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The Government of Anambra State is ready to take action against parents who use their children for street begging and prostitution.
The state commissioner for information, Paul Nwosu, said despite Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s free education programme in Anambra, some parents still send their children and wards to the streets to beg for alms.
In a statement on Wednesday, September 11, 2024, Nwosu said “There is absolutely no reason why these kids shouldn’t be in schools instead of milling under Aroma flyover and our other city centres in seeming vagrancy.”
Describing this as troubling, the commissioner said the practice undermines the Anambra Government’s efforts to mordenise and regenerate the state.
The statement reads, “It is so troubling seeing healthy children who ought to be in schools being used as beggars at the bus stops, road intersections, and along our streets.”
“It’s time all the unrepentantly incorrigible parents who release their children for this unhealthy practice are stopped in their tracks.
“This is a smear on Governor Soludo’s sustained effort to regenerate our major cities and urban centres.
Nwosu stressed that the children are supposed to be in schools enjoying free education, adding that state agencies would soon start going after parents whose children beg on the streets.
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He said, “Parents and syndicates who send these minors to go and beg for them on the streets must be reminded that there is a law prohibiting child begging and prostitution and so on.
“Henceforth, a more coordinated action would be taken by relevant government agencies to get to the root of the matter so that an effective stop will be put to it.
“The children deserve to be in the schools enjoying the free education guaranteed by governor Soludo instead of being on the streets, begging for alms they eventually give to the adults.”
In May 2024, while speaking during the 2024 Children’s Day celebration at the Alex Ekwueme Square in Awka, Soludo said Anambra state has the least number of out-of-school children aged 6–15 years in Nigeria.