LAGOSIAN DEVELOPMENT PLAN : NO MORE CHILDREN FOR BEGGARS

Dear Diary,

Lagos, as I said, is fast becoming a world city, an internationally recognised metropolis, the major hub of business in West Africa and one of the reasons Nigeria has become the 25th largest economy in the world.

However, somethings need to be done.
I started with my opinion on the need to ban further formation of new churches taking up space that can be used to companies and job opportunities that would be better for the economy than another prayer space.
Today I continue with another harsh medicinal point.

2.       Ban beggars from reproducing.
Notice how rich people or members of the upper and at times lower middle classes of society with the means to provide for their families hardly ever have more than 4 children? At least in this day and age.
But you also must have noticed how beggar women pile their children on their heads, tie them on their backs or make them trail behind in their numbers to go about the street begging.

China had an interesting way of dealing with this. They banned ALL families from having over 2 children. Because they are sensible, they had their economists and statistical demographers look into the future and they saw that the numerous child-having habit wasn’t gonna help them in the future. So they sensibly opted to nip it in the bud.

One family. One child.

But no, here in Nigeria you must at least have 5 or you haven’t started. Let me at this point remind you that jobs are already so hard to get. Not as many people are as enterprising as would be healthy for our economy, the Universities churn out more graduates than most others in the world, 3 quarters of whom are airheads, or cannot get jobs, or have not the wherewithal to startup businesses to support themselves, hence everyone is completely dependent on the Government for handouts, and of course desperation and corresponding crime rates will only be on the skyrocketing path.

This doesn’t seem right o.
It’s already hard enough for folks from comfortable families to get jobs, we haven’t yet of a child of a beggar becoming President, they have almost no access to the education they . So I think the society can do without beggar children who become more criminals than Upstanding members of society.

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Lagos Beggars.

Dear Diary,

There is this little boy who begs on the Ikeja road to the airport. He twists his right hand to look deformed. Not a very good attempt, if you ask me.

It cracks me up really.
Maybe I should take a photo.

I have looked at him closely, there is no burn or deformity there. I have even seen him at unguarded moments when his ‘deformed’ hand isn’t so deformed anymore.
Then I pity him. He couldn’t possibly have decided to stand on the road begging, could he?

Begging in Lagos….and the rest of Nigeria has become a lucrative business. In Calabar, they used to bring them in vans to beg early in the morning and at night they’d be whisked away to submit the proceeds of the day to whoever their pimp is. I hope the State Government has been able to do something about it.

There’s the lady with the pepertual scowl on her face still here in Ikeja under the bridge. Since I started working here at the airport in 2012 till now, I see her everyday quoting the same not-so-sad-anymore story “please help me, my mother is dying. She’s at the General Hospital.” I used to give her money but now I’ve grown weary of her. One time I actually asked her “Your mama never die yet?”

Then there are the others who beg and take phone calls with rather fancy phones that I don’t even use.

There’s this man I met at Oshodi who was begging every and anyone for N20 to add to his money to pay his fare to Obalende. He’d been begging everyone and still begging me. So I told him “oya come let me pay the bus fare for you. Enter the bus!” He shouted at me o. He told me to not spoil his market if I do not want to give him money.
Girl, I ran away o. Before I will just see a Nigerian movie play out in front of me where his fellow beggars will surround me and beat me.

Let’s not forget the “corporate beggars.”

Makes me feel bad for those genuine beggars who have nothing. Cause I hardly want to give to any of them.