At early hours of Thursday, it was gathered that some groups of beggars numbering about 250 staged a peaceful protest against low patronage by members of the public owing to a recent rumour that some rich men usually ‘buy’ money from them for fetish purposes.
The report, according to the spokesperson for the destitute, Imam Abubakar Abdullahi, Serikin Hausawa of Hausawa Community, Oja’ba, Ibadan, had created deep hatred for his people.
“The reports that some wealthy people are buying money from beggars, including the physically-challenged people, for money rituals is not true. As a result of the claim that some ritualists do buy money from these beggars, there has been public resentment against these innocent people.
What we know is that traders, hawkers and commercial drivers do come to these beggars who are mainly blind and lame people, to change money (get smaller denominations). We need to clear our names so that people will not be punishing us for offences we don’t know anything about,” he said.