‘Why we push our kids to beg on streets’
The children know they are in competition here and they are not wanted, so they keep an eye out on the filling station’s supervisor who looks on disapprovingly at them. The moment the man approaches, the children scamper towards the gates of the filling station, waiting to lay siege as the cars approach the gates. […]
The children know they are in competition here and they are not wanted, so they keep an eye out on the filling station’s supervisor who looks on disapprovingly at them. The moment the man approaches, the children scamper towards the gates of the filling station, waiting to lay siege as the cars approach the gates. Sadiq, the man, shakes his head pityingly and says, “The children have a target to meet. They have parents and guardians waiting for them to make returns.”
The seven children carry on relentlessly, not minding whether they were rebuffed by motorists or chased away. Weekly Trust approached the children and sought to know from them if they are almajiris from the local qur’anic schools, the children of which are known to take to begging to cater for their needs after being sent away from their parents to poor local teachers who can ill-afford to maintain them. They shake their head in the affirmative, with trepidation. But Hafizu, a barrow pusher who was sitting close by and eavesdropping quickly interjects that “They are not almajiris, they are pretending to be. Ask them the name of their malam (instructor) and the school they attend.” A question to the youngest member of the group who is less street-wise draws a blank. The others could only point with shy fingers when asked. Two of the children gave their names as Jibrin and Kabiru before the eldest among them told the others to shut up and let them leave.
Hafiz should know. “I used to be like them too,” he says. “I also did what they are doing now to survive and bring something home to my parents until I became a barrow-pusher. You are left with no choice when you come from a very poor home. You just do what you have to do to survive.”
Down the road, by Alkali Road’s sprawling set of shops, by a tree, sits Hajara (not real name), who says she is the mother of two of the kids begging beside a nearby shop. “I do it because I have no choice. I’m uneducated and a widow, plus I have two boys to look after. I don’t want them to end up as criminals. I hate this life, but what else can me – or my boys – do?”
In Kano, that ancient centre of commerce, the figure of young boys and girls who beg on the streets is rising dramatically. It was gathered that the figure rises owing to the fact that some children were drafted to beg for their underprivileged parents. According to a census carried out by the Kano State government in 2003, there are 1,486,000 beggars in Kano. Although the figure does not reflect thousands of men and women who beg in traffic, bus stops and other strategic places, it continues to increase.
One of the beggars who simply identified himself as Adamu revealed that his parents live in Kano and they were the ones who sent him to beg for them. “Whatever I get from people, I give them their share and keep the remaining,” said 10-year-old Adamu. Another young girl who identified herself as Rahinatu said her mother sent her to beg for money from the motorists when they stop at the traffic.
At a restaurant on Zoo Road, another boy told Weekly Trust that he begs for food or the money to buy food in order to evoke sympathy of the customers. Alarmingly, Special Adviser to Kano State governor on Education, Alhaji Aminu Isma’ila Sagagi, told Weekly Trust that recent findings show that the figure of the beggars from Qur’anic schools alone had risen to two million.
According to him, the level of poverty in the country makes the ratio of the beggars that were not from the Qur’anic schools rise. “It is now very difficult to differentiate between the Tsangaya beggars and drafted beggars because their ratio is fast-rising,” he said.
Umaru (not real name) says he sends his three children to beg near where he works as a security guard. “My salary is a bad joke, so I had to be creative about supplementing it. My wife and I came up with the sad tales we taught our kids to narrate to prospective alms-givers. It works most of the time.” But Usman, who says he is due for retirement next year, says givers sometimes recognise the children, so they have to work extra-hard to cook up new stories. “Why we do it? Simple: Poverty,” he told Weekly Trust matter-of-factly.
Survival is the name of the battle and in this fight against poverty children are at the fore, used by parents and guardians as a means because they can easily elicit sympathy.
“Some people have not been treated fairly by the system,” says Abdullahi Aliyu Abubakar, the Deputy Imam of the Sultan Bello Mosque, Kaduna’s largest, located on the same expressway. “These people must surely look for a way out of their difficulties. So many times we have found that people are pushed to begging because of difficulties, though there are some who do it out of sheer laziness.”
Back in Kaduna, the seven child beggars later give up the battle at the filling station and make their way across the highway towards Akilu Road, an area cut off from the expressway and filled with restaurants, shops, suya spots and a motel. They keep a safe distance from the businesses, waiting for the customers to make their purchases or exit before approaching. Five cars came and went and yet the child beggars have not struck any luck. Used to such disappointments, apparently, they move away casually, heading deeper into the neighbourhood, not toward home or Qur’anic schools, but to further ply their trade.
Then in Nasarawa State, the presence of kids earning a living at street corners, road junctions, motor parks, petrol stations, eateries and other public places has become a phenomenon, with the government continually looking the other way while the tradition gets firm roots. In Lafia, the state capital particularly, these kids, mostly male, dominate the landscape, and are an ever-present public feature. Weekly Trust spoke to some of these kids in Lafia metropolis where the venture knows no bounds, and they were not ashamed to speak about their background as children growing up under perpetual lack and want. Abdullahi refused to give more than his name, but said he is living with an uncle who does not provide any care for him. Rather, Abdullahi, barely eight years, is expected to feed from remnants at food spots, as well as make money from anybody on the street, for the home. “Whatever I make, I take home to my uncle and he blesses me,” said Abdullahi.
But a Qur’anic teacher at Tsangayar Mallam Atiku in Lafia, Mallam Hashim Mohammed queried why any kid who finds his way into the street for the purpose of making a living, is regarded as almajiri. He corrected the impression, saying almajirai are pupils of Qur’anic lessons who are taught good virtues including how to be self-sustained. This teacher has over 500 pupils under his care, and daily, they go out in the mornings and evening to their assigned chores which is mostly fetching of fire wood from a distant place. “We know some of the children here are not almajiris,” says Iliyasu, a roadside hawker selling yoghurts in Kawo, Kaduna. “We can understand the kind of hardship in their homes.”
At the other side of the flyover, close to the railway lines are a horde of teenagers, about eighteen of them, in the shed in the bus stop facing the road. A faint smell of Indian hemp smoke is in the air as one of them puffs on and in the middle of the shed a card game is on. Weekly Trust met Murtala among these teenagers who say some of them are runaways who chose to grow up on the streets.
A veteran of the street from all indications, Murtala sheds further light on the methods adopted by desperate parents out to make a living through their children. He talks about the wisdom behind the practice of some blind men who walk around with their daughter or granddaughter as guide while they go around soliciting for alms. “We have an old man who comes around here with a girl,” he says mischievously. “I don’t know if she is his daughter or grand daughter, but she is very beautiful. All of us here are in love with her. The moment he comes here to beg we call him and tip him so that we could use the brief opportunity to talk to the girl. The old man knows we are only being generous to him because of his beautiful daughter.”
A recent survey by a Lafia-based NGO, Centre for Women, Youths and Community Action (NACWYCA), shows that kids making a living on the streets are exposed to drugs and other intoxicants, exposed to rape and other abuses. The survey says further that street children in Lafia, and particularly the girls, are engaged in risky sexual behavior.
In Kano, Sagagi also argued that the problem of begging is multifaceted problem that needs only multifaceted approach in order to attain a good result.
“There is no group of people in Nigeria today who are not passing through this,” says Abubakar, a deputy imam at the mosque in Kaduna. “The case of the North is more visible in the eyes of people because you have a larger population of people here. So it is difficult to hide the plight here. The only way out is for our leaders to be just. They should bear in mind that the money entrusted to them in their respective local governments or ministries is for the people. They should ensure that such monies reach they people by way of improving their conditions of life.”