Lagos, Nigeria – Mujanatu Musa’s one-roomed apartment – built mainly of rusty iron sheets – cuts a sorry sight in Ajegunle, a sprawling slum in Nigeria’s economic hub of Lagos.Flanked by old, decrepit buildings, the makeshift structure shelters the 40-year-old mother and her three children, Abdulrahman, 12, and 9-year-old twins, Abdulwaris and Abdulmalik.
Since Musa and her husband separated more than three years ago, the family has been living on her irregular earnings of about 2,000 naira ($1.30) a day from hairdressing work. In dry spells when there are no customers, she is forced to borrow money from neighbours, she said.
Times are tough for the family, who fit into the fold of the 133 million, or 63 percent, of Nigeria’s population living in multidimensional poverty, according to government data.
If not for the privately run school in the community that charges low tuition and allows underprivileged parents to pay school fees with used plastic bottles, the children would have no access to formal education, Musa said.
“Their father has left us since 2020. The plastic is what helps me pay their tuition,” the mother …
