They
sometimes swarm around like bees. They move in two’s and three’s- a troika
comprising of a mother and two children. The sight is not uncommon in the
society but when they tend to be normal visitors in a citadel of learning, then
taking a second thought is not out of place. Their sing song may be different
but their tune is parallel. Same tale, same refrain, same rhetoric!
Just as men are in sizes, they also come in
categories; old men, young men, young women, old women, adolescence and even
toddlers. These are unwanted guests on the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU),
Ile-Ife, (South West Nigeria) campus, who are daily becoming members of the
university community.
They come with endearing tales of how life
has dealt mercilessly with them and their poor victims can’t help but dip hands
into the pocket to ‘bless’ them. Some
claim accidents, a few hold the supernatural world for their fate while many
blame the harsh economic conditions.
There are young women who will want money
to settle bills of their children’s upbringing. There are old men who will want
to pay hospital bills. There are young men who claimed to be sacked bank
workers whose mums are on the sick bed. Some are stranded and they “quickly
need money” to transport themselves to town. For the young boys, they need
money to eat or pay examination bills. The list is endless. If one is to go by
the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist who said that
"everyone lives by selling something”, it can then be concluded that the
act of begging is a trade.
“Given the rate
at which they are growing, they may soon stage a rampage”, says Ife Idowu, a
400 Level student of Industrial Chemistry.
“One of my fellowship members was praying at the sports complex when a
woman approached him with a food flask claiming to be hungry. He was on the way to get her the food when
she called him back and showed him an empty can of coke and asked him to get
her one in addition to the food. Your guess is as good as mine; he was exasperated
at her reaction. She was a different beggar, one with a choice”.
At times, many of the beggars who parade the campus
often have the audacity to disrupt classes. They come into lecture halls
kneeling and begging with sympathetic eyes.
For their sakes, lectures can be disrupted as class reps are asked to
pass a collection bag around for them. Some even come into class at night when students
are reading. “The same faces still come
with the same tales. Sometimes, they may
be so daring that they come into the halls of residence. I remember a teenager
with a baby strapped on her back begging for drug money”. This is the
submission of a 400 level student of Crop Science who craved anonymity.
Corroborating her claims, Adurayemi Ositelu, a final
year student in the department of Medical
Rehabilitation sees the menace as something that is becoming unbearable. “Sometimes you see small children among them.
There was a Sunday I was coming from church and an okada (motor-cyclist) man had to shout on three kids who were begging
people coming from church for money. The effect of this is not good on the
society. This means that we are not teaching the values of hard work and
sincerity. This will subsequently amount to bringing children up as rogues”.
In
a university that prides itself as being “for learning and culture”, then one
should expect a modicum of order and moderation in this regard. It is said that
a beggar who begs from another beggar will never get rich, whether there could
be a curb to this menace; only time will tell.
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