{"id":8914,"date":"2013-08-24T03:40:11","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T03:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disnaija.com\/nigerian-newspapers\/the-beggars-are-here-again\/"},"modified":"2013-08-24T03:40:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T03:40:11","slug":"the-beggars-are-here-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/the-beggars-are-here-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The beggars are here again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When the Lagos State government moved against street begging a couple of months ago, it drew different reactions. But the beggars stayed off the streets. FUNMI SALOME JOHNSON reports that they are now back.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Moderately dressed with nice colour combination and a good grasp of Queen\u2019s English, Mama Orobo as she is popularly called is a beggar who is based around Mushin area in Lagos. She approaches anybody to obtain money from them, under various hoaxes which include that she forgot her ATM card at home or that she knows them somewhere.<\/p>\n

Although based in Mushin, she moves around to different places like Ikeja, Ojota and a few other places where she carries on her acts. \u201cGood afternoon sir, please I left my ATM card at home and I need to fuel my car now, pointing to a parked Range Rover SUV across. Please sir can you help me with any amount to fuel my car?\u201d this woman asked.<\/p>\n

Out of compassion someone who was about to make a withdrawal at an Automated Teller Machine, ATM, located around Ikeja, gave her N1000. She gladly accepted the currency note with thanks; but instead of moving towards the SUV, she walked across and approached another passer-by, obviously with the sole aim to use the same guise to beg money. They are everywhere, young and old alike; some well dressed while others are tattered.<\/p>\n

They, however, have the same objective: beg money off their fellow human beings. Not too long ago, the Lagos State government moved some beggars to Onitsha, Anambra State all in a bid to rid the state of beggars and destitute.<\/p>\n

In spite of that action, visits to some parts of the megacity like Ikeja, Ikotun, and Oshodi reveal that the beggars have returned to the streets. Saturday Mirror spoke with one of these beggars his name is Yusuph and his base is in Ikeja along on the pedestrian bridge.<\/p>\n

Yusuph told Saturday Mirror that with the turn of events in the state concerning the decision to rid it of beggars, life has been very tough for him lately. \u201cLife has been so unbearable for us especially with the ban on street begging.<\/p>\n

I am helpless and do not have a job and cannot feed, that is why I am out here to beg instead of stealing. All I am out to get is some money to feed myself,\u201d he added. When asked of any family member that could take care of him, Yusuph said he had that he has none; more so that he is a cripple. To him, instead of the government ferrying them back to their home states or imprisoning them for begging, they should be helped and rehabilitated. \u201cThe government should help us because we are helpless and we don\u2019t want to steal that is why we go out to beg.<\/p>\n

They should give us money to trade so we can make a living out that and stop begging\u201d he said. Another beggar, Anuoluwapo Akiode, popularly known as Agba, who begs around the BRT Park in Oshodi, narrated his ordeal while in jail for seven months for begging despite his condition.<\/p>\n

Agba is a forty something year old man in the body of a lame two-yearold. He sits on a make-shift barrow and drags himself around. \u201cIt has not been easy being on the streets. I was jailed for seven months for begging but here I am again out here begging. I would have loved to stay at home and do business too but I don\u2019t have the resources to fend for myself that is why I\u2019m begging. I just wish government will find a place in their hearts to help us.<\/p>\n

The situation is very critical,\u201d the man with a sad face intoned. In the past, beggars were simply people with one form of disability or the other and hid under their disabilities to beg for alms. However the reverse is the case nowadays as many people have chosen begging as a fulltime profession.<\/p>\n

Funny enough begging pays their bills, puts food on their tables and also clothes them. Some state governments recently, in their attempts to sanitise public places, clamped down on beggars, returned non-indigenes to their various states of origin while those who are indigenes were sent to rehabilitation camps. This move has, however, been considered in some quarters as bearing a political undertone. Some organisations like the civil society condemned the action of the state government over the issue.<\/p>\n

Reacting to this condemnation, the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Youth and Social Development, Dr. Dolapo Badru, stated that the current administration respected the rights of persons living with disabilities, adding that it would, however, not bend the law when such groups of persons fall foul of the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cNearly every day when my men go on enforcement, this same set of people draw daggers and knives on my staff; they stab and bite them to evade arrest because they broke the law and when such a person is taken to court to be convicted, a person sits down in his airconditioned office raining abuses on us for doing what is right,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

He noted that some of those convicted posed as beggars in the traffic to rob unsuspecting motorists. He vowed that government would not stop its clampdown on them until the trend was nipped in the bud. Undermining this, a visit to some other areas of Lagos has shown that the beggars have in a subtle manner returned to the streets.<\/p>\n

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Posted in Nigerian Newspapers. <\/a>A DisNaija.Com<\/a> network.<\/p>\n

Source: National Mirror Newspaper<\/p>\n

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