By Pius Awunah
The Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) has so far arrested over 200 persons as the clamp down on beggars and others who engage in social vices in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),begins. It would be recalled that the FCT Minister, Mr. Nyesom Wike,recently ordered the cleansing of the FCT of miscreants, urchins and beggars.
Acting Director, Department of Social Welfare in the Social Department Secretariat of the FCDA,Gloria Onwuka,told journalists recently in Abuja that no fewer than 210 beggars across the city centre had been arrested.Onwuka stated that the exercise, which is continuous, commenced last Monday and that so far,80 males, 58 females, and 72 child beggars have been picked up across the streets of the nation’s capital.
According to her, the operation is a security measure to rid the city of suspected criminal elements such as “one-chance” robbery and kidnapping, among other anti-social activities.She noted that most of the child beggars were hired by women for begging as a strategy to win the sympathy of the unsuspecting members of the public,thus posing security risks.
She stated that, after profiling,some of the so-called beggars were identified as suspected criminals, using the real beggars and children as shields, only to indulge in criminal activities either in the night or at any given opportunity.
Her words: “Every day, you receive complaints about one thing or the other – one chance, kidnapping, and all manner of evil things happening in FCT.“So, the Minister, following consistent security reports on their activities, has decided to solve this cause of insecurity once and for all.“You see, these beggars will even go to the extent of hiring people’s children to come and beg.
”She added that the families from whom the beggars hire the children do not know the purpose they were being used for.
“They have taken it as a business. They will go and hire people from other states, put them in vehicles; very early in the morning, they will come into Abuja and start begging; by evening or in the nighttime, they disappear.“There is a woman we caught.
She said that she has cancer of the breast, but by the time we removed the bandage, there was not a single wound on her breast.“So, all these things are happening in Abuja, that’s why the minister has decided to do away with them,” she stated.
On the ‘one chance’ cab operators,she narrated how the enforcement team arrested one of them at night by 2:00am with a machete, a POS machine and different POS cards of banks.
The acting director stated that all those arrested would be profiled where they are camped and fed in Bwari, and would be taken back to their various states. Also speaking,the Director, Department of Security Services(DSS), FCT, Adamu Gwary, represented by a Deputy Director,Dr. Peter Olumuji said that all those arrested committed various crimes in Abuja.
