The Federal Capital Territory Administration has removed 607 beggars and mentally challenged persons from the streets of Abuja from July 2025 to date.
The Head of Enforcement at the FCT Social Development Secretariat, Mrs Ukachi Adebayo, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Monday.
Adebayo said the exercise was carried out by the Operation Sweep Abuja Clean team.
She explained that “out of the 607 persons evacuated, 583 were beggars while 23 were mentally challenged individuals.”
She added that the beggars and mentally challenged persons had been counselled, profiled and returned to their various states in collaboration with state governments through their liaison offices.
“What we do when we apprehend the beggars and mentally challenged individuals is to counsel them so as to profile them.
“After that, we take them to their various liaison offices to be returned to their respective states, where they are expected to undergo rehabilitation,” she said.
Noting that the beggars and mentally challenged persons often return to the streets after evacuation, Adebayo said the operation was ongoing and would continue.
She said, “The more you take them out, the more they resurface.
“Some of them were driven by insecurity in their states and ran to Abuja to take refuge, but we will continue to apprehend them and take them back.”
Similarly, Acting Director of Social Welfare at the SDS, Mrs Gloria Onwuka, said some of the children begging on the streets were brought in from other states by unidentified individuals to beg and hand over the proceeds to them.
Onwuka added that some of the women caught begging with children were not the children’s biological mothers.
“Begging is now run like a business. People will go and hire people’s children from other states, put them in vehicles very early in the morning, come to Abuja and start begging.
“The families they are hiring these children from don’t even know that this is what their children are being used for.
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