The Social Development Secretariat of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has disclosed that it has so far arrested 210 persons, masquerading as beggars, over suspected criminal activities in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
The Acting Director of Social Welfare Department, Gloria Onwuka, disclosed this when she took the apprehended persons to the Vocational and Rehabilitation Centre in Bwari on Thursday.
She said that out of those arrested in continuation of its ‘Operation Sweep Abuja Clean,’ 58 are women, 72 children and 80 men.
The Director explained that due to outcry over criminal activities, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, had directed officials of the department to step up arrest of unhoused persons, who claim to be beggars.
The Director said, “every day, you receive complaints about one thing or the other, One -chance, kidnapping, all manner of evil things in FCT. So, the minister directed us to do away with all those things.
“Most of those who claim to be beggars go even to the extent of hiring people’s children to come on the road and be begging.
“And there are families where they are hiring these children fro, and nobody around them knows that this is what they are using their children to do.
“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 night time, they disappear.
“There is a woman we caught, she said that she has cancer of the breast. By the time they loosened the bandage she placed on her breast area, there was no single wound on her breast.
“The one-chance issue, there is one that our officers, our people, picked at night by 200am. He was carrying a machete with POS and different bank ATMs .
“The time they pick anybody, they will ask you, which one is your bank? They will give you the card of your own bank, you press, if you fail, they use that machete and do away with you.
“We have arrested 80 men since the commencement of the exercise, the females are 58, while the children are 72 in number. The exercise will continue untill Abuja streets are free of such people”
On other forms of security, the Director FCTA Security Services Department, Adamu Gwary, said those arrested were constituting various degrees of criminality in the federal territory.
Gwary represented by Peter Olumuji, said the activities of the so-called beggars had become a threat to security of the residents.
He said, “we want to believe that most of the people arrested, have constituted various degrees of criminality and other things in the nation’s capital.
“The security concern of most of these nuisances within the FCT have become a source of great worry to the residents.
“And the Minister has given that directive to the Commission of Police and all other relevant agencies to ensure that the FCT is rid of all these security threats” he stressed.
