The growing industry of street begging

By Yemi Olakitan 

The issue of street begging in major cities of Nigeria is a worrisome subject to many, particularly in Lagos, Onit

sha, Kaduna and other major cities of the Northern states. It has become a common phenomenon for beggars to eke out a living on account of one physical disability or the other. Some use babies to attract sympathy while others pretend to be stranded and in need of help. Ag Head of investigations, Yemi Olakitan examines what is apparently a multimillion naira “industry”.

The issue of begging in Nigeria is a long standing social phenomenon, which in certain places especially in the North, cuts across generations. It is usually tolerated based on religious or cultural beliefs that often dedicate an obligation to help the poor.

However, it has been established that begging has a negative implications for the economies of the cities, the environment and the beggars themselves.

The growing population of beggars in Nigeria constitutes a blemish or environmental nuisance and a health hazard, particularly those carrying infectious and contagious diseases. Some scholars argue that begging has serious implications for Nigerians and the economy as beggars are not productive and contribute nothing to the economy.

Beggars portray a bad image to visitors, tourists and foreign investors and unless government develops a practical policy that will cater for the welfare of the poor and remove beggars from the streets, they will continue to pose a problem to the society. The situation is also dangerous because criminals disguise as beggars to perpetuate evil deeds. The story is still fresh in mind of the notorious cannibal, Clifford Orji, who pretended to be mad, waylaid and murdered many people right in the middle of Lagos and ate their body parts or sold them for ritual purposes.

He was reported to have died in prison while awaiting trial.

However, beggars continue to be part of the Nigerian society. Lagos, the commercial capital of the country has a large share of the nation’s beggars. In Lagos, beggars can be seen in very corner of the state. At most strategic roads, many with some form of diseases are carried and put at the center of the road with men and women with sacks in their hands soliciting for money.

Religious places of worship are one of the favourite places for beggars in Lagos.

According to Deaconess Shola Abimbola of the Global Church of the Living God, “In Lagos, it is not uncommon to see beggars in various religious centers particularly churches. There are people who come to church, well dressed and looking well and what they do every Sunday is to beg for money.

“I think Lagos is a preferred destination for beggars in this country and many of the beggars you see on the streets are not even Nigerians. They are from neighboring countries such as Niger, Chad, and Cameroun.”

Friday prayers at the thousands of mosques scattered across the country are also targeted by beggars, who capitalise on Islamic injunctions concerning alms to beg from Muslims.

However, the authorities are not happy with the situation.

In 2013, the Lagos state Government launched a war against begging in the state Governor Babatunde Fashola vowed to eradicate all forms of begging.

The governor stated that the law against begging must be enforced to ensure that beggars were stamped out of the streets of Lagos, as their activities constituted nuisance to the public and the government. Fashola, said there was no reason why people should beg for alms on the streets of Lagos when they could easily learn some vocational skills.

“When we say people shouldn’t beg on our street, we mean it. The reason is that begging is not an option here.

Everyone must contribute to this economy and those who have drug problem or illness have the choice to visit our remand homes where we feed them, rehabilitate and treat them.

“So, we have provided a choice and there is a law against street begging and we will enforce it,” he stated.

The governor added that several people had been trained at the vocational centers and had become very useful to the society, stressing that those begging for alms could also make themselves available for training in order to become useful to the society.

He explained that the Lagos State Remand Home and Skill Acquisition Centre, Isheri, was developed over the last years essentially out of nothing.

The governor said the wood work section at the centre was where a lot of the state’s school furniture was being made adding that the boots worn by officials of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority and Neighborhood Watch were being made at the footwear centre.

“We have been to the refrigeration unit of the centre where they teach them basic refrigeration, maintenance, operational and management skills. The young ladies make foot mats, dresses and all of that.

Other state governors such as Enugu State Governor, Sullivan Chime had vowed to get beggars off the road in his state, saying street begging was an offence under the law.  Governor Abdul Fatah Ahmed of Kwara State also thought it wise to put in place certain measures aimed at discouraging people from street begging.

Reports say more women have turned beggars in Kwara State. These women reports daily in public offices to beg for alms, claiming that they had contributed to the electoral victories of public officers.

According to the law, any person who hawks or wanders about to beg for alms is guilty of the offence while any person who encourages or facilitates any act of street begging is equally guilty.

Besides, any person who contravenes the provisions of the law would be guilty of an offence and would be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding N5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding three months or both.

The law has defined alms to mean money, food, clothes or other material things. At one of his monthly media chats, Governor Ahmed described as unfortunate, the myriad social problems confronting the country, resulting to a few people going into street begging as a profession.

He said his administration has created a rehabilitation programme under the ministry of social welfare to ensure that a lot of skill acquisition centers across the state are put into use, wondering why many people particularly the beggars have refused to take advantage of this.

The governor noted that the increasing presence of beggars in the state was largely as a result of the evacuation done in other states where they just bundled them into vehicles and dropped them indiscriminately in different locations of the country.

While those states have their own laws to contend with, he said, his state also has its own and would not bend the rules simply because they want to take care of the less-privileged.

He called on beggars to take advantage of the systematic programme government put in place for their rehabilitation; he warned that to take to street begging was to contravene the law as government’s door is wide open to support beggars who seek rehabilitation.

Investigations by Sunday Mirror shows that begging still continues despite the government efforts aimed at curbing it and the laws put in place to arrest offenders. It was found that some of them are controlled by “godfathers” who are entitled to a ‘cut’ of the money they get on a daily basis in return for ‘protection’.

Ezekiel Keith, a Lagosian and social commentator, says begging in Lagos is worrisome. “It is something the Lagos State Government has not succeeded in curbing despite the megacity status of the state, the law and the rehabilitation centers. It is not uncommon to see beggars wherever you turn to in Lagos begging for food or money. You would think that it is because they are disabled but some are able-bodied men and women with no apparent disability except laziness and poverty. You will find them on the streets, bus stops and garages, even children are not excluded. Sometimes, one will see women with children begging for alms, at other times; you may find children running after you, pulling on your clothes asking you for money. These things still go on.”

Some people believe that the Almajiri system practiced in the North has ensured that a high number of children are perpetually on the streets begging for alms. Nigeria’s Almajiris are the worst of beggars. These street urchins are a product of that system and impoverished homes. They are deserted or are turned out from their homes as early in life as age five or six, and sent to  live with Quran teachers in local madrassa also called “makaranta alo” (Arabic schools), which are mostly dilapidated “dormitories” constructed from rotten corrugated roofing sheets or inferior bricks.

The pupils’ learning materials are torn fragments of papers with portions of the Qur’an or small wooden slates known in the Hausa dialect as “alo”. “Alo” is used to write down verses of the Qur’an to be memorized.

The Senate President, David Mark had recently charged Northern governors to ban the ‘Almajiri’ system. He had argued that the Almajiri system is counterproductive and is a breeding ground for miscreants.

According to Elder Theophilus Ajibola, an educationist, Almajiris system is the worst thing that has even happened to the Nigerian child. “This is where children are indoctrinated into another form of Islam by perverted and paranoid Islamic teachers to become violent. These children often grow up to have a negative view of life, it is from such ones that terrorist find willing recruits,’’ he said.

Mr. Babatunde Adisa, a Lagos state businessman, who spoke on the subject, said, “poverty and desperation create the right environment and fertile ground for religious extremism. The only reason why terrorism thrives in the Northern part of the country is because the environment there is conducive for it. Why is it that there is no terrorism in Saudi Arabia or in Qatar, where Islam is the major religion? If you get to these countries, you will think that you are in heaven. The poverty level there is low. Nobody wants to blow themselves up with a bomb there. Beggars should be rehabilitated. Those who can work should be positively engaged in our farms. The Lagos State Government alone cannot handle it. It is a national problem that must be handled from the federal government to the state governments and the local communities”, he said

However, Mohamed Teid, a Muslim activist, said that the religion obliges Muslim to cater for beggars.

“Islam has obliged us to cater for the needy in our midst so that they will have no cause to beg on the streets. If we are truly believers in the teachings of Islam, We will see that the religion has made a number of provisions to cater for beggars. There would be no beggars on the streets if we practice the provision of the Islam. There is Zakat, the compulsory charity that should be taken from the rich and distributed among, or expended for, the needy, to establish its importance, Zakat is not given by the rich but taken from their wealth annually. Sharia would have solved the problems of begging in the North but it was restricted to chasing away prostitutes and banning alcohol”.

Reverend Andrew Akinsuyi, a Nigerian-Canadian, who is also the president of a Christian charity organisation, named Salvation of God Mission, said some beg out of poverty while others are simply lazy.

He said, “In Canada there are beggars. It is a worldwide phenomenon. There are people who are genuinely poor and there are people who are lazy and do not wish to work but prefer to beg. There is nothing you can do to these kinds of people, they will always beg. They may not be physically challenged, begging is in their mentality. It is a disease of the mind.

“Many of these people need professional counseling to leave the streets even if you give them work or a house, they will still go back to the streets. It is a disease of the mind. There is something they do in Canada which I will love to introduce in Nigeria if I have sponsorship for it. They establish food bank for the poor. Individuals and corporate entities donate food items to certain centers and the poor can go there and collect food. It is a very laudable programme and I wish that we can emulate the system in Nigeria. The federal and state government must work together if we must eradicate begging in our nation. They must establish rehabilitation centers, vocational training centers and ensure that every Nigerian, no matter how physically challenged, can be productively engaged. The society itself must not live the work in the hands of the government because the poor will always remain among us. We must all join hands together in tackling the menace by providing training. Rehabilitation, opportunities for beggars and every Nigerian so that they can be removed from the streets”.

However, the Dean of Post-Graduate School, Nigerian Defence Academy Professor Adam Okene, called for synergy among state governors in the northern parts of the country to eradicate the problem of Alamajiri and street begging.

According to him, 30 per cent of children in the North are street beggars, while recent research showed that the North-west geo-political zone of the country accounts for 70 per cent of the beggars in the country.

Perhaps it was in recognition of the disturbing trend that President Goodluck Jonathan initiated about 124 Almajiri Models Schools across the country, especially in the North. He personally commissioned the first set of 35 Almajiri Model Schools constructed by Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund. The symbolic commissioning exercise was done in Sokoto.

These 64 schools that are on stream are those built on behalf of the administration by UBEC. The 64 schools are located at: Adamawa, Borno, Gombe, Bauchi, Yobe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, Oyo, Osun, Lagos, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Rivers, Kogi, Niger, Katsina, Taraba and Nasarawa States.
This was part of a drive to completely tackle the out-of-school children challenge that is negatively affecting the nation’s overall development.

The consequences of the ubiquitous presence of the Almajiris across the North and in other parts of the country are felt by all Nigerians.

Beyond the construction and furnishing of these schools, the Jonathan administration developed specialised curricula in 11 subjects that are taught in these schools to enhance quick assimilation for the boys. The curricula, which flow with the mainstream basic education curriculum were based on the culture and needs of the Almajiris.
Many have raised fears about the sustainability of this programme.

However, the Supervising Minister of Education Barr.  Ezenwo Nyesom Wike said the directive of the President on continued engagement with stakeholders at all levels will be carried out.
Another important step towards sustaining and expanding the gains of this programme was a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between the Federal Government and State Governments on the running of these schools.

It covers the running of the schools, maintenance of infrastructure, enrolment drive, employment of qualified teaching and non teaching staff, provision of uniforms and writing materials and the provision of day-to-day running expenses of the schools.

The MOU also provides for the protection of facilities at the schools, impact assessment after pre-determined periods of operation and submission of quarterly reports by State Universal Basic Education Boards, SUBEBS, to UBEC. The last major component of the MOU is ensuring that sustainable provision for the feeding of the Almajiris in the schools is always on ground.
Also, the Jonathan administration developed and produced a National Framework for the Development and Integration of the Almajiri Education into basic education.

This framework is to serve as a guide to states, local governments and nongovernmental organisations to key into this project aimed at providing quality education to these less privileged Nigerians.

It is however no clear how this programme is being implemented now especially with the raging insurgency situation in the North, which has led to over two million people being displaced from their homes and communities with many already destitute, a factor that is bound increase the population of beggars across the nation.