Man, Samuel Abdulraheem Abducted At Age 7 To Guide Blind Beggars Tells His Story & It’s Really Disheartening
The sight of blind men and women being led around by little children is common on many streets – especially in dense traffic where they usually tap on car windows, or around churches, mosques, banks and relaxation centres.
We see these young beggars everyday and everywhere but their real lives are alien to us. It’s crazy just how much goes on under our noses, all of us unaware of it.
In a piece for the BBC, writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani shared the moving story of one of such beggars, Samuel Abdulraheem, who was abducted in Kano and hired out to blind beggars weekly or monthly as a guide around the dusty streets that make up the outskirts of Lagos and neighbouring states.
Samuel was just 7 when he disappeared form his family home in the 90s. The last of 17 children from a polygamous home (his father had 17 children by four wives), Samuel was left with his nanny when he went missing. His family were told he had gone outside to ride his bicycle.
His favourite sister, Firdausi Okezie, who was 21 years old at the time Samuel was abducted revealed to BBC that they had tried everything to find him.
According to her, she was not made aware of the situation immediately due to the fact that she was still in university studying. She noted that she began to suspect something was wrong when her favourite sibling did not run to the phone to talk to her whenever she called like he always does.
Suspecting something was wrong, Firdausi traveled home unexpectedly and found out the sad news. She said:
“At first, my father had the nanny arrested, but after investigations, they let her go. There is nothing we didn’t do to try to find him.”
They also tried to hide the news from Samuel’s mother, who was divorced from his father, for as long as possible. Every time she called from her new home in a different city, they would conjure different excuses. Eventually, an uncle was assigned the unenviable task of telling her.
In addition to extensive police investigations, the family placed adverts in newspapers and sent out search parties to comb the streets. They checked ditches in case he had been the victim of a hit and run, and even consulted Muslim spiritual priests, known as Mallams.
After searching for a while with the help of the police, Mallams, and family, the father asked the family to accept that Samuel was dead– they had done the best they could.
However, Firdausi refused to give up. She dedicated her university thesis to her missing brother and a year after graduating, she moved to Lagos in search of work.
She converted to Christianity and started attending Winners Chapel – one of Nigeria’s mega churches based in Ogun state just outside the city.
Every December, the church holds a five-day programme known as Shiloh. Firdaus had gone for the event where she applied for a stand to sell some tie-dye fabrics her mother had made. While waiting for a carpenter to help set up the display, she sat on a chair and placed her head in her lap for some rest.
That was when she heard a beggar appealing, in the name of Allah, for spare change. Firdausi looked up. This beggar had his hand firmly planted on the left shoulder of a boy who was dressed in a tattered brown tunic and undersized trousers. Firdausi screamed – the haggard boy guiding the beggar was her lost brother.
Firdaus’s scream attracted a crowd, including church officials. Shocked and unable to properly articulate her joy, she managed to explain that the gaunt boy with bent shoulders is her long lost brother. They termed her finding her brother a “miracle,” and the officials bathed the boy, dressed him up, and the pair climb the altar to give a testimony.
Miraculously, Samuel was found after five years of being declared dead. Sharing his story, Samuel who is now 30 years said those years remain a blur to him, and maybe he was given something that made that so.
He didn’t think of his family while in captivity, he said. He shacked up with a one-armed woman who rented him out, he said, and slept on a mat. When he was rented out, though, like a piece of furniture, he slept on the streets with whatever blind beggar was his current master.
Over the years, he says about five others boys turned up to live with other women in the same yard, each hired out to blind beggars. Samuel recalled:
“All I remember is the train journey. I am not sure I had emotions then, just a zombie that knew he had to wake up and lead a beggar out. Make money, eat food and sleep, and the same routine the next day.”
Samuel now works as a supervisor on construction sites
Samuel also talked about how he was hired by different beggars for a period of a week or a month. He said he and beggars slept alongside others in various public spaces. He said:
“I was like a slave. I couldn’t say I wanted to go and do anything. I had to be around always.”
Talking about his experience as a beggar’s assistant, he said:
“I was always hungry. During the daytime when you work, you hardly sit down to eat. I didn’t feel the beggars were bad. They wake up, beg, the way people wake up and go to work.
“There were times when you get so tired and you start bypassing people, but blind people are very sensitive – their hearing – so they pick up sound. Sometimes they would twist your shoulder and say: ‘There is someone there. Why are you moving away?’ They try to make as much money as they can.”
Speaking on meeting his sister, he said it took a while to know who she was. He recalled:
“It took a while but I knew that she was someone I knew – that this person was someone related to me.”
He was 13 years old at the time he was found, and it was hard for him to return back to living normally. He went back to his father’s home while his sister continued to take care of him.
The 13-year-old had come home with boils and rashes that gave off a foul stench. His right shoulder remained bent for more than a year from years of being gripped by beggars. After years of no education, it was hard to get him into any school as many rejected him and said he was too old for primary school.
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A school led by a proprietor, who had been in Canaanland when he was found, finally agreed to take him. He excelled in school and within a year he passed his entrance exam to secondary school.
In secondary school, he spent only 3 years as he was an exceptional student and by 17 years old, he sat for his university entrance exams and gained admission into Ahmadu Bello University to study chemical engineering.
Due to his intelligence, Samuel became popular for helping students with assignments and he was unfortunately expelled in his fourth year after he was caught writing another student’s answers during exams.
The 30-year-old, who now works as a supervisor on a construction site, revealed his desire to go back to school and study computer science once he is financially stable.
He also advised people on how to treat beggars and their assistants. He said that when people see a beggar with someone, they should have a second thought that, ”possibly, this child could need help, don’t just see and give money and walk away.”
Samuel says he holds no grudges, and sees everything that happened to him as a part of life. And, because of his experience, he refuses to give beggars money. Instead, he prefers to buy them food.
I’d rather buy them food. Because, back then, it was better giving me food than money because the money went to the beggar and none came to me.”
Read the full story on BBC.