“I came to Ibadan, Oyo State 30 years ago I remember that time very well. I was really scared of vehicles, my body was shivering throughout the journey and I was scared it was a big vehicle. I came here to look for food to feed my children. I was left with the children, after my two husbands died. I fell out of love with my first husband after I had two children with him unfortunately he died and I married my second husband who also later died. Both of us were blind and you know some of us are not lucky.”
Rahinatu Ibrahim, popularly called Ganga, recalled with nostalgia when she first embarked on her journey to the South West many years ago from Kano State.
After the demise of her two husbands, the visually impaired woman decided to travel far with her children in search of food to feed them.
Despite being scared of vehicles at that time, the thought of her children starving and her inability to farm made her face her fears. She was determined to conquer.
“My children were young and I couldn’t farm, I did not have the strength to do so, so I had to come here to beg. Nobody was helping me with the children; I was only depending on God. I came here with seven of them and we begged everywhere together and along the line, one of them died here, he was a twin,” she told Saturday Tribune in an interview during the week.
After begging for many years, when her female children were ripe for marriage, Rahinatu took the girls back home and married them off.
“They all grew up here and when they were due for marriage I took them back home and I married them off. Someone asked for one of the girls hands in marriage here in Sabo but I refused, I didn’t want her to marry a Yoruba man and maybe he wasn’t lucky or God didn’t want him to marry her,” she said.
The visually impaired woman said she stopped moving around to beg many years ago after her legs developed some pains and because of the harsh begging conditions, she had to return her granddaughter who was her aid, back to her mother in Kano. “I used to move around to beg a long time ago with my sister but since my leg developed some pains I stopped moving round to beg, I just come to the roadside and sit to beg.”
I’ve stayed to beg at Oke Bola, Oke Ado and many areas with my children. My granddaughter was helping me to cross the road but I had to take her home because it is not easy to be out here under harsh conditions with a child, so, I took her home to her mother.
“After my daughters got married, I travelled home to visit them. I just a returned a couple of days ago; I went for Sallah. My son wanted me to stay longer to rest, he wanted me to wait and return after the raining season but I refused. There is no money in the north; those who stay in the north are trying.
“If you have money and food, no problem, you’d enjoy the north. But this era, everything is hard, food is expensive. We buy a measure of corn for as high as N1,050 and one of my daughter’s husbands abandoned her and her four children. He said he wanted to go and work in Ile Ife and he has refused to go back. With the high cost of goods in the market, I had to send her some money two weeks ago to buy food for the children,” she said.
Rahinatu revealed that the people in Ibadan have been good to her since she moved to the South West as no one has ever talked down or harassed her.
“I thank God because since I came here, no one has ever harassed or taken advantage of me. The people here have been good to me. If someone has not done anything bad to you, you shouldn’t say he did.
“But I can remember one time here at Mobil, there was some crisis. I did not come out to beg that Sunday so I was told what happened. The crisis unsettled us so I went to Apata to beg and that was my first time of going there to beg.
“When I got there, the beggars there chased me away. They said I should not sit there because I was not begging with them. I moved away from them and fortunately one woman gave me a place to sit and that was how I was able to get money to feed that period. After a while, peace returned to Mobil Junction and I came back,” she told Saturday Tribune.
Would she ever go back to live in the north? She revealed that it was not easy begging in the North because “we usually don’t get much alms back home.”