more in our childhoods.

If the woman had another option, she wouldn’t be sweeping the streets to earn a living.

Away from Adetoun’s story, we need to address the broader issues of child labour and child begging. These twin problems are becoming increasingly rampant across the country. It is not unusual to see children hawking bottled soft drinks, sachet water, or even snacks during school hours. According to UNICEF, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, with over 18.3 million children currently out of school. That is a staggering number which unfortunately increases by the day.

But what’s even more disturbing is seeing parents deliberately sending out their children to beg for alms, just to feed.

I’ve personally been approached by children as young as three or four, begging me for money to buy food. In one recent encounter, I asked the older child where their parents were, and he casually replied, “They’re at home.” I threatened to arrest their parents if I ever saw them begging again. Out of anger, I chased the children away without giving them anything. But as they disappeared into the crowd, my conscience pricked me. I should have given them something at least. Sometimes, it really isn’t their fault. “Na condition make crayfish bend”, as we say in Pidgin.

In a delightful spin to the controversy stirred up by Adetoun’s actions, Nigerian chess champion, Tunde Onakoya, made a post on X, offering a scholarship to the little girl whose mum was embarrassed in such a manner. I found Onakoyaʼs statement on this matter to be particularly positive in a way that indicates how we should treat people nowadays. He said that it was “extremely cruel” to humiliate a mother in front of her daughter like that, and even worse to have it recorded and posted online, noting that “the poverty that pushes one to hide their labour in the dark is a painful one.” Onakoya emphasised the need for compassion over clout-chasing, overly-righteous outrage and offered the eleven-year-old girl a scholarship from Secondary School to University level.

The mere sight of children begging often reminds me of the late Professor Chukwuemeka Ike’s novel—“Our Children Are Coming”. It was a cry of protest, an outpouring of frustration from a generation betrayed by the very society meant to protect and nurture them. Today, that cry is louder than ever. As a nation, we must decide: will we continue to film and scroll past the suffering of our children, or will we rise to confront the conditions that rob them of their innocence? If we must use our phones, let it be to call for help—not to document another person’s despair for fleeting validation or fickle sympathy. In the end, our humanity is not measured by how many views we get, but by how we choose to treat the vulnerable when no one is watching, and what brave lengths we can go to in order to save a life.

Zayd Ibn Isah can be reached at lawcadet1@gmail.com