by Auwal Anwar

Suddenly, a young Igbo girl, probably 20, came to my window and greeted me. She told me that she had an exam to write in Kaduna by 2pm and she had no transport fare.

In November 2010, on the first day of attending a three-day workshop on environmental impacts organized by the World Bank in Kaduna, my car developed a fault. I had to leave it behind with a mechanic for repairs while I went back home to Zaria to spend the night. The following day, my wife dropped me at the motor park on her way to work, and that was when the begging began.

A group of haggard chaps approached me, asking where I was going to, which I told them. Unknown to me, they were with the buses section. On arriving there, one look at the bus told me that I should not invite curse upon my journey by entering that rickety junk. So, I just apologized and started for the taxi section. Those chaps would not have it. When all entreaties failed to convince me, they began begging.

I hopped into the taxi, a Peugeot 505 station wagon, and I sat at the back. I was the only passenger. That was when one middle-aged Hausa woman, with a child strapped to her back, came to the window and whispered weakly, with a cracked voice. She said she and the kid had not eaten since the previous day. She begged me for ‘any little amount’, invoking many holy names of the prophets. I looked at the baby, who was sleeping, and I had to part with enough money for two meals. She snapped the money out of my hands and left hurriedly. But on lifting up my head from my book, a few minutes later, I sighted her by the window of another taxi, most probably narrating the same story.

Suddenly, a young Igbo girl, probably 20, came to my window and greeted me. She told me that she had an exam to write in Kaduna by 2pm and she had no transport fare. When I asked about her parents, she said her father was dead and that her mother told her to ‘find her way;’ otherwise, she should forfeit the exams. Considering I had just been duped, I asked her to join us so I would pay the driver myself.

And she did. But before we reached Kaduna this ‘student’ wanted to know if I was living alone so she could come and be ‘helping’ me with some house chores every morning – in Kaduna!

As we were about to leave, I decided to alight and buy a newspaper. As God will have it, while I was scanning the papers at the stand, a woman began begging behind me. I turned to behold the same woman. And she was telling me the same story! When she finished, I told her to fear God, that I’d just given her money, had I not? On recognizing me, the woman gasped and scurried away. Shaking my head, I re-joined the taxi and we left.

At the Kaduna toll gate, we met two policemen who stopped us and started asking questions. The more our driver met their requirements, the angrier they got. It took nearly 20 minutes for them to exhaust the checklist. At the end he had everything they asked for. And that was when they begged him for money to buy ‘pure water’. He had to give them. We were incensed.

On arrival at the mechanic’s workshop I realized that he had not finished the repairs, though he had already told me on phone before I left Zaria that the car was ready. He was working on another one because its owner was there and he had begged him to abandon my own for his. I was very unhappy because my plan was to get the car and rush to attend Day 2 of the workshop. As he was begging me to exercise patience, a young hawker of Kosai (beans cake) approached me. Trailing behind her were nine kids, none whom was above 7 years of age.

She asked me, “Could you please buy this food for these hungry almajirai? God will reward you for it.” As I gazed at those dirty kids, all my anger against my mechanic fizzled away. They looked miserably hungry and they smelled foul, all for no fault of theirs. I imagined my child in that situation and my heart stirred. I had to help. So I paid for the whole tray contents as I believed it would not even satisfy them.

But on collecting the money, the hawker just turned and left, while the kids zoomed after her. Before I could say ‘Goodluck Jonathan,’ they had got to that man who muscled through me. And then she began begging him on their behalf. I was later to learn that it was a standard practice, such that at the end, the hawker and the kids would share the money!

Beggarville. Isn’t it high time we changed?

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Read this article in the Leadership Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija