Despite efforts by successive administrations to get rid of beggars in the Federal Capital Territory, the menace is increasingly becoming alarming. In this report, GBENGA OMOKHUNU x-rays the situation.
In the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), street begging is a menace that is getting worse by the day. Virtually everywhere in the nation’s capital, the unpleasant social phenomenon is visible. Beggars are importunate people who will do nothing but demand things of strangers: money, food, shelter or other utilities.
The beggars are usually found in front of big churches, banks, hotels, inside filling stations, in motor parks, markets and along major streets and roads. Most of them have no homes and as such; they sleep in odd places not quite different from where they beg alms.
Begging could be defined as a practice of imploring people to grant one a favour which could be money, food, or clothes, among other things, without reciprocation or refund. Begging has also been described as an act where some young children are co-opted into leading blind, older people clutching onto long canes and going from vehicles to vehicles, individuals to individuals while chanting the same lines repeatedly as they accost members of the public with appealing songs and soliciting alms.
Many believe that the influx of beggars into the territory in recent times may have partly defeated the purpose for which the FCT was founded. An Abuja resident, Ibrahim Usman recounted how he was accosted by a well-dressed man at Wuse Market one evening with a story of how he forgot his wallet at the office as he hastened to leave, and how he could not retrieve it as the office would have been locked.
“Assessing his dressing and composure, I believed his story and gave him money, only for me to run into the same man weeks later at Jabi Park telling the same tale to another unsuspecting person.”
In Abuja, beggars are mostly common around Wuse market, Berger, Area 1, Nyanya, Lugbe, Kubwa, Maitama, Banex Plaza, AYA roundabout, all major bus stops and in almost all the six area councils. The experience of many Abuja residents revealed how beggars claim to be short of transport fare to get to the next point for a job or business.
Few years back, a Special Task Team on Abuja Environmental Protection broke a syndicate of suspected suppliers of beggars to strategic locations in Abuja. Subsequently, the Abuja Environment Protection Board (AEPB), is always going round the city to clear beggars and possibly repatriate them to their state as many are not residing in Abuja.
The latest was the recent arrest of a 48-year-old Hadiza Ibrahim, a notorious street beggar caught with five hundred thousand naira and one hundred dollar notes. There are insinuations that Hadiza, with the security situation in Abuja, might be involved in criminal activities like drugs peddling, arms dealing, kidnapping, among other crimes, to have gathered such a huge amount of money as a beggar. Many said she may be using the act of begging to disguise.
After investigation, Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) revealed that preliminary security profiling of Hadiza, who was caught in the act by the Social Development Secretariat (SDS) at a junction along Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent in Wuse II clearly established that she was not into any nefarious acts. Acting Director, SDS, Malam Sani Amar, while briefing on the issue, said as part of its profiling, the police personnel attached to its enforcement team, were given time to play their role, and it was clearly established that she was innocent of the allegations.
“Within our little knowledge and experience in discharging our duty, with the assistance of security personnel attached to us, we understand that Hadiza was not involved in any criminal activities.
“And if you look at the money found in her possession, it accumulated overtime. And the profiling we did on her, and we gave the police in our team, time to play their role, and they did what they can, and it was clearly established that she is not into such nefarious acts. She was so wise to have selected the areas of her own begging business, where she realizes huge money daily.”
According to him, Hadiza, who hails from Zaria, in Kaduna State is one of the die-hard beggars that had been severally apprehended by the secretariat’s taskforce from the streets in highbrow areas. He added that from their assessment within a decade that they have been apprehending notorious beggars, she seems to be socially deformed – not mentally, even as he described her as an “economic saboteur.’’
The FCTA official, however, appealed to the public to stop giving alms to beggars on the streets and junctions, adding that the act is encouraging them, thereby causing environmental nuisance in the nation’s capital city.
“You can imagine somebody dishing out one hundred dollars as alms to a beggar, not knowing that such a person has more than that amount with him or her. Won’t the beggar return to the same location?
“We have established colonies and settlements of real people who are in dire need of such support either cash or kind. So, I want to solicit that anybody who wishes to give such alms or support, should please carry out such do such people in dire need or you can go directly and give them.
“Civil servants, private business operators and what have you, if you want to give alms or assistance of any kind, look around you, there are people in dire need of help, reach out to them, you will be blessed”, he stressed.
On her part, the beggar, who could not communicate in English language, told Abuja Review when her money was returned to her, said prior to her taking to street begging more than a decade ago, she was into clothes trading, which she was forced to abandon due to increasing rate of bad debt.
Explaining how she accumulated the huge sum, Hadiza said: “I use to save N2, 000 daily alongside, whatever I realize from begging on the street”.
