As the economy continues to go down, even beggars have fallen back on investments they made years back. Some of them now rely on the businesses they setup years back for their wives who are not blind.
Muhammed Ibrahim, chairman of the Blind Hausa People Association of Oyo State told Saturday Tribune that they are now surviving on what their wives make from the petty businesses they are running.
He said they setup the businesses for them from their alms proceeds when the economy was strong.
“All we can say now about our situation and the economy is just thank God because things are increasingly difficult for us. We do not move around to beg again and people no longer come to give us alms like they did before.
“What has been helping us is what we make from our wives that do petty businesses. Some of them are tailors, some sell food and the likes and that is what we feed on. Our wives started their businesses after government chased us away from the area beside the golf club in Sabo, Ibadan.
“That time, we were still getting alms from people so we gave those that were not blind capital to start small businesses to sustain them and our families. Thank God we did that because that is what we are managing with and if we are fortunate that people bring us some alms then we thank God,” he said.
He said some of their children had to drop out of school because they could no longer afford to pay their school fees and some of the levies the school demanded.
“We have children that are in school and to keep a child in school takes a lot of money. We do not have money.
“They’re always demanding payment for something. Just recently they were asked to bring N500 each as levy to fix the school toilet and we thought they would exclude our children but they said it’s every child and if we do not pay they would be turned back home.
“Like I said, we have children in school and struggling to see them through is difficult. I have two children in senior secondary school but one of them had to stop at his final year because I cannot afford to pay for his final exams. He said they were asked to pay over N50,000 but I told him Hassan I don’t have that kind of money and he had to stop,” he told Saturday Tribune.
Ibrahim said he wished they got more support from the government because they had lived most of their lives in Oyo State and were as good as indigenes of the state.
He said they only took their children to the north for history purposes and for them to be familiar with their roots because they were born and brought up in Oyo State.
“I wished the government here supported us more because we have become indigenes of the state. Some of us have spent up to 50 years here, all our children were given birth to here and when we go to the north they do not want to stay there because they are used to being here in the west.
“So we just take them home for history purposes because they have to know their roots. But even when we take them home people look at them differently,” Ibrahim said.
He added that they are thankful to Governor Seyi Makinde for the food palliative and hoped that they would get more when next such exercise is carried out.
“We are grateful to the government, they gave us 40 bags of rice as food palliative. They took it to Akinyele where the other beggars are but because they were many there, it did not reach us here in Sabo. We are hoping that when next they are sharing it, it will get to us here,” he said.
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