We would rather go to school than beg — Street kids

News By Punch

Street kids who beg to survive tell ARUKAINO UMUKORO that they would rather go to school than beg.

From a distance, our correspondent watched as five-year-old Garba Isa and nine-year-old Kabiru Mohammed went after motorists and passers-by, begging for alms on the LASU-Igando Road, Iyana-Iba, Ojo, Lagos. Sometimes, they appeared frustrated; at other times, they seemed animated and forceful, peering into the windows of vehicles as if their lives depended on the motorists.

They were not alone. Many other children, boys and girls of different ages, beg at the intersection. Our correspondent spotted another child, who looked no more than six years old, giving some naira notes to a woman who looked like his mother. In a flash, he disappeared to continue his ‘trade’ for the day, just like Isa and Mohammed.

They spoke to SUNDAY PUNCH about their plights.

“My father is dead, while my mother is struggling to take care of me. I have no choice but to beg,” said Mohammed. Isa gave a similar response, and added that his mother was around the corner, also begging. According to them, they feel disappointed whenever they see other children dressed in school uniforms going to school or driven in their parents’ cars.

“I would like to go to Arabic school and an English school to learn, but when I tried learning English, I could not cope,” Isa told our correspondent. Due to poverty and a lack of education, Mohammed and Isa, like many of their peers, are left with no choice but to beg for a living, despite the risks involved. According to a 2009 research report by the Anti-Slavery International, begging is a “range of activities whereby an individual asks a stranger for money on the basis of being poor or needing charitable donations for health or religious reasons.”

These street children are among the millions of out-of-school children in Nigeria.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, one out of five Nigerian children is out of school, with over 10 million children out of school. This represents 47 per cent of the population of out-of-school children globally. A significant number of these children hawk wares on the streets, are engaged in menial jobs or are forced to beg on the streets. Sometimes, the female children were more daring than their male counterparts, as our correspondent observed.

At a point, when the traffic was light, they switched lanes to hassle passers-by, begging them for money or food to eat. One was so insistent on getting something from  a passer-by that she held tightly to his shirt, and didn’t let go for at least 20 metres. A few hours later, our correspondent saw one of the young girls seated at in a corner, with four other children, and an adult beggar, briefly resting on a worn-out wrapper spread on the pedestrian lane.

The adult female beggar was their mother. She gave her name as Amina Salisu. The exhausted-looking young girl was eight-year-old Miriam and she had a twin sister. Her other siblings are five-year-old Umaru, his twin brother, Shehu, and a three-year-old.

“I have been in Lagos begging for almost 10 years. It was during this time I gave birth to my children. Their father, also a beggar, lived in Lagos too. If I have a better opportunity, I would like to send my children to school, both Arabic and English schools, but I don’t have the money. I feel sad when I see more privileged people driving big cars and sending their children to school,” she told SUNDAY PUNCH, adding that the money they get from begging is used for feeding, clothing, and buying necessary things such as soap for bathing and washing.

“When I have made some money, I travel to Kano, where I come from, and then come back to Lagos when the money is finished,” she said. Salisu lost one of her three-year-old twins a few months ago to measles. He also begged, until he contracted the infection and died. “He had measles and I did not have money to treat it,” she said.

SUNDAY PUNCH gathered that most of these street children and their families come from the northern part of the country such as Kano and Katsina States, and even neighbouring countries like Niger. Lagos, being Nigeria’s commercial capital and one of the most populous cities in the world, is a promised land for many of these beggars.

“They told us Lagos has many rich people and that we can make a lot of money here, that is why I came here, but I haven’t seen the money yet,” said Amina Mohammed, whose children are aged between three and ten years old.

“I don’t want my children to start begging. So, I left them in Kano. I want to also send them to school, but I can’t,” she said, adding that some of the street children have been injured or killed in such instances. Many of the children who spoke to SUNDAY PUNCH lamented the fact that they had no choice but to resort to begging for a living, while their peers went to school. They spoke about their desire for a proper education and hoped that the Lagos State Government or any well-meaning individual in the society could help them in any way to get educated.

“I want to become a teacher so that I can teach children like me and they don’t have to beg,” said six-year-old Musa Umaru. For 10-year-old Sani Ahmed, he just wants to be educated to help his mother and other siblings. “I want to go back to Katsina and help my family,” he said. In Iyana-Oba, Berger, Ebute Meta, Agege, and many other parts of Lagos, it is common to find a colony of beggars, many of them, young children.

Although he doesn’t speak English, when asked why he was on the streets at that time, one simply said, “Ba makaranta,” in Hausa, which is loosely translated as, “no school”. His face lit up when asked if he would like to go to one. “Yes,” he simply replied. Ten-year-old Abba, who said he joined a truck with many of his peers from Katsina State, first came to Lagos over three months ago to visit his relative in Lagos. “My mother is also around, begging. We came to visit one of our relatives, saw him begging, so we joined him,” he said. It is the same for many like him who were inducted into a world of begging.

Abba said many of them lived in and around shacks in run-down or uncompleted buildings.

“We make different amounts daily, it could be N200, N300, N500 and so on, and we give the money to our parents or guardians,” Abba said. According to 10-year-old Hussein, sometimes, some male adults take them to other areas in the state to beg and enrol in their Arabic schools. Later, they are ‘rescued’ by their parents or guardians to continue begging elsewhere.

“I want the government to help us. They should enrol us in schools,” he said.

The United Nations Children’s Fund noted that child labour remained a major source of concern in Nigeria, in spite of legislative measures.

“Child labour is defined as work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and deprives them of opportunities for schooling and development. These jobs include being street vendors, beggars, car washers or watchers and shoe shiners,” the UNICEF stated in a report.

The International Labour Organisation put the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria at 15 million.

“I had a relationship with some of these kids who begged on the streets a few years back. One of them was eight-year-old Fatima. She said the people who brought them to Lagos told them there was money in Lagos and that they needed to come and make money (through begging). I don’t know her whereabouts today,” said founder of the Dustbin Estate, Miss Tolu Sangosanya, who also runs the LOTS charity foundation.

Sangosanya added there were many beggars on the streets due to poverty and lack of economic empowerment.

“I don’t think anybody would want their children on the streets; poverty is a major cause. Once that can be solved, societal ills such as begging and street hawking would be eradicated,” she noted. For many of these children begging for survival, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child may mean nothing to them.

The Declaration states, “The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.”

In an effort to rid the city of street beggars, the Lagos State government had in the past evicted many of them from some areas. However, many have found a way to continue begging, by relocating to other parts of the state, especially densely populated areas where they can easily escape the eyes of the law.

When SUNDAY PUNCH contacted the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Mrs. Risikatu Akiyode, she said she was in a meeting, but said the state government had taken measures to look into such situations.

On Saturday, the head of population unit, WAPA, Mr. Olu Akinmuleya, said the ministry would provide more information on the issue on a later date.