The Anambra State government is currently battling its Lagos state counterpart for repatriating destitute people arrested on the streets of Lagos to their home state of Anambra.
Anambra state Governor, Peter Obi, has indeed fired a strongly worded letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, describing the relocation of destitute people from his state as “illegal, unconstitutional, and a blatant violation of the human rights” of the “deportees”.
But checks by PREMIUM TIMES indicate that the Anambra state government had in the past arrested beggars on the streets of Awka and swiftly repatriated them to their home states of Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom.
Below are two reports of the arrests and “deportation” as captured by two Nigerian newspapers at the time.
Anambra Orders Arrest Of Child Beggars
The Anambra state government has issued a warning to all street beggars, especially children used by their parents to beg for alms, to vacate the streets or be arrested. 29 of such women who displayed their children as strategy for getting alms have already been arrested in Awka and Onitsha, and repatriated to their home states; Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom states.
The state commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Dr. Ego Cordelia Uzoezie, disclosed Friday in Awka when a middle-aged woman was arrested for begging with nine children at various points in Awka.
Uzoezie said her attention was drawn to the spectacle when one of the children who begged at the Unizik junction, Awka, six-year-old Goodnews Sunday, was hit in the jaw by an Okada rider, while he begged. Uzoezie decried the attitude of some parents who used their children to beg for alms, and warned that after 72 hours any beggar seen in the state would be arrested by the law enforcement agents and the special task force of the ministry of women affairs and social development.
Anambra Govt Orders The Arrest Of Beggars With Children, 29 Arrested So Far
CHAMPION, DEC 4, 2011
By Odogwu Emeka Odogwu, Awka