FOR long a menace, beggars are lately overrunning the streets and public spaces in Lagos. Their unchallenged dominance in the nooks and crannies of the state has become an emerging security and environmental threat. The Lagos State Government should shake off its lethargy and take strong action to address this abnormality.
It is not for lack of awareness. Recently, the state’s Commissioner for Youth and Social Development, Olusegun Dawodu, admitted that begging posed a grave nuisance. Apart from individual vagrants, begging is now run by syndicates. Dawodu said, “These groups of people have turned begging for alms and hawking into a huge business by collecting returns from beggars and hawkers. These people sleep under the bridges, motor parks, uncompleted or abandoned buildings and other places not conducive for human habitation.”
Apart from the infamous beggar colony in Kano Street, Ebute-Meta, many others have sprung up across the state. Beggars mass on streets, narrowing the space for vehicles and pedestrians. They breed there, raising families. In defiance of the Child Rights Act domesticated by Lagos, they refuse to send their children to school and deploy them as beggars. Such eyesores negate the megacity aspiration of the Lagos government.
Of the 123,000 persons reported to enter Lagos daily, some remain and turn to begging. It has become a lucrative business operated by syndicates. They run beggars’ colonies and deploy beggars, male, female and children, in the streets. Cruelly, they organise the renting of twin babies, triplets or more for female agents who deploy in the streets, pedestrian bridges, garages, bus stops and markets, trains and buses, using the hapless babies as props to attract alms. This is blatant child abuse.
The state government’s promised strategy that includes a special task force to curtail the menace has not materialised. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his immediate predecessor are squarely to blame for the present deluge of beggars. Under Babatunde Fashola (2007-2015), there was a vigorous, sustained programme of combating the menace. The notorious colonies were dismantled; pedestrian bridges, markets and worship centres were rid of beggars. Raids, arrests and prosecution of child traffickers abusing children for begging were undertaken.
A programme of rounding up the destitute and returning them to their home states, though unpopular, was implemented. True, Lagos was not completely rid of them by the time Fashola left office; but the programme was ongoing, requiring continuity by his successors to end a menace that had sullied the state for decades. But his successors, Akinwumi Ambode (2015-2019), and Sanwo-Olu, lacking the political will, failed to sustain the momentum.
Sanwo-Olu should enforce the laws. Permitting lawlessness is not a constituency project. Existing laws criminalise street begging, child abuse and vagrancy; he should enforce them.
The Lagos State Child Rights Law 2007 contains provisions to guard against using children to beg for alms or subjecting them to harsh circumstances. Section 26 (a) reads, “No person shall buy, sell, hire, let on hire, dispose of, obtain possession of or deal in a child — (a) with intent that the child shall be employed or used for the purpose of hawking, begging for alms, or prostitution or for any unlawful or immoral purpose.” These laws should be strictly applied.
Government should raid and dismantle beggars’ colonies. Some harbour sleeper cells of criminals. Responsive and responsible governance involve taking difficult decisions and clearly, this is one.
Admittedly, begging is a problem for governments and cities worldwide. Induced by poverty, homelessness and forced migrations, beggars have existed since antiquity. Modern governments take strong measures to eradicate it and target its roots. A study by India’s University of Peshawar’s Institute of Development Studies concluded that “begging is very dangerous to the world community” because beggars do not work but depend on others to live, some taking it as a lifelong profession and drawing income from those in productive activities that would otherwise have gone into savings, investments or the purchase of goods and services. Lagos should act fast.
The harsh economic realities in the country may have turned more people to begging, but this is one practice that cannot be allowed to fester. The argument that some of the beggars were victims of the insurgency in the North is heart-breaking, but resorting to street begging is not tenable either. Such displaced persons should be moved to camps for internally displaced persons scattered across the country and properly cared for. Street begging cannot be part of the future Lagos State is working to build.
Having the world’s largest population of beggars with over 4.1 million, India’s federal and state governments have gone tough: 20 of the 28 states have criminalised begging. In some, the offence carries three to 10 years detention in special state-run beggar homes. In the United States, there were a reported 580,466 homeless persons across the 50 states in 2020. Though US higher courts have tended to roll back legislation, most states and cities criminalise begging. Singapore’s strict enforcement of vagrancy, environmental and anti-begging laws keeps its public spaces free of beggars.
Beggars also pose environmental dangers. They reside in, cook and erect illegal structures on the streets,, defecate and generate all kinds of waste. This contributes to the scourge of open defecation and cholera. Nigeria, embarrassingly among countries with highest open defecation statistics, lost 3,598 persons to cholera in 2021.
Giving alms to beggars is not a social service in the 21st century. Rehabilitation programmes by state and local governments are a critical duty. The federal and state governments should implement creative economic, infrastructure provision and social programmes. Parents/guardians who use their children/wards for begging or hawking should be arrested and prosecuted.
Sanwo-Olu should not pander to political interests or selfish election permutations. The state should reinvigorate its job-creation programme, establish rehabilitation centres and revive the programme of permanently clearing public spaces of the destitute, smash the begging syndicates and return to the zero-tolerance mode for child trafficking and child abuse.
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