By Okey Maduforo Awka.
There is growing panic at the heart beat of Awka Capital City in Anambra state following the menace of street urchins at Arroma Junction; who forcefully obtain money from passers by under the guise of begging for help.
These urchins numbering over thirty had taken over the fly over bridge at Arroma Junction last year in the name of begging for money and claiming to be destitute along with perceived nursing mothers with children below five years and have been receiving assistance from members of the public until December last year when another set stormed the fly over bridge between the ages of twelve to sixteen years.
These recent entrants into the bursting Arroma Junction cut the picture of miscreants dressed shabbily with scares of knife cuts and other bruises shouting on unsuspecting members of the public to give them money or be delt with.
According to this reporter “One had accosted me dressed in a black T shirt and white pair of shorts , dusty legs without any footwear and a chain necklace”
“He shouted at me ; “Common give me money let me go and eat ” Come why are you looking at me like this , this man , give me the money ” he shouted .
Yours truly was receiving a call as at 2 pm on that fateful day while he shouted and I had to move away from him suspecting he may be carrying a pen knife.
A man in his forties last month woke up in the morning Saturday to discover that his Keke tricycle was missing and it took the assistance of some his colleagues to find the vehicle hidden at an abandoned building along the Secretariat road and further investigations revealed that the Keke was allegedly stolen by those urchins.
“My brother this is becoming too much here in Arroma Junction and some of the shops are bugled at night and we are suspecting those boys”
A fruit vendor at Arroma Junction also told this reporter that she had dropped her wears at her spot and had gone to bring her stool only to discover that one of her bags of oranges is missing.
Also most mechanic workshops have lost the batteries of cars packed under their custody by the suspected miscreants.
Deepening the already tensed situation in Arroma- Secretariat – Alex Ekwueme roads is that some of the urchins arrested later came back after regaining freedom to threaten those that handed them over to the police .
Arroma Junction has a police post known as B Division as well as the Anambra state Secretariat and Federal Secretariat as well as the permanent government house under construction .
Though officers and men of the Police B Division have been patrolling the area frequently they are oblivious of this growing insecurity concerns .
Further investigations showed that these urchins including the nursing mothers end up at the dead of the night at the Amawbia junction – Enugu Agidi road and it is not clear the exact location that they pass the night.
Those that do not go back to their place of hiding pass the nights in front of lock up shops and business centers at Arroma while others play football on top of the fly over bridge until about 12 midnight.
Earlier before this development the Anambra state Commissioner for Women Affairs Mrs Ify Obinabo had made efforts to engage these urchins with apprenticeship training for them to stay away from crime but the miscreants would visit their places of training and run away without going back to work.
“We have tried to get them to learn one trade or the other but they will run away after two or three days and you will not see them for about a week and the following week they would come back to Arroma Junction to start again” she said.
