05/06/2026
Title: Lagos Did What Many Feared To Do. Northern Nigeria, It’s Time We Faced The Mirror.
Yesterday, the governor of Lagos State moved groups of girls from Northern Nigeria off Lagos streets. They were begging. For years we’ve watched it and called it “tradition”. For years we’ve looked away.
That ends now.
1. This Is Not Culture. It’s A Trap
Street begging is not identity. Identity is language, craft, values, history. Identity is not sending children to traffic lights with bowls in hand.
When a practice traps hundreds of generations of boys and girls in the same cycle of poverty, that’s not culture. That’s a system that failed. We normalized it until shame became routine.
2. Lagos Governor Deserves Credit
Whatever your politics, removing children from the streets takes courage. Lagos didn’t just clear roads. It refused to accept the abnormal as normal. That’s leadership.
Governor, you did well. Now do more. Let this be the start, not the photo op.
3. To My Northern Leaders And Parents: Look At This
Every region has poor people. But few regions export vulnerability as visibly as ours. Women and children on highways, at mosques, at bus stops. If some come from Niger Republic or Chad, that makes it worse. It means we became a transit point for regional poverty.
Ask yourself: What does it say about us when “Northern child” is the first image people picture when they hear “street beggar”?
That stereotype is our disgrace. And disgrace only leaves when we change the story ourselves.
4. The Fix Is Not Just Deportation. It’s Reform
Sending people back to their states is step one. Step two is harder:
- Education: Almajiri and Western education can work together. A child who can read and code is harder to exploit than a child with only a bowl.
- Family planning + Reorientation: More children than you can feed, shelter, and school is not blessing. It’s a burden passed to strangers.
- Empowerment: Governors, commissioners, senators, reps, agencies must fund skills, microloans, and local industries. Begging should be the last option, not the first plan.
5. Change The Narrative
Being Northern should mean resilience, scholarship, enterprise. The North produced scholars who taught the world. The North built trade routes that moved empires. We did not build that legacy on street corners.
Until we embrace reform, the disgrace continues. Not because outsiders hate us. Because we refused to fix what shames us.
Governor of Lagos Babajide Sanwo-Olu ,
Honorable commissioner for the environmental and water resources Tokunbo Wahab ,thank you for the bold step. Other Southern and Western governors should follow, legally and humanely.
Northern Nigeria, this is our call to attention. The world is watching. Our children are watching. We can either defend the shame, or end it.
None of this means we should mock the poor or look down on those forced into begging. Poverty is not a crime. Hunger is not a crime. Being born into a broken system is not a crime.
The real failure belongs to the adults, institutions, and leaders who watched generation after generation of children inherit the same hardship and called it normal.
A child holding a begging bowl is not evidence of culture. It is evidence that somewhere, a system failed.
We must replace blame with solutions, charity with opportunity, and sympathy with reform.
Every child deserves three things: a home, an education, and a future.
Anything less is a betrayal of the next generation.
This conversation is not an attack on the North. It is an appeal to the North.
We cannot build a region known for scholarship, commerce, and leadership while accepting conditions that keep millions of children trapped in poverty.
Real love for a community means telling uncomfortable truths and working together to solve them.
The strongest societies are not those without problems. They are those willing to confront their problems honestly.
Northern Nigeria has the people, the resources, the history, and the potential to lead Africa in education, innovation, agriculture, and enterprise.
But first, we must decide that every child matters more than every excuse.
Years from now, history will not ask whether we defended the status quo.
History will ask whether we had the courage to change it.
The children on the streets today will become the adults of tomorrow.
The question is simple:
Will they inherit a begging bowl, or a future?
The answer depends on what we choose to do now.
~ Dr Zainab Suleiman Buhari
