Nigeria’s lost generation of child beggars

In just one state of the country’s second biggest city, Kano the number of child beggars has nearly doubled in five years to about two million, the majority wandering the streets, moving door to door asking for money."Anybody moving around any of the major cities in the North can observe the prevalence of child beggars on the streets,” said Salihu Muhammad, who works for, a Kaduna-based aid organisation. “Their number has risen sharply in the last few months," he told the United Nations news service, IRIN.

While aid workers are talking of a ‘lost generation,’ residents fearing a ‘social time bomb’ waiting to explode, are starting pressure groups to try and deter the beggars. But there is also the risk that the move may backfire and encourage more poverty-stricken children to try their luck. "The presence of these children is a social time bomb, which if not defused, will certainly consume everyone when it explodes, because these children know nothing about parental care, love and affection and therefore see everybody as an enemy and responsible for their deprivation," said Abdullahi Yusuf, a resident of Kano.

Traditionally poor parents from the West African nation’s northern countryside send their children, some as young as 6, to the city to learn the Koran under Islamic teachers called Malams. Islam discourages the idea of begging, but begging by students of the Koran is condoned and even justified by some Islamic scholars in northern Nigeria."Some are dumped with the Malams by their parents who never show up again," said Jibrin Gunduwawa, a 70-year-old cleric. "We don't have enough for ourselves so we allow them to go out and beg for food and alms for their upkeep," the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

Kano, is not the only Nigerian city where child begging is prevalent, but experts say it happens there on a larger scale than elsewhere in the country.  The city’s officials are worried that these children are especially vulnerable to social ills like paedophilia, drug addiction and ritual murder."We feel very bad about this; it's a generation lost, a whole generation," said. Senator Eme Ufot Ekaette, who heads a child welfare panel in the national assembly. Saudatu Sani, a federal legislator from Kano state who formerly headed a parliamentary committee on children's affairs, agreed. "We the elite have to provide for these child beggars for our and our children's safety. "The pathetic life they live... breeds heartless criminals."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children