A few days ago, I was listening in on a talk show, on a local station & Tehran topic being discussed was BEGGING, which is also known as Fine Bara, Corporate begging, or Behind bara on this side of heaven & this part of the country.

Begging is the practice of imploring others to grant a favour, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. Besides money, they may also ask for other small items.

A few years ago, beggars were considered runts of the society. They were people who had lesser means of daily living & were mostly physically handicapped, or mentally sick people.

Now, there seems to be a new vogue of beggars in town known as corporate beggars or professional beggars who've besieged major commercial cities in Nigeria and resorted to begging for alms instead of doing meaningful jobs. Now, they just find a stress-free, acceptable (to them anyway) method to make money which is begging.

A well dressed person (compared to how 'normal' beggars dress) comes up to you regaling you with tales of how he/she just lost a wallet, got robbed or is a visitor in that part of town and has exhausted the fares he/she has and still has a considerable distance left & needs funds from you to help take him/her to wherever it is he/she is going. In most cases, such people speak well and can have a good command of the English Language & you believing the story to be true give enough to cove the fares (and probably more).

I'm not saying the stories told are totally false or a person' purse or wallet cannot have been stolen on that particular day, my point simply is, there has been an increase in recent times of these stories and tales and what have we and they've constituted a real social menace in our society.

I was @ Costain (a suburb in Lagos) some months back when I saw a man dressed in a white jacket and white slacks (pair of trousers [these pair looked like the real definition of 'slacks' to me] and he sounded like he was begging for money and my sources tell me he's been doing that since 1973 in several other areas he frequents, he just moves close to a person and asksfor what he wants (corporate begging), though now, it seems a lot of people know and avoid him because he was asking loudly for #20 (unlike what's obtainable with corporate begging).

I also think begging can also be a psychological problem (or so I believe) as some cases of lost family relatives who were found in different parts of the state, sometimes begging, I know this for a fact because I was witness to one.

After weeks of a woman's family looking for her, she was found begging for alms she didn't need since her husband was a comfortable man and she has grown-up children who were doing well, but she moved back to her parents house, left home very early in the morning and came back in the evenings after a 'hard day's job'. People who saw and recognized her were shocked at what she was doing.

Her problem is unknown to me (Nigerian people may say its probably a curse from her hometown or 'somebody is following her'), but its largely psychological and probably fear of something known to only her.

We've several other young people like that, who have been groomed from home to ask for whatever they need for their upkeep from the rich friends they have, probably in higher institutions. These children are not taught to live within their means or to cut their coats according to their cloth (and not size) the rich ones are expected to bring enough to cater for him and how many other people who rely on him, when most of these people who are used to asking and collecting things from other people get older, they become too lazy to fend for themselves but rather resort to begging for their daily survival and see nothing wrong with it. They just believe as long as the person isn't complaining to them, everything is fine.

The idle hands is the devil's workshop, so everyone should endeavour to fund a real, profitable enterprise & divert the knowledge and talents they have into something useful & stop constituting a nuisance in the society.

So now, ion think I have any other thing to add (for now), so you can stop being so serious and so curious & find something more productive to engage yourself in instead of reading an already ended article.

Shoo.........