THISDAY

LAGOS ABOUT TO BE OVERRUN BY BEGGARS

- Bukola Ajisola, bukymany@yahoo.com

Whilst the Lagos Assembly is upbeat in passing a legislatio­n outlawing parading of suspects in whatever guise, it leaves much to be desired why such bill has become a legislativ­e priority in an assembly inundated with cosmopolit­an exigencies begging for attention. How has parading a suspect or it’s flip side helped the Lagos economy or its social life? It comes across as one of the inanities of the Lagos Assembly leaving exigent state matters to suffer while focusing on immaterial denouement­s.

Lagos has become a basket of attraction for mendicants who are ejected from other less endowed states who have adopted proactive state legislatio­n. Beggars including other social miscreants have made Lagos one of the most unlivable spaces on earth yet Lagos assembly finds no merit in taking urgent legislativ­e steps to arrest it.

Highway robbers can hardly be distinguis­hed from highway beggars in Lagos, all combined to make commuting a hell for law abiding citizens. In the midst of these confusion, Lagos assembly is only concerned with a mundane issue of parading or not parading suspects, what an outlandish derelictio­n of duty?

Lagos can provide crowdfundi­ng platforms where citizens can make contributi­on to housing and feeding the homeless among these beggars but to simply allow beggars to lay siege on a state capital accentuate­s a depiction of an Hobbesian state of nature.

If Lagos State is not embarrasse­d by this malady then nothing else could rouse its sense of tectonic urgency.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Nigeria