Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has repatriated 217 destitute, street beggars, and vagabonds, evacuated from the streets of the Federal Capital City (FCC) in Abuja.
The director of the department of Social Welfare Services, Social Development Secretariat (SDS) of the FCTA, Alhaji Sani Amar-Rabe, disclosed this to journalists at the FCT Vocational and Rehabilitation Centre in Bwari Area Council, shortly after dispatching officials of the department to transport the destitute and beggars back to their various states.
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Amar-Rabe said the repatriation complied with the order by the FCT minister of state, Dr Ramatu Aliyu, and the permanent secretary, FCTA, Mr Olusade Adesola, who instructed the department of social welfare services to rid the city of human and environmental nuisances.
He stated that it was the responsibility of the FCTA to ensure that those evacuated from the streets were repatriated to their various states.
“We are here in respect of repatriation of the apprehended destitute, street beggars, street boys, and vagabonds who were profiled, and their health challenges were equally attended to and they showed no interest in learning vocational skills.
“But those who have a good mindset, embrace skills acquisition for empowerment. There are just 217 beggars and street boys that are to be repatriated, mostly to Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, Jigawa, Kano, Zamfara, Sokoto, and Kebbi states. This time around, we also have some from Abia, Imo, and Delta states,” he said.
He revealed that the FCT minister of state had been in contact with some of the state governments through their liaison offices, to ensure that the affected states were more responsive in addressing and managing the repatriated destitute and beggars.
“What we noticed from some of the destitute and beggars, is that they consider the FCT safer and economically viable, especially those of the North West and the North East. So, people from these zones move to Abuja for survival and some of them, we discovered that begging and destitution have become an attitude to them.
“The street boys that constitute menace and defaced the FCC, some of whom at a particular time, manifest into another threat to the security of the residents especially those that do sleep under bridges claiming to be destitute, but most of them are criminals,” he said.
The director called on the FCT residents, especially the well-to-do, to desist from giving alms and charity to the street beggars because it is encouraging them to continue to remain on the streets and constitute nuisance to the city.
The principal of FCT Vocational and Rehabilitation Centre in Bwari, Malam Bala Dantsoho, explained that most of those that were repatriated are untrainable, so they have to be repatriated to their various states.
Dantsoho, who decried the proliferation of street beggars and destitute in the FCT, urged state governments to be more proactive in tackling destitution.