As Poverty increased, the number of beggars has continued to skyrocket due to growing insecurity across the country.
Kwara State has thus become a hub for begging most particularly for teenagers who are supposed to be in school learning.
Ilorin Metropolis has been polluted with underage children begging around the street, with the reports gathered by Afrika Eyes, showing that no proactive measures have been put in place by the State Government to reduce underage begging in the state.
According to the United Nations Children Funds (UNICEF), the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria is 18.5 million which is a whole lot higher compared to the 2021 estimate put at 10.5 million.
A study by UNICEF shows that Nigeria has an estimated 18.5 million out-of-school children, the highest in the world. About 60 percent of the country’s out-of-school young people are in the northern part of Nigeria.
Statistics from the study confirmed that some of the states in the northern part of the country were adversely affected by kidnapping, banditry, insurgency, and early marriage, therefore the accelerated wide variety of out-of-school kids in the zone.
One of the major source of insecurity has been established to be the negligence and incapacitation of some parents to enroll their wards into formal education.
Some residents of Ilorin metropolis have expressed concern over the inflow of child beggars into the Kwara State capital and its impact on security of the state.
Mr. Tajudeen Babatunde, a motorcycle rider, couldn’t hide his dissatisfaction with the continuous increase of underage beggars Ilorin.
He noted that there is nothing good in children roaming the road while their counterparts are in school while adding that it’s unsafe for the children themselves.
“Look at the northern part of Nigeria, those who started the banditry and terrorism are small teens that were recruited due to the fact they had nothing to do, they had been seen roaming about the street begging for cash and the recruiters saw them as an asset.
"These teenagers were both kidnapped or wooed with money, and later skilled to launch assaults across the country, because the government failed to rescue them from the street,” he said.
He added that the children embrace the little token given to them because of their ignorance.
Mr Babatunde noted that most of the beggars have been encouraged to turn out to be a terrorist because of the little token they have been uncovered to.
He also stated that Insecurity has ended up being a risk to our society, by him, "an idle individual is a devil's workshop", while reiterating the truth that the authorities have a lot of duties to take care of.
He advised the Kwara nation government to represent a mission force that will be monitoring the youngsters that are roaming around the street begging for money.
"Government enterprise have to go round the kingdom and choose any baby seen begging if viable arrest their mother or father and make sure that the children get free education so that our society will be safe towards insecurity."
"These beggars have caused a lot of issues for us right here at the publish office, many of them have been hit with the aid of tricycles and okada begging people for cash barring taking cognizant of any vehicle coming their way,” he added.
Mrs. Kafilat AbdulRahman, a dealer at the submit workplace, narrated how street begging has been commercialized in the state.
She appealed to the state government to come to their aid and ship the children back to school or be returned to their home states.
Ayuba Abdullahi, a trader at the Ilorin Post Office, recounted how insecurity has taken over the northern part of the country linking underage begging as an Avenue for recruiting bandits and terrorists.
He said many farmers were chased out of their communities because of insecurity while some innocent people have been killed.
According to him, "many of the kids of the victims who lost their lives have turned to beggars, while some are lazy they deliberately grew to become themselves to a beggar due to the fact they don't prefer to work.”
He implored the authorities to look into the situation and rescue the young people from the road and offer them free education.
He also called on the parents of some beggars whose state of affairs is manageable ought to deem it healthy and enroll their wards in public schools.
"I enrolled my children in school, and these days I'm proud that they are in faculty learning."