Romanus Okoye
It used to be said that a beggar has no choice. “But that’s not true in Lagos, beggars here make a choice,” a sociologist, Isaac Otuamala, told the reporter while explaining why people beg. “In Lagos, the beggars, especially the professional ones, tell you exactly how much they want.
“The professional ones amongst them believe they make more money from begging than engaging in a meaningful enterprise and they really do, because they take advantage of the sympathetic nature of people and make begging a vocation,” he said.
Different colours
Indeed, the streets of Lagos parade legions of beggars. They are of different statures and status and cut across all ages, gender and tribe. While some are stationary beggars that operate at specific spots, uncountable others are mobile, traversing the width and breadth of the state, exploiting sympathetic givers, either to meet real life needs or indulge their insatiable desire for drugs, booze and women.
Beggars spread their tentacles to various spots, including bus stops, eateries and beer parlours.
While some beg for beer, some beg for food. Some beg for money to buy medication for real or imaginary health issues. There are the corporate ones in suit who forgot their wallets at home while rushing to work. Yet, there are contract- beggars who beg for their masters and receive a cut at the end of the day.
A lady banker told the reporter that the number of beggars in Lagos is turning it to mega beggars’ city. “Even in banks, beggars wait for ATM users. Even inside, they beg for pen to fill forms. Neighbours beg for water, beg for oil, salt and seasoning cubes. And if you don’t give, you are branded wicked,” she said.
At various corners of the street, the women of easy virtues beg for patronage. “Oga come, I will do you well. I will give you different styles; anyhow you want it. Buy me cigarette,” they chorus.
Different tales for different folks
Mrs Amara Okafor told the reporter that sometimes she is torn between whether to give arms to beggars or not. According to her, the scepticism arose from different stories she heard about beggars. She said there is an allegation of some beggars making up to N5000 daily, owning their own homes and live lavishly outside their areas of operation. Some also allegedly use money collected for rituals.
Similarly, a prominent journalist told the reporter how a corporate beggar asked him for financial assistance and he willingly gave. Thereafter, hardship hit him.
He said: “Hardship made real meaning to me. Lack and want flooded me like torrential flood. My family and I saw hell until I consulted my pastor. He told me that I gave money to a man and he used it for rituals. It was after fasting and prayers that the yoke was broken. Since then, I became wary of giving alms.”
Conversely, someone told the reporter that some give for ritual purposes, not that they really want to help the beggars. “That’s why some of the beggars tear-off tips of the naira notes when they receive money from the suspected ritualists to avert any curse that may have been placed on the money,” he said.
Investigation revealed that many of the beggars are fake or liars. They just spin all manner of stories to attract pity.
Take this from Akosa Igbedu. “I entered a bus at First Gate at Festac Town and saw a young man begging for assistance. He said he was released from the Kirikiri Prison and needed money to return to Owerri, his home town. I had pity on him. He looked dirty and hungry. I asked him how much he needed to go back to his village and he said N2000. Luckily, I had enough money on me. There and then, I gave him N4000 and was happy I helped a fellow human being that was in need. Little did I know that the young man was a scammer and had turned begging to an occupation.
“Few weeks after, I entered a bus at Cele bus stop going to Ikotun and the young man telling the same story and people were giving him money. Immediately he recognized me, he jumped down from the car and melted into the crowd at the bus stop. People asked me why he saw me and ran away and I told them the story. Since then, it is only the physically challenged that I manage to assist sometimes.”
Internet operators
There is also Internet begging, which is the modern practice of asking people to give money to others via the Internet. Internet begging is not only targeted at people who are acquainted with the beggar as it has expanded to soliciting help from strangers.
A victim, Ashamed, explained: “I got in touch with Catherine Hannisick through MeetMe App where she always claimed that she loved me and wanted to marry me. She said her commander promised to pay half of her airfare and she needed to come up with the other half of $1500. I had sent her the $1500 already. I asked her for proof because she said she had nothing to eat because her military camp was attacked. She sent me an image of pasta from the internet. I felt so stupid now because I wonder if it is possible for anyone on a mission in the army to have that much time to be texting on dating App.”
Another respondent, who preferred to be identified as Islandgemini50, shared her experience about scammers who pretended to be beggars online. “I was talking to someone on Plenty of Fish. He had a European accent and told me he was from Sofia, Bulgaria. We spoke for a long time and he told me he was on a ship heading to Australia for business in shipping. That’s fine and he never did ask me for money initially, just an iTunes card. Eventually, he did beg if I would accept a check that a client owed him. I said no due to scams. I did think about it and said I would accept the check but I would not deposit it in my account. He didn’t like that but too bad.
“I went to the bank and asked them to check if it was legit. First of all, why would someone ask a stranger to accept a $4000 check? I can steal it! The check was deposited in a new account just for that purpose. The following day the bank told me the check was fake. I also requested copies of the check. I was able to contact the supposed sender that lives in Maryland. He was an elderly man who told me that he and his wife had identity issues and he never heard of the third party bank the check was cut from. The bank was legit, just not his bank.
“I called the sender of the check and told him it cleared but I was keeping the money. Then after much fighting, I took pictures of the check that the bank had stamped and told him it was fake and that I spoke to his client that never had an account at that bank. Anyway, he denied all and had accused me of stealing his money. What nerve!”
Global
As it is in Nigeria, so it is in many parts of the world. Last month the Advertising Standards Authority in United Kingdom reprimanded Nottingham City Council for a poster campaign over the summer that saw five different notices pasted up around the city suggesting that beggars were frauds, junkies and drunks. They complained that the advertisement “reinforced negative stereotypes” and “portrayed all beggars as disingenuous and undeserving individuals that would use direct donations for irresponsible means.”
At the heart of this row is whether people should hand over cash to people on the streets. Over there, there are myths about beggars doing a shift outside Boots for eight hours and then jumping into their BMW parked round the corner and heading back to their mansions to count their takings. The fear expressed by the indigenes is that when your neighbourhood vagrant has amassed enough shiny pound coins from liberal givers like you, they’re just going to go and blow it all on drugs and booze.
Thames Reach, a London-based charity which works with homeless and vulnerable people in the capital has the ambitious goal of ending homelessness through trying to get the people it helps into accommodation. They are in no doubt why begging exists: “Overwhelming evidence shows that people who beg on the streets of England do so in order to buy hard drugs, particularly crack cocaine and heroin, and super-strength alcoholic beers and ciders. These highly addictive drugs cause an extreme deterioration in people’s health and even death.”
Thames Reach’s outreach teams, including its London Street Rescue service, who are out and about on the streets of the capital working with London’s homeless 365 days of the year estimate that 80 per cent of people begging do so to support a drug habit.
Also, when the Metropolitan Police did some drug testing of people arrested for begging, the figures indicated that between 70 and 80 per cent tested positive for Class A drugs. Stephen Bell, the chief executive of Newcastle Charity Changing Lives, speaking at the launch late last year of a campaign in the city to dissuade people from giving to beggars, said: “We are amazed by the generosity of people in Newcastle in giving to people who seem to be in need. But we know that many people who are begging have accommodation, and the money will often be used to buy drugs or alcohol, not food or shelter. There are better ways to help people who are genuinely homeless, including volunteering or donating money to one of the homelessness charities in the city.”
Hayley Smith, owner of her own PR company and founder of a charity called FlowAid, which provides free sanitary products to homeless women works directly with homeless charities in London, including Acton Homeless Concern, St Mungo’s, and Ealing Soup Kitchen, explains why she still gives to beggars: “It does make a difference whether some use it for drugs or not. It can determine whether someone eats that day or not, or it can be the extra £2 needed to get a room that night, or even sanitary products.
“You just never know the situation. However, it doesn’t just make a difference physically, it makes a difference mentally and emotionally. It makes them feel noticed and not invisible, and cared for, even for a split second. And this can make a world of difference.”
Corroborating the above position, a woman told the reporter why people refuse to give monetary donations. She said: “It is assumed it will go on drugs and alcohol.”
She, however, noted that though this may be the case for some people, it is unfair to tarnish everyone with the same brush. “There are a host of things that beggars might spend their cup of change on and they aren’t all necessarily to do with addiction. Many homeless people that I have worked with save the money and spend it on accommodation and food, which aren’t cheap, as well as internet cafés and phone top-ups. Things which we shouldn’t be denying people, yet we take for granted.”
Another respondent a phone engineer, Emeka Sampson, said he dissuades people from giving to beggars and amazed by the generousity of people in giving to people who seem to be in need.
He said: “We know that many people who are begging have accommodation and the money will often be used to buy drugs or alcohol, not food or shelter.
“There are better ways to help people who are genuinely in need, including volunteering or donating money to one of the homelessness charities.”
A research conducted by Times magazine revealed reasons people beg. Poverty is number one. “This is probably the main reason for this begging commotion on the streets. There are people who are categorized under the extremely poor – in other words, the poor call them very poor. They can hardly afford to get any basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and medication. These people are left with no choice but to move and settle on the streets to beg because they have to survive. They are mostly homeless and the street has become their homestead, the gutters their verandas and the trees their shelter regardless of the weather.
“Sometimes, whole families relocate to the streets and the situation where parents train and initiate their children into begging has become common. At the end of the day, a new breed of big-eyed-cute kids are loitering the bus stops and busy roads tagging strangers clothes for loose change.”
Another reason is disability. Disability is said not to be inability. However, some people think that because they are disabled, they will win sympathy from strangers hence they hit the streets. Usually, when they receive money or other items they have not worked for, it becomes the order of the day. The report noted that disabled beggars have no excuse to refrain from working. They can engage in income generation activities while in small co-operatives and associations for the disabled. If other disabled people have made it in sports and in the business world, why can’t beggars follow suit. Becoming creative in artistic ventures, handcraft, painting or tailoring will generate income and these are much better than sitting and begging under the scorching sun.
Laziness is a strong motivation, the research revealed. Sitting in one place and watching a new day break and dawn on the street corner is sheer laziness. Beggars have a mentality that they will receive everything on a silver platter. ‘Man eats where he works’ is a popular saying that is backed by the fact that ‘God blesses the works of our hands.’ There are several jobs that can be taken on by these beggars but they simply choose not to work because they are too lazy.
Rural-Urban Migration: With the great belief that urban life is more comfortable than the rural setting, several abandoned their homely lifestyles in the countryside and headed to big cities in search for greener pastures. Unfortunately, when they migrate to urban areas, they fail to get jobs and as a result, some of them find it hard to survive without any source of income.
Otuomala, who also lectures at Nigeria Institute of Journalism, said things are very hard in the country and that’s part of the reason people beg. “There is extreme poverty,” he said. “So some are forced to beg not because they really want to but circumstances compel them to beg.”
He also noted that some people are handicapped and may not do much for themselves. However, he said that aside these groups, there are many others who inherently beg out of laziness, greed or as professional beggars.
“The professional beggars do not believe in the adage that a beggar has no choice. These ones demand for exact amount they want. These people believe they make more money from begging than do any other legitimate work. I know a man who has been begging in one particular spot for over 10 years now and he looks healthier than you and I.
“Ordinarily, begging is a crime and should be discouraged in all its entirety. It brings shame to the individual, to the family and to the society at large. But we must be mindful of the extreme poverty in the land,” he said.
Commissioner for Youth and Social Development in Lagos State, AgboolaDabiri, said available statistics indicated that despite the law enforcement agencies’ efforts at curbing the menace, beggars had become recalcitrant and sometimes engage in criminal activities while parading as beggars. He explained that the facilities which the government built to serve as transit home for rescued beggars and destitute is over stretched hence, the urgent need for all stakeholders to find a lasting solution to the problem.
He, therefore, admonished all stakeholders, especially the leaders of Arewa communities present not to abuse the good gesture of the state governor who is running all-inclusive government by accommodating all and sundry that are residing in the state.
The Head Judge of Lagos State High Court, Hon. Justice Kazeem Alogba said there was need to amend the law that prohibited street begging whereby both the givers and beggars as well as their suspected godfathers were made to face a stiffer penalty if caught. The judge pointed out that begging is not accepted even in the Quran, as people who wanted money should work for it. He further suggested that prosecution for street begging should be graduated in accordance to the gravity of offences committed.
Senator IsahMisau representing Bauchi-Central, while moving a motion titled, ‘menace of street begging and the need to rehabilitate beggars,’ expressed concern over the spate of street begging and nuisance it constituted on the streets of city centres across the country.
He said: “Though street begging is a global urban problem, the situation in Nigeria appears intractable and overwhelming, as beggars are now found everywhere, especially at motor parks, religious centres, road junctions, venue of ceremonies and other public places.
“The Senate further expresses concern that some of the women who engage in street begging also reportedly practice prostitution on the side, thereby leading to unwanted pregnancies and the bearing of even more child street beggars, while some hoodlums even hide under the guise of begging to carry out evil/criminal deeds.”
According to former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, “the issue of street begging has to do with a function of culture that has to be reversed. We need to do more to improve the welfare of the masses to discourage begging.”