Date: 2017-06-02

Pensioners in Kwara State have taken to begging for alms on the streets of Ilorin.

Vanguard's checks in the state capital revealed that the pensioners are always in strategic positions, particularly in popular filling stations and other public places, begging for alms.

Armed with their documents, they approach owners of flashy cars who want to buy petrol, asking them for money so they can feed themselves and their family members. The documents are often displayed to the car owners, to confirm their claims.

In some cases, they also display prescriptions for drugs they need to buy to live. More often, they tell pathetic stories of the stipends they are collecting as pensions and efforts being made to make authorities see reason to pay them their dues, which have consistently failed.

Few of them, who accosted this reporter for alms, claiming that they had to throw shame and integrity to the winds and resolved to begging for alms to be alive, lamented that many of their colleagues, who could not beg for alms, were dead.

A pensioner in the late 60s, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Vanguard that he had been begging for over five months to survive and that he had no regret going cap-in-hand to live. According to him, "on the average, I get N4,500 or, at least, N3,000 at the end of each day, whereas my monthly pension is N2,850. So, I have to beg for alms."

When asked about his children, who ought to be taking care of him, he said: "I have two graduates and all attempts to get them jobs have failed. They are also doing menials jobs to survive."