The traffic had come to a halt as usual at Old Garage on the Ijegun-Ikotun Road. Shortly after it began to ease off, I saw a woman carrying a child and instructing the older one to run after motorists to beg for alms.
The woman approached some motorists with the baby, doing same. Moved by compassion, a young man inside one of the busses trapped in the traffic jam called to offer her money, but was shocked when the woman brought out a handset that was ringing inside her bag.
What? So, she has a handset, I thought she needed money to buy food! The young man lamented and withdrew his hand from his pocket. But the development did not surprise his colleague who sat beside him.
“She does not need money to feed, if she keeps a handset. I am not going to help her sustain expensive habit,” the young man said angrily. Surprised that his friend did not recognise the beggar, his colleague who knows the woman’s antics, laughed and asked: “So you still do not recognise that woman who you have given money at Old Garage in the morning and at Akowonjo Roundabout in the evening?”
The seeming smart friend disclosed further that the beggar changes her clothes and moves between Ikotun and Akowonjo with her children.
His anger is that the woman makes so much money and can afford a handset while the givers find it difficult recharging their phones.
“My heart goes out to those poor children. I do not think they deserve the kind of treatment their so-called mother has subjected them to. By the way, I thought there is a law in Lagos State against this kind of maltreatment of children”, the young man said.
Indeed, the angry colleague may have spoken the minds of many Lagosians who wonder that long after the Child Rights Law was passed in the state, child abuse still persists.
Besides the begging, it is worrisome that some families send children to sell things in the market during school hours.
The ugly scene is common place in Lagos, One evening at the popular Boundary in the Ajegunle area of Lagos, I was accosted by little children running all around me saying “uncle buy food for us”. I was stunned by the ages of the children.
I was forced to ask the whereabouts of their parents. One of the beggars who said her name was Aishat Aminu said, “My mama leave me go Arewa”. While I was reluctant at offering alms to them, the determined and vulnerable children beggars followed me till I almost got to my destination.
But not too far from where I stopped, I saw adults who seem the parents of these children, sitting at a corner and watching the scene.
On my way, I discussed with a friend of mine, Mike, who narrated his own side of his encounter with child beggars. “Last year at Iyana Ipaja, I noticed two young women with kids, aged between five and six, strapped to their backs, approached motorists and pedestrians to beg for money. They said the children were sick and needed medical treatment, which they could not afford”, Mike narrated.
Mike was shocked when he saw the same women at Onipanu last week, telling the same story, but with much younger babies on their backs.
“I feel the state government should go tough on this act and arrest whosoever is involved,” he said.
Two weeks ago, Lagosians who had gone to the popular Aswani Market, off the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway, stood in awe looking at a woman begging for alms with her two-month old twin babies.
She traveled all the way from Ajase in Benin Republic to Lagos just to use the kids to beg for alms.
According to Mike, if there is any place where the Child Rights Law should be enforced, that place should be Lagos State where child abuse seems to go on as if it is normal.
“The Ministry of Youth Sports and Social Development ought to ensure that child-beggars are taken off the streets without minding what parts of the country the beggars come from.
“Exposing those children to the elements, using them to beg for alms, keeping them away from school, are all against the law. Those who go against the law should be prosecuted,” he suggested.
“No government in this 21st Century should fold its arms and allow the destiny of children that would grow to build and sustain the nation in future be sacrificed on the altar of alms-begging. It is high time government took decisive action against those who use kids to beg for alms”.
He said there was a particularly pitiable case “in Ikeja of a woman who uses her triplets to beg for alms. It is obvious she makes a lot of money, yet the children are malnourished,” Mike said, rather angrily.
Investigations by BDSUNDAY revealed that those women might not be the biological mothers of the children they use for begging.
A trader in Ikotun Market, Ayobami Rilwan said: “I wonder if any woman that went through the pains of pregnancy and labour would subject her child to the scorching sun and the trauma on Lagos roads to beg for alms.”
Speaking to BDSUNDAY through an interpreter, Wasila Yakubu, a woman beggar with a boy of about four years and a two-year old girl by her side, said her quest to survive brought them to Lagos.
She said her friend, Aisha, left their village in Katsina to Lagos last year, with her daughter with nothing other than her few cloths, but returned home three months later well-nourished and with so much money that she engaged labourers to work in their farms.
“I visited her to know how she made such money in barely three months. She told me that in Lagos, you make money as long as you can walk up to somebody and beg for money without shame.
“After my husband deserted us, I set off for Lagos from Katsina. I spent three days on the road with my children in a train as it is the cheapest means of coming to Lagos,” she said.
A woman who begs with her son at Ojuelegba area of Surulere, Lagos but who refused to disclose her name, said: “Begging is not a job to be proud of. I do not enjoy exposing my young boy to attract sympathy from passers-by. But that is exactly what I am doing.
“I came to Lagos with my husband and seven months after our marriage, things began to fall apart.
“I ventured into begging three months after the birth of my son since my husband disappeared and we were in abject poverty. There was no food, no money, no hope. His whereabouts is still unknown to me,” she said.
BDSUNDAY also discovered another tactic employed by middle-age women to beg for alms. These are women who stand at popular bus stops with babies strapped to their backs. Usually, they claim they are stranded and needing money to get to their destination.
Sharing his experience with our correspondent, a young man who gave his name simply as Timothy, said: “I started to notice some young ladies who pretend they are stranded at bus stops. They usually back babies asking people for financial assistance to pay their transport fare to their destinations. They always mention places far away from where they are, perhaps, to attract more sympathy. Initially, I used to give them money until I discovered they were fake.”
“The day it dawned on me that they were professional beggars, using kids, was a day I saw same set of ladies at two different bus stops same day. I first saw them at Oshodi bus stop, then same day in the evening time, I also ran into them at Mile 2 bus stop. They did not realise they had approached me earlier in the day around 10am. The same one that met me at Oshodi still came to me at Mile 2 while her mates watched us from where they stood. I barked at her. I raised my voice and people gathered. From what other people said there, they are known syndicate and notorious along the Oshodi-Mile 2 axis. So, on that day, my sympathy for such people died,” Timothy said.
But the question many concerned Lagosians are asking is why the government is not enforcing the Child Rights Law, which was enacted to protect children from all forms of abuses.
Jonathan Aderoju
