Different Faces Of Corporate Begging

Apart from the familiar physically-challenged people that are traditionally known to ask alms in the city, other shades of beggars are beginning to emerge. Call them corporate beggars, if you like.

different_faces_of_corporate_beggingThis class of beggars operates on an 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.

It is also common to see women, normally backing their babies, often well dressed, also asking for financial assistance at bus stops, especially in the morning and evening, to either buy baby food or as transport fare.

Others wave medical reports or drug prescription lists at their ‘victims’, begging profusely that they need money to purchase drugs for their ailing relations. In most cases, it is for their children. And those children would have just undergone one form of surgery or the other.

For those who normally beg for transport fares, part of the trick is to exaggerate the distance in order to draw  sympathy from the public.

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

He states, “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.”

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

A senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Lagos, Dr. Bamikole Fagbohungbe,  says 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.

He says, “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.”

“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,” A psychiatrist and a former head of the Department of  Psychiatry, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Osogbo campus, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, notes.