I am waiting to see a blueprint on the abolition of begging and its replacement with a vocational programme by Nigeria’s Northern State Governors Forum

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Several states in northern Nigeria have passed laws to ban begging over recent years. On the face of it, such pronouncements may sound laudable but it is just sloganeering unless it is backed up with a plan to train, rehabilitate and get these beggars into productive endeavours

[2] According to a global survey published by Habitat for Humanity in 2015, Nigeria has 24.4m beggars. Also, according to this survey, 16.5% of Nigeria’s population is homeless. As we all know, Nigeria’s beggars are by and large made up of mentally ill and disabled citizens

[3] If you are taking 24m people off the streets, you simply have to find alternative employment for them. You also have to come up with a mental health care plan for those in need of it

[4] No one needs to be told that a disability policy also needs to be put in place for those in need of it. So far, I have not heard of any programmes from any state governor to address these concerns

[5] One family that inspires me when we debate disability is the Ovitz family. They were a family of Hungarian Jewish actors and traveling musicians originating from present Romania, who survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two

[6] They were descended from Shimson Eizik Ovitz, a badchen entertainer, itinerant rabbi and himself a dwarf. He fathered 10 children in total, seven of them dwarfs. The Nazi’s used them for all sorts of experiments but alas, they stayed strong and after the war returned to entertainment. How I wish I actually met these inspiring heroes

[7] One of the most evil men to ever walk the face of the earth, the German concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death, separated the Ovitzes from the rest of the Auschwitz camp inmates to add them to his collection of test subjects. He was curious about the fact that the family included both dwarfs and tall members

[8] Wanting to spare the group of dwarfs because they were harder to find than other kinds of test subjects such as twins, Mengele arranged to have special living quarters built for them so they could be monitored, to keep them healthy for his human experimentation. Mengele's physicians extracted bone marrow and pulled out teeth and hair to find signs of hereditary disease. They poured hot and cold water in their ears and blinded them with chemical drops

[9] Fortunately, the Ovitz family survived their ordeal and were released when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945. In May 1949, they immigrated to Israel, settled in Haifa and began their tours again, becoming quite successful and packing large concert halls. In 1955 they retired and bought a cinema hall

[10] Does any governor on any of the states of northern Nigeria have any such plans for the beggars they are clearing off the streets? At the very least, they should be looking to open a vocational village where they can train and employ these people in crafts such as sewing, shoemaking, hair dressing, carpentry, vulcanising, etc