Rising Cases Of Teenage Beggars Worries Niger Governor

By MAIRIGA Juliana,Minna.

Niger state Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello has warned of the imminent danger that faces the nation with the large number of children roaming the streets in the country especially in the north.
He said that in the process of trying to prevent crime, the nation is indirectly breeding crime.
Speaking at the Interfaith Dialogue and Engagement organized by the Development Initiative of West Africa and the Kukah Center held in Minna, Bello said that the number of children roaming the streets across the nation is becoming alarming and must be addressed.
“It is sad that while we are trying to prevent crime in the country, we are breeding it indirectly. We must be concern with the number of children roaming the street. The danger is that the next generations we are breeding are generations of children on the street. With these children, we are breeding danger particularly in this present dispensation”, he said.
The governor who was represented by his Special Adviser on Religious Affairs, Mallam Ahmad Tanko opined that the reason why most children are still on the street is because parents have failed in the discharge of their responsibilities.
“Let us all go back and resume our responsibility as parents. We have to take responsibility and stop our children from roaming the streets. We have not discharged our responsibility as parents that are why our children are on the street.
“These children do not know the comfort of a bed; they do not know the comfort of clean water or the comfort of their parents. They are born and thrown into the streets. Let us go back and take back our responsibilities as parents”, he added.
In his address, the Bishop of Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Arch Bishop Hassan Kukah said that whether the nation likes it or not, the next owners and leaders of the nation are the Almajiris and the youths who roam aimlessly in the streets.
He urged Nigerians to put behind the past and forge ahead for the peace and unity of the nation stressing that there is a lot the nation can do as a unified body, “there is a lot we can do together to build a better and peaceful Nigeria and leave it as a legacy.”
Kukah then called on government to work at improving the quality of conversations between Muslims and Christians adding that if the problem can be dealt with at the university level, the nation would have achieved a lot.
“Universities are the incubators of the leaders of tomorrow. The reason why we are having confusion in the country is because we have not dealt with this problem at the university level. The conversation between Muslims and Christians at the universities has to be improved”, he declared.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *