Write an article suitable for publication in a national newspaper on street hawking, discussing the dangers and suggesting appropriate solutions.
This task tests your ability to write an article for a national newspaper: a formal, well-organised piece of continuous prose that informs and persuades a wide adult readership. A strong response needs the recognised features of the article form (a catchy title, a by-line, a hook that draws the reader in, developed body paragraphs and a firm conclusion), a clear treatment of both parts of the task (the dangers of street hawking and appropriate solutions), and mature, accurate expression. Below is a complete model answer, followed by a note on how such an article is marked.
MODEL ARTICLE
DEATH ON OUR HIGHWAYS: THE HIDDEN COST OF STREET HAWKING
By Amara Okeke
At the busiest junction in the city, the traffic light turns red and, in an instant, an army of children pours into the road. Trays of sachet water, groundnuts, plantain chips and phone chargers ride on small heads as bare feet dance between bumpers and exhaust pipes. To the weary motorist it is an ordinary sight; to the nation it should be a scandal. Street hawking, the selling of goods along our roads and in our markets, has quietly become one of the gravest social problems of our time, and it is claiming our children before our very eyes.
The most immediate danger is the sheer threat to life and limb. A hawker chasing a fifty-naira sale will sprint across four lanes of moving traffic without a second thought. Every year, countless young sellers are knocked down, some killed outright, others left crippled for life. The road was built for vehicles, not for a marketplace, and every transaction conducted between speeding cars is a gamble with a child's life.
Beyond the traffic lies an even darker peril: exposure to crime and abuse. A child alone on the street, far from any protecting adult, is a natural target for kidnappers, traffickers and criminals who prey on the vulnerable. Girls are frequently lured with money and false promises into exploitation, while boys are drawn into stealing, drug-running and street gangs. The pavement becomes a school of vice where the syllabus is fear.
Street hawking also inflicts a slower, quieter ruin: the destruction of education. A child who hawks from dawn until dusk has neither the time nor the strength for the classroom. Denied learning, such children grow into illiterate, unskilled adults, trapped in the same poverty that first drove them onto the streets. Their wasted potential is not their loss alone; it is a debt charged to the whole nation, which forfeits the doctors, engineers and teachers those children might have become.
Finally, there are the constant hazards to health. Hour after hour, hawkers stand under a punishing sun or in drenching rain, inhaling the poisonous fumes of a thousand engines. Poorly fed and rarely rested, they fall easy victims to respiratory illness, exhaustion and infection. The trade that is meant to feed them is steadily wearing their young bodies down.
Yet this is not a hopeless situation, for every one of these dangers has a remedy within our reach. First, the government must not only pass but firmly enforce laws that forbid children from hawking during school hours, and must hold accountable the parents and guardians who send them out. A law that is never enforced is merely an insult on paper.
Secondly, we must attack the root, which is poverty. Truly free and compulsory basic education, backed by school-feeding schemes, scholarships and modest support for the poorest families, would remove the desperation that pushes parents to trade a child's future for a day's income. When a family can survive without its children's earnings, the streets will begin to empty of their own accord.
Thirdly, the authorities should build proper markets and well-sited stalls so that legitimate trading is carried on in safe, organised spaces rather than on lethal carriageways. Alongside this, a sustained public campaign, on radio, in the press and in our places of worship, should awaken every citizen to the true price of the goods bought through a car window.
Street hawking, then, is far more than a harmless roadside inconvenience. It endangers the lives, the morals, the health and the very future of the children who practise it, and it robs the nation of the leaders it is meant to raise. The solution lies not with government alone but with all of us: lawmakers, parents, teachers and ordinary citizens acting together. Let us resolve, today, to lift our children off the highways and set their feet firmly on the path to school, for the child selling water at the traffic light this morning could be the mind that transforms this nation tomorrow.
NOTE ON HOW THE ARTICLE IS MARKED
An article of this type is assessed under four headings. Understanding them shows why the model above earns a top-band grade:
- Format: The response must clearly be an article, not a letter, speech or essay. The model supplies the expected features: an arresting, relevant headline, a by-line naming the writer, a paragraph that hooks the reader with a vivid scene, logically developed body paragraphs and a rounded conclusion. It does not open with "Dear Sir" or "Ladies and gentlemen", which would wrongly signal a letter or a speech.
- Content: The task has two duties, the dangers and the solutions, and both must be handled fully. The model develops four distinct dangers (accidents, crime and abuse, lost education, ill health) and three matched solutions (enforcement of law, tackling poverty through education and welfare, and provision of safe markets), each explained rather than merely listed. Ideas that are relevant, developed and clearly relevant to a national readership score highest; a bare list of points does not.
- Expression (organisation and language): Marks here reward a controlled, mature register suited to a newspaper, effective paragraphing with one clear idea per paragraph, varied sentence structure, apt vocabulary and smooth linking of ideas (first, secondly, yet, finally). Persuasive touches such as the closing appeal lift the writing into the top band.
- Mechanical accuracy: Spelling, punctuation, grammar, tense consistency and correct use of capital letters are checked throughout. Frequent errors of this kind pull a script down even when its ideas are good, so a top-band answer keeps such slips to a minimum.
Examination takeaway: When a paper says "write an article ... discussing the dangers and suggesting appropriate solutions", treat the two underlined demands as a checklist and give each a substantial, roughly balanced share of your writing. Open with a title and by-line, hook the reader in your first lines, devote one developed paragraph to each point, and close with a firm, memorable conclusion. Full marks depend on satisfying the format, covering both halves of the content, and keeping your language and mechanics clean, not on merely producing a long piece.
