For Mutiu Gbarada, every day comes with unrelenting struggle for survival. The teenage boy sleeps and wakes up daily on the street like a queer destitute. And again, like an ill-fated beast of burden that strives so hard but gets so little, Gbarada is tossed here and there by wind of uncertainties as he struggles to survive living on the streets. Sometimes, he begs for survival while at other times he either steals or engages in odd jobs. The wretched boy takes shelter either in the abandoned carcass of a car, under the bridge or under a shed.
He neither knows what tomorrow holds for him nor is he sure of the next meal that would be available for him. Home, of course, is a horror to Gbarada, an orphan whose parents, he learnt had died close to 10 years ago in a ghastly auto crash when he was barely four years. At that time he was under the care of an uncle whom, he said, was always subjecting him to severe punishments.
The hapless strange-looking boy said he left home for the street one day when he lost his uncle’s money while running an errand for his uncle. “I was given a N1,000 note to buy foodstuff for the night but unluckily, the money got lost. I was crying and passersby kept asking what went wrong but nobody could assist. At a point a neighbour of ours who was passing by stopped to inquire what went wrong. When I told him, he made a frightening remark saying that my uncle would kill me.
“What he said set me panicky; I didn’t want to die so I took the hard decision and ran away from home. I never again wished to return home”. He said he was always very sad whenever he recalled the day he ran away from home to live on the streets but said he decided to make the choice due to fear.
Asked if he would like to go back to any of his kinsmen again, Gbarada who has spent close to two years on the streets simply said: “Never again. I will rather die here (on the streets). I expected to get the best care from my uncle as a young boy who had faced serious tragedy in life as an orphan but sadly, I was maltreated by my guardian. I never regret ever making the decision to run away from home and I never wished to return home”.
Mr Segun Aderibigbe, 51, spent more than 18 years on the streets in Ibadan before he got to a turning point and struggled to live a new life. Like Gbarada, Mr Aderibigbe took to the streets following his parents’ death in a tragic circumstance. According to him, his parents had died leaving five of them (children) behind. As the third child of his parents, he said he opted to work in order to raise money for his siblings’ school fees because the extended family failed to rise to their aid.
However, in the process of seeking a means of survival, he got introduced to a bad gang at age 17. His decision was repelled by family members but their intervention appeared to be a little too late as he was already caught up in the web of bad lifestyle. He said the family made several efforts to bring him back home but the efforts did not yield good result. He became more hardened when he got introduced to the league of ‘Molete Boys’.
He said: “Whereas, I came from a reputable family and we were registered in Catholic schools by our parents but things changed for the worse for all of us when our parents died. I ran out of home in protest after striving in vain to fend for my siblings and myself. We were hungry. I couldn’t understand why family members neglected us instead of sending us to school or getting us trained as artisans. I was exposed to bad gang and became influenced. I got attracted to street life so things changed for me.
“Although the family made efforts to bring me back home but I did not yield. In attempts by family members to get me back home they used force on me, they used charm and even made several incisions on my body but that didn’t change anything. I was too deep into hard life. Nothing was attractive to me anymore. I was so rebellious because they tried to force me back instead of using the softer approach.
He, however, changed from towing the hard path several years after following an encounter with Arch Bishop Gabriel Olasoji, founder of the Caring Outreach International Charity (COIC). He said: The man of God saw me on the road alongside other members of my group and talked to us about correcting our ways and making right choice in life. It was not easy and it took a long time to convince me and a few others to drop the old and miserable lifestyle but the Bishop and his group kept coming to counsel us. They were unrelenting at encouraging us to heed the good news and in the end, I heeded the call”.
I was one of the Adedibu boys at the time. I got attracted to the group because Baba (Adedibu) was kind and very helpful to everybody. But I agree that it is not good to live as a deviant. I urge our youths not to engage in thuggery or violence because it can cut short one’s life. Many of us had died. It is by the grace of God that some of us are alive to tell the story.
Precisely, Aderibigbe alongside16 others were rehabilitated by COIC in 1994. They were picked from the streets and given food, clothes and shelter for some years. Some of them were given vocational training while the others were helped to get jobs with some organisations in Ibadan.
Aderibigbe, who was trained by the NGO as a barber, established his business at Imalefalafia area of Ibadan. Although the venture eventually collapsed some years after as a result of financial constraint, he said: “I am very happy today and I feel better because of the changes made in my life so far by the COIC. But for the intervention of the Caring Outreach International Charity I don’t know what could have become of me by now. Perhaps, I must have died or could have been in prison considering the bad and dangerous lifestyle I imbibed.
“I was into thuggery and we were always engaging in fights and we used to cause disturbance. The NGO saw of on the streets of Ibadan. They did not see us as outcasts; they did all they could to give us another opportunity to be better members of the society. It was not an easy effort to bring us back from the old and miserable ways but they succeeded. I pray that God will continue to help them and sustain the initiative. It is wonderful how the NGO succeeded in achieving what my family could not achieve to take me away from the road for many years. My daughter, now aged 9, is in primary three”.
Aderibigbe got married in 2009. According to him, the woman (name not given) gave birth to a baby girl shortly after they got married but the union did not last long. He claimed that his wife’s family and friends instigated their divorce because of his bad past and the age difference between him and the wife. He said: “She heeded their advice and re-married to a younger person. Sadly however, I learnt that the new man didn’t take good care of her and I was told that she died in the process of childbirth. I heard that she was pregnant with twins”.
However, at 54, Joseph Olanrewaju, native of Ilesha in Osun State is neither married nor currently in any paid employment. After being rehabilitated and fixed up in a job by the COIC, Olanrewaju said his life had completely changed but things went bad for him again when he lost his job during recession.
Olanrewaju is a victim of divorce. Things went bad for him shortly after his parents divorced as he was allegedly raised with iron hand by his father.
He said: “My parents were cloth merchants in Ibadan during their lifetime. They decided to file for divorce so things went really bad for me when my mother moved out of the house.
“At some point, my maternal grandmother took me to Ilesha to take care of me. But, at age 12, my father came back for me. Shortly after I was brought back to Ibadan he withdrew me from school to join him in his trade. I was starved and badly treated by my father”.
Olanrewaju said when things got to a head he ran out of home and took to the streets as a thug. He said: “I got introduced to the Molete (Adedibu) Boys. At that time we were tools in the hands of politicians in the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). One day, while we were loitering on the streets we saw a vehicle approaching. I jumped on the road and demanded for money from the occupant of the vehicle. Reverend Gabriel Olasoji (now Arch Bishop) was in the car. I was surprised because he gave us N5,000.
“He asked me to come closer to the car. He warned me against engaging in thuggery saying it is a dangerous lifestyle. He explained to me that politicians were only using us as mere tools to ventilate their political aspirations. He gave me his address and urged me to bring other members of my group to him later but I failed to heed his advice until about two years after. We later went to him and he eventually got our attention”.
Although Saturday Tribune was unable to speak with Bolanle, one of the female street girls that were rehabilitated by the COIC, it was learnt that she is currently doing fine with her life in Lagos. Bolanle who was notorious for violence and hard life, was popular within the group. She was the one cooking for the street boys in the home where they were rehabilitated before she later relocated to Lagos.
While speaking on what inspired him to establish COIC, Arch Bishop Olasoji said: “It is sad that thousands of destitute children are dying in Africa and Asia. Tragedy of starvation, broken homes, lack of basic social amenities such as clean water, health care and quality health facilities, shelter etc. contribute to societal problems. COIC was officially launched in Maiduguri in 1976 when I was 19 years old to save lives that are being wasted due to negligence, lack of care and poor economic policies.
An international publication, ‘Economic and Politics Weekly’ reported in 1988 that the number of children who are unwanted and neglected by their parents, or whose parents, though willing, are unable to raise them in a harmonious family mileu is large enough to warrant concern. Although it is difficult to get the statistics of street kids in different climes across the world, poverty has been listed as one of the reasons that gave rise to street living. In a 2015 report by an academic journal, The Conversation, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) was reported to have said that about 14 million Nigerians are on the streets to eke out a living.
An Islamic cleric, Professor Sabit Olagoke, who urged parents to rise to their responsibilities on their children, said: “The Holy Quran says from God we come and unto God we shall return. The Holy Bible says we were born naked and we must return. When we are alive, let us be committed to playing our parts in helping humanity.
“We must focus on the impacts that we make as human beings. We should help fellow human beings because some people are poor not because they are lazy. Nothing is too much to help the poor, the vulnerable and the physically challenged. Let us play our parts,” he added.