By MAHMOOD MALIK MUSA (M. M. M.) IBRAHIM

Beyond Abuja’s Begging Bowls: Why Sweeping the Streets Cannot End Poverty

A Capital City with Two Realities

ABUJA was designed to project the image of a modern national capital. Its wide highways, government buildings, diplomatic quarters and expanding skyline speak of political authority and national ambition. Yet another Abuja exists beneath that carefully managed image.

It is found at traffic junctions, beneath bridges, outside worship centres, around markets and at the entrances to shopping districts. There, men, women and children stretch out their hands, not necessarily because begging was their preferred occupation, but because hunger, displacement, disability, unemployment and personal tragedy have pushed them to the streets.

The presence of street beggars has become one of Abuja’s most uncomfortable contradictions. A city built to symbolise Nigeria’s progress also displays, every day, some of the consequences of Nigeria’s deepest social failures.

The policy response has largely focused on removing beggars from public spaces. However, the persistent return of many of those evacuated raises a more fundamental question: can a government successfully clear poverty from the streets without confronting the conditions that created it?

The evidence from Abuja increasingly suggests that it cannot.

Behind the Outstretched Hand

The temptation to see every beggar as a nuisance has made it easy to ignore the different journeys that lead people to the streets.

Some are widows struggling to feed children after losing their husbands. Others fled communities destroyed by banditry, insurgency or communal violence. Some live with disabilities caused by illness, accidents or violent attacks. Others arrived in Abuja searching for work but found unemployment waiting for them.

Their circumstances differ, but the outcome is often the same: the street becomes the final safety net when every other support system has failed.

For Aisha, who begs while caring for her twin babies, daily survival has become a calculation measured in hundreds of naira. She told journalists that there were days when her earnings barely provided enough to eat, leaving her to go hungry while breastfeeding her children.

Hadiza’s concern was different but equally revealing. She said she begged partly because she wanted her children to have access to education and avoid inheriting the same cycle of poverty.

Mohammed’s story illustrates how illness can transform economic independence into dependence. Once a trader, he said glaucoma changed his circumstances and forced him to combine small-scale trading with begging.

Ahmed described how an attack by criminals left him with the loss of a leg and the destruction of his former livelihood.

For women such as Hauwa and Rakiya, insecurity became the road to displacement. Their stories centred on communities attacked, relatives killed and livelihoods destroyed.

These accounts do not mean every person begging in Abuja is without alternatives. Nor do they eliminate the possibility of organised exploitation. However, they demonstrate why treating all beggars as a single category can produce policies that address the appearance of the problem while ignoring its causes.

   

When Insecurity Becomes an Urban Poverty Problem

Nigeria’s insecurity crisis does not end where the violence occurs.

When a village is attacked, the consequences travel. They move with widows, orphaned children, injured survivors and families who abandon farms, businesses and homes. Eventually, some of those displaced people arrive in cities such as Abuja.

The Federal Capital Territory, therefore, increasingly receives people whose poverty was produced elsewhere.

A woman who fled banditry may be arrested for begging in Abuja, but removing her from the capital does not automatically restore the village she cannot safely return to.

A family displaced by insurgency may be profiled and transported back to its state of origin, yet insecurity or the absence of economic opportunities may eventually push the same family back to Abuja.

This helps explain why enforcement alone has struggled to produce lasting results.

The FCT Social Services Development Secretariat has reported evacuating hundreds of people from Abuja’s streets. Yet officials have also acknowledged that some return because the difficult conditions that pushed them to the capital remain unresolved.

That reality exposes a gap between removal and reintegration.

A person can be taken away from a traffic junction in one day. It is far more difficult to provide that person with housing, education, healthcare, psychological support, employment and sustainable income.

 

The Children at the Centre of the Crisis

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of street begging is the number of children exposed to its dangers.

Children who grow up on the streets face risks that extend beyond hunger. They may become vulnerable to trafficking, forced labour, sexual exploitation, violence and recruitment into criminal networks.

NAPTIP has warned that vulnerable children can easily become targets for traffickers. The agency has also identified situations in which children and persons living with disabilities may be deliberately used to generate sympathy and collect money.

This introduces a difficult dilemma for members of the public.

Giving money may appear to be an immediate act of compassion. Yet, where begging is controlled by criminal or exploitative networks, that money may ultimately sustain the system rather than rescue its victims.

The answer, however, cannot be indifference.

The challenge is to move from spontaneous charity towards structured support. Citizens who want to help vulnerable people can support credible charities, shelters, educational programmes and rehabilitation initiatives capable of reaching people beyond the roadside encounter.

Most importantly, children must be moved from streets to schools.

As ActionAid Nigeria has argued, education remains one of the strongest protections against the cycle that produces street begging. A child who spends every day begging instead of learning enters adulthood already burdened by exclusion.

 

The Almajiri Question & the Need for Reform

The debate over street begging also intersects with cultural and religious practices, particularly the almajiri system.

The problem is not religious education itself. The problem arises when children are sent away without adequate financial, educational or welfare support and are then left to survive through begging.

A child should not have to choose between learning and eating.

Integrating vulnerable children into a properly regulated education system could reduce their exposure to exploitation while preserving legitimate forms of religious and cultural learning.

Criminalisation alone will not solve this challenge.

The state must distinguish between cultural practice and child neglect, between genuine religious education and systems that leave children permanently dependent on the streets.

The objective should be reform that protects children without creating unnecessary hostility.

The Failure of a ‘Sweep & Remove’ Policy

The FCT Administration has repeatedly insisted that street begging is prohibited in Abuja.

Its concern is understandable. Street begging raises questions about security, public safety, human trafficking and the international image of the nation’s capital.

FCT Minister Nyesom Wike has argued that Abuja cannot become known as a city dominated by beggars and people living on the margins.

That position reflects one side of a legitimate policy debate.

Yet the opposing argument, articulated by Senator Ali Ndume during discussions over the FCT budget, deserves equal attention. Removing beggars without establishing systems for feeding, training and reintegrating them merely shifts the problem from one location to another.

The contrast between the two positions captures Nigeria’s wider policy dilemma.

Should government first protect the image and security of the city?

Or should it first build the social infrastructure necessary to prevent people from returning to the streets?

The better answer is that government must do both.

A capital city has a right to enforce public order. At the same time, a democratic government has a responsibility to ensure that enforcement does not become a substitute for social policy.

 

Where Does Rehabilitation Begin?

Rehabilitation cannot simply mean moving people from one location to another.

A credible system must begin with proper identification and classification.

Some people on the streets need emergency medical care. Others need disability support. Some require trauma counselling after displacement or violence. Children need education and protection. Able-bodied adults may require vocational training, employment opportunities or financial support to restart small businesses.

The needs are too different for a single approach.

This is why profiling must lead somewhere.

If a person is identified, counselled and transported away but receives no sustainable support afterwards, the system has only postponed the problem.

Rehabilitation should therefore be measured by reintegration, not evacuation statistics.

The number of people removed from Abuja’s streets may make an impressive enforcement figure. The more important figure is how many people remain off the streets because they have found sustainable alternatives.

The Empty Centre & the Question of Accountability

The report of an apparently empty rehabilitation centre at Bwari raises another question that deserves public attention: what exactly happens between arrest, profiling and reintegration?

Any government programme that removes vulnerable people from public spaces must operate with transparency.

Where are those removed from the streets taken?

How long do they remain there?

What medical, educational or psychological services do they receive?

How many are reunited with families?

How many receive skills training?

How many eventually return to the streets?

Without answers to such questions, enforcement risks becoming an endless cycle of arrest, relocation and return.

Public authorities should not only announce the number of people removed from the streets. They should also publish measurable rehabilitation outcomes.

The Street Is a Symptom

Street begging is not a single problem. It is where several national problems meet.

Poverty meets unemployment.

Insecurity meets displacement.

Disability meets inadequate social protection.

Child vulnerability meets trafficking.

Cultural practices meet weak regulation.

The result is visible at Abuja’s traffic lights.

The government can clear those traffic lights tomorrow. But unless it addresses the forces that keep producing vulnerable people, another group will eventually appear.

That is why the debate must move beyond whether beggars should be removed from Abuja.

The more important question is what happens after removal.

A humane and effective policy must combine enforcement with education, rehabilitation, healthcare, disability support, employment, housing assistance and protection for displaced families.

Abuja should indeed be a safe and orderly capital.

But order achieved by repeatedly moving vulnerable people from one street to another is not a lasting solution.

Behind every outstretched hand may be a story of failure, loss or exploitation. Nigeria’s challenge is not simply to make those hands disappear from public view.

It is to build a society in which fewer people are forced to stretch them out in the first place.

Click HERE to watch the Documentary on “How Street Beggars survive in Nigeria’s Capital” on Leadership TV YouTube page.