You can’t end begging without tackling poverty and illiteracy, Shehu Sani reacts to Sanusi’s comment on beggars

A former Senator representing Kaduna Central Zone, Shehu Sani, said on Thursday poverty and begging culture in the North were results of social injustice and systemic failure of political leaders in the country.

Sani, who was reacting to a statement credited to the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi, on the increasing number of beggars in the northern part of the country, told journalists in a chat that ” poverty ravaging the country, especially the north and has turned many people to beggars cannot be addressed by legislation.”

He also frowned at “attempts by some states in the North to outlaw begging.”

Sani said: “Begging in the Northern part of Nigeria is a direct result of poverty, neglect, social, cultural and religious factors combined.”

“Religious leaders sanctify begging by giving it a divine interpretation and reverence, and political leaders generates beggars by impoverishing and pauperizing the people. Imagining a society without beggars in a nation strangulated by social injustice and systemic poverty is an illusion.

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“The Northern Political leaders should understand that it is impossible to compose a paradise without beggars in a hell they created over the years. Beggars are tragic victims and direct result of a nation failed by its successive governing elites. You can’t end begging without ending poverty and illiteracy.”

“It is an aberration for a government to enact a law against begging. You can arrest beggars but you can’t end begging as long as the social, cultural, political and economic factors that contribute to begging to exist.

“Many states in the country in the last twenty years tried to criminalize begging but failed. They used beggars to win elections and demonize their opponents and now want to criminalize them.”

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