The Menace of Corporate beggars on Lagos roads

The menace of corporate beggars on Lagos streets is the focus of this piece.

If you are stuck in the perennial holdup in your car or a commercial vehicle in places like Obalende, Awolowo Way Ikeja, Oshodi and many other popular areas within the Lagos metropolis, one common feature is to see people with all manner of prescriptions and pictures of maimed people begging for alms. They are always well-dressed, thereby gaining the attention of passengers.

A man who has become a common fixture at the Ikeja Under Bridge area of the State is always seen begging for N1500, money he claims is meant to buy intravenous drips for his son James who he always swears is at the Lagos State General Hospital for an appendicitis surgery.

His standard line is, “please good Nigerians, help my son James who is 12 years old and is in urgent need of six intravenous drips which costs N250 per sachet. 

“The doctors at the General Hospital have been kind enough to carry out the operation but he needs the drips to survive. Please help James with any amount you can donate,” he always says pulling out a prescription bearing the hospital’s stamp.

Sometimes, because of his demeanour, he gets money from passengers but most of the time he is simply ignored as many Lagosians who constantly ply the route know that it is all fake and that he is just a corporate beggar.

Apart from the familiar physically-challenged people that are traditionally-known to beg alms in the Lagos, other shades of beggars are beginning to emerge. They are well dressed people who appeal to people’s conscience. They are corporate beggars.

This class of beggars operate on individual basis and they seem to pick their targets by some traits they see in them. It could be the kind of cars they drive, the neighbourhood where they live or the kind of clothes they wear.

These corporate beggars operate in and around offices, churches, shopping malls, road sides and familiar neighbourhoods and even lurk around Automated Tellers Machines (ATM).

Investigations by Inside Lagos revealed that they abound in all corners of Lagos especially around the General Hospital at Ikeja, where they target the perpetual gridlock to claim all sorts of illness.

It is also common to see women with babies strapped to their backs often well-dressed, also asking for financial assistance at bus stops, especially in the morning and evening claiming that they need to buy baby food.

Kind-hearted Lagosians are now at a loss of whom to help as it has turned out that most of them are fake and greedy people who only prey on well meaning people.

Lagos, being the commercial nerve-centre of the country, receives a large influx of people from different parts of the nation and even neighbouring countries.

Some believe that it is the centre of excellence where people find jobs no matter how dirty, but others come in to create their business without waiting for white-collar jobs. Part of the business that people engage in is corporate begging.

Narrating his experience to Inside Lagos, Mr. Oluwasogo Isaac, a banker who works on the Island said that he almost lost N25,000 to a corporate beggar.

“The incident happened around Ketu, BRT bus stop. This woman approached me and launched into a story of how her son is in the hospital suffering from first degree burns as a result of a fire outbreak which she claimed rendered her homeless and penniless.

“I was utterly moved with compassion because she showed me pictures to back her story. There and then, I wrote a check for N25.000 asking her to come and cash it at our Marina branch because I also work there. I said this with the intention of helping her raise more money from my colleagues. She thanked me profusely and left.

“It was after she left that a KAI officer who had been listening quietly told me that she is fake, and that she changes tactics every day. As God would have it she came to the bank the next day and I insisted that she must take me to see her son at LUTH. That was when she developed cold feet and began to change her story. I collected my cheque from her and made sure she was disgraced pubicly. It is so sad that you can’t trust people anymore,” he said.

A Yaba-based resident, Mr Anthony Obi narrating his experience with a beggar at Yaba, said he was approached by a well -dressed young man who spoke flawless English, begging for transport fare.

“He told me that he came all the way from Ikorodu to Yaba,  to visit a relation but missed him narrowly, and that he did not have enough money to go back to Ikorodu.

“I asked him the exact amount he needed and he said  N500. I calculated it and I discovered he needed between N350 and N400.  Though I never believed his tale, I gave him only N200.”

While Obi was kind enough to part with N200, Mr. Funso Odekina had a different experience.

Odekina, who lives at New Oko Oba area of Lagos, recalls an encounter he had with a female corporate beggar. The woman’s deceitful nature was unveiled by him.

“I was busy in my workshop when I noticed a middle-aged woman who clutched a polythene bag, dressed in Ankara,  advance toward me. I had thought she was about to ask for directions to where she was headed.

“But I was surprised when she said she was on her way to Agbado and she had no money on her, that I should assist her with money.

“Since I believe in alms giving as a Muslim, I gave N150, knowing that the amount would take her from that point to Agbado. She thanked me and left.”

But Odekina was surprised to see the same woman the next day,  still relating the same story to another would-be victim. He raised the alarm, which exposed the woman’s tricks.

Odekina explained that he and others who had gathered warned her never to ply her trade in their territory again.

This is what many Lagosians experience almost on daily basis, forcing many people to become stone-hearted towards the plight of people who genuinely need help.

However, psychologists and psychiatrists have given reasons why there are such corporate beggars in the society.

A senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Lagos, Dr. Bamikole Fagbohungbe,  said there are two types of corporate beggars that are easily-identifiable in the society; those forced into begging either due to the economic downturn or those who have been sacked from paid employment; and those who do not want to work but looking for easy ways out.

“Those who are in the first category are those who took to corporate begging due to hopelessness of their situation. They had tried all other means but there is no succour. Those in the second category are those who want to cut corners, they do not want to work. Rather, they prefer the easy way out.”

A psychiatrist and a former head of the Department of  Psychiatry, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Osogbo campus, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, noted that since the military had exterminated the middle class, it is either one is at the upper crust or lower class.

He stated that non-existence of the social security system for the unemployed and the aged “does not augur well for the society.” 

“When there is economic dislocation either through loss of job or lack of employment, some people resort to corporate begging. First, they may begin by going to their friends and asking for assistance.  it is when the friends begin to treat them with disdain that they look elsewhere.

“There is even a type of corporate begging among those political office holders who left office some years back. They use all sorts of gimmicks to raise money from some of their colleagues currently in office.

“It is high time the state and federal governments instituted social security system as we have in the United Kingdom, which we even tagged capitalist economy. They tax the rich heavily to take care of the poor,” he said.

Written by Ayomide Owonibi Odekanyin of Nigerian Tribune