00:00You can see children like these all across Lagos.
00:04Some are barely big enough to see through the car windows.
00:09They should be at school, but they are in the streets doing what they can to earn some small change.
00:16Buy us 6 granades.
00:19Will do, calm down.
00:20How much is this one? 200?
00:22No, sir. Granades are so expensive.
00:25Every little bag of nuts Ezekiel sells helps his mother with school costs.
00:31But if the family can't collect enough, he and his brothers won't be able to go.
00:36Thank you, sir.
00:38Sometimes I work from night to night, but people don't have money to buy granades.
00:43My father has no work, so I'm helping my mom to sell so that she can pay our school fees and everything.
00:50It's the start of the new school year.
00:53Billboards advertise uniforms and equipment, but such things are out of reach for many children across Nigeria.
01:01It's the worst country in the world for out-of-school rates.
01:05Millions of broken promises.
01:08Now, Nigerian law says all children have the right to basic education,
01:14but an estimated one in three children between 6 and 15 years do not go to school.
01:19And that rate is expected to be pushed up by economic austerity measures and the resulting inflation.
01:26Children in the poorest communities are affected the most.
01:31Some who could afford to send their children to school last year now have to send them out to work.
01:37This is Ezekiel's mother.
01:40She has two other children of school age and another who's younger.
01:44This year, because the economy is getting worse, I have to carry the little one to join the older one,
01:49because gari and rice is too expensive.
01:52She would like to send them to school.
01:55Every mother wants their children to go to school and become something.
01:58If I didn't go to school, I could not be here.
02:01Just under 8% of the federal budget is spent on education,
02:06well beneath the 15 to 20% recommended by the United Nations.
02:13What comes in from the federal accounts depends not only on our resources,
02:18but on the international markets out there.
02:21And the price of oil in the international market will determine the revenue that will come to our disposal
02:27that will be meant for so many things in our economy.
02:31Ezekiel doesn't know about the oil market or rampant corruption,
02:36but he does know what he would like to be doing.
02:39If I didn't have to sell my nuts, I would read my books.
02:42He has no choice.
02:44He walks up to 10 kilometers every day, he says, and it's risky.
02:49I'm really afraid of accidents, like maybe a car hitting me when I'm selling my nuts.
02:54He's good at math, he says, and would like to become a banker.
02:58But without stable access to education,
03:00his young mind will remain one of countless in Nigeria left to fend for themselves.
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