The Far North and the Begging Syndrome By Dahiru Maishanu London moyeejoh@yahoo.com
I have recently
received numerous responses for raising the issue of the serious
problems of street begging by indigenes of the states of the far north
in general and those of Sokoto state in particular. In one of such
responses, one writer with a multiplicity of names and a borrowed
genealogy that go by Usman S. Abubakar Torankawa Yabo tried to castigate
me for daring to bring this issue to the public domain. Yabo said the
issue of almajirinci was not new in the far north as it predates the
Nigerian state itself.
While not arguing with
Yabo over the existence of the Islamic system of education before the
birth of Nigeria, I still think the issues I raised in my write-ups
concerning street begging by our indigenes need to be more closely
examined.
Obviously, Yabo or his
sponsors were furious at me for saying that out of every five beggars on
the streets of our cities in Nigeria, one is from Sokoto State. Although
Yabo did not debunk the arithmetic, he wrote that the issue was not new
and I had no right to blame the Bafarawa administration and by extension
the leadership of the Far North for not doing anything about this
social, cantankerous malaise.
He further refused to
divulge to the reading public what the administration has done to arrest
the problem as he didn’t see it to be a problem in the first place. His
only point was that the state administration had tried to reform the
traditional Islamic educational system, which if true, is commendable
but still does not answer my questions on street begging
The point here is,
either Yabo’s knowledge of the issue is too shallow and therefore
dangerous, or he is deliberately trying to take the reader for granted,
as has been the standard practice of his sponsors. For Yabo to say that
there is no problem of begging by indigenes of the far north, he must
have mistaken his target audience for his paymasters who often want to
hear only ‘sweet’ things rather than the members of the public who read
his piece.
For avoidance of doubt,
this piece is not written to take issues with Yabo who as far as I’m
concerned, is a virtual creation doing the bidding of a few overzealous
officials whom I have recently learnt may not even be acting with the
consent of the Governor himself. On the contrary, this piece is to dwell
on the begging syndrome that seems to envelop both able bodied as in the
case of Yabo and more especially the physically disabled from the far
north
The issue of
Almajirinci, which Yabo referred to in his article, is a practice where
young, able-bodied schoolboys are sent to different Islamic teachers (malIams)
throughout the caliphate in order to learn Islamic and Arabic education.
While they are at school, the boys are sent in the evenings to the
doorsteps of their host communities to solicit for food and go back to
their various schools at the end of the day. This is the simple
Almajirinci that we used to know not only in Sokoto but also in the
whole of the far north.
The begging syndrome,
which I referred to in my article, is not that of young school boys
going in the evenings to get their plates of food filled just for that
evening and retire peacefully to their abodes. The type of begging I
meant was one by adult destitutes from the state on the streets of all
major towns and cities in the federation. Mr. Yabo cannot tell the
nation that these beggars don’t exist in Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Abuja,
Benin and Port Harcourt to mention just a few.
These beggars are seen
everywhere roaming the streets from morning to evening, dragging along
their young, vulnerable children disturbing vehicular movements and
traffic. From their physical attributes and their accent, one doesn’t
need any body to tell him that these beggars are not only northerners,
but are obviously from the far north. If Yabo has ever been to Lagos, he
would not have so flagrantly written that there are no beggars from the
state. This would amount to playing with the intelligence of the reading
public.
These beggars have
various degrees of ailment and deformity that must have arisen from
simple, preventable childhood diseases that the governments of the
affected states including the one Yabo is fronting for could have
prevented by simple immunisation and control. Some of them are not
afflicted with any obvious ailment or deformity apart from their
pauperised looks as a result of hunger and dirt. Some of the women are
looking healthy, but use their children as front to solicit for money.
While many people from
the south think of these beggars as simply from the north, we from the
north, perhaps with the exception of Yabo and his sponsors know fully
that these destitutes are by and large from the so called ‘core’
northern states populated by the Hausa/Fulanis. It is also an obvious
fact that these beggars are mostly affected by preventable childhood
diseases such as polio.
It is easy for
government officials to pretend that these problems don’t exist, but to
some of us who live in Lagos and other southern cities, there is simply
no hiding place. We are daily being branded as children of beggars,
cripples, blind men and lepers.
The question here is,
are we, the so-called Hausa-Fulani inherently lazy or more prone to
these childhood diseases than the other tribes both in the north and in
the country in general? Are we so desperately poor that we have to
travel to Lagos, Benin and Port Harcourt to ply this inexplicable and
shameful trade of begging on the streets? Or are there fundamental
issues that need to be addressed in order to tackle this issue. If this
is the case, are the governments concerned doing anything to address the
issue?
Obviously, the Hausa-Fulanis
are by any measure not lazy people and are not gullible to diseases than
any other group of tribes in the country. They are similarly not
desperately and helplessly poor that they resort to taking to begging as
a sort of a profession. If there is any part of this country that can be
called the food basket of the nation, the far-north undoubtedly
qualifies to be that basket. This is because they can conveniently feed
the whole nation with their agricultural, dairy, meat and poultry
products.
But the problem is far
beyond being lazy or disease prone. The problem has fundamental
undertones which whether the likes of Yabo like it or not have to be
brought to the fore. If governments of the states in question as far as
from the military era to the present have addressed issues of poverty
alleviation juxtaposed with job creation, jobs would have been created
for the masses to avoid finding ourselves in this embarrassing
situation.
If the people have been
properly educated about the benefits of having their children and wards
immunized, there would have been less number of beggars from our states.
If the people are given quality education, the society would raise and
manage better leaders who would see the menace these social problems
bring to us as a people and evolve ways of solving them.
The other issue is that
of immunisation of children against preventable diseases which require
not only the vaccines but also massive awareness campaigns to sensitise
and educate the people to the benefit of this simple procedure. Even
though this wanton neglect started from the military era, the present
administration could have remedied the problem instead of sponsoring
faceless people like Yabo at the expense of our meagre resources
Another issue is that
of rehabilitation of these destitutes. A single visit to Borno way,
Lagos, slum of these beggars will make any reasonable person filled with
shame and pity for these destitutes. The condition of living in that
slum is unimaginable. Men, women and children are crammed upon each
other in this foul smelling squalor that is worse than any ghetto in the
country.
Crime is also breeding
in all slums inhabited by these beggars. Young children born in these
slums are growing into irresponsible adults engaged in drugs and
prostitution. Physical and Sexual abuse including incest have become the
order of the night.
The question of
education for these children does not even arise for that has no meaning
to them. For these children, nothing matters to them apart from the
daily struggle for survival in the harsh realities of life they found
themselves. The street is their home, school and office; they live and
die by the street. Such is the unfortunate situation this seemingly
simple situation has turned into. This is inviting our leaders from
Kebbi to Kano to pay these destitutes a visit to see the situation for
themselves
The other group of
beggars which Yabo himself qualifies to be amongst is the group which
consciously parades itself as the vanguard of the ruling class in
writing uncharitable articles for them for a fee and attendant favours.
This group has recently multiplied in number as the people have started
taking their destinies in their own hands and demanding for their rights
from the present façade of leaders.
These people are
usually fed with all sorts of stories by the leaders and given the
mandate to write to attack citizens of the state who dare to speak the
truth on the activities of government. They, in turn, turn to personal
abuse, family intimidation and fabrication of false stories in order to
tarnish the image of those they are hired to attack.
Unfortunately for these
writers and their sponsors, the reading public is more sophisticated
than they are thinking and could fathom the truth from falsehood.
Readers know that there is a problem of beggars in the society. They
equally know that the origin and preponderance of these beggars is not
only from the north, but also from the far north with Sokoto taking the
lion share. The government of Sokoto state and other northern states
affected by this problem owe both the public and the beggars themselves
a duty to address the problems facing the destitutes with the view of
rehabilitating them.
The likes of Yabo have
turned an otherwise healthy debate into a personal war aimed at pulling
down people with dissenting views at all costs. They have deliberately
refused to separate issues from personalities. As for this writer, he
will continue to address issues that concern the generality of the
people, not petty personal issues of individuals. Finally, one hopes
that one day, the people behind the likes of Yabo can come out with
their own write-ups and engage us directly instead of wasting tax payers
money sponsoring some one to so. Failure to do this confirms that they
are round pegs in square holes.
|