Wait oooh. What do these so-called asinine masquerades (éégún) causing undue mayhem to people on our roads stand for? Grand theft? Daylight thievery? Or traditional extortion? Because I don’t understand.

I don’t understand why an able–bodied man, hale and hearty, young at heart would resort to begging under the pretext of tradition. It is moronic and so barbaric! This was not surprising; what was more surprising was the begging methodology these hoodlums used.

Just today, I saw some of these brave thieves, two of them, in their garbs, veiled, armed with their arms–length whips like herdsmen, all completed by their monstrous look. In the air zigzagged their whips to scare passersby, and ensure that in fear they handed them money. Rogues.

Their hoax tactic, however, backfired when I got to the scene. I didn’t know how this fury wore me. I only saw that I surged ahead, marching towards them, with a completely frowned face and a walk style that says, “if they born you well try rubbish”. And I meant it. Had they acted funny, by Allaah, I would have tripped and stripped them (or at least one of them).

I was astounded that they read well my face and that their senses had not melted under the hot sun at the time I passed them by. I was also surprised they read my countenance under my bespectacled face despite their thick, sweater–material veil. I later learnt that they were thought to read face. Lucky them.

In this hard time? When recession is the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the water we drink, abah! When some people’s money has been “MMMed”, just of recent? Some people would then come to the road coercing their fellow humans into paying for what they never bought. So absurd. Total rubbish.  I think an embargo would do for this act of public nuisance.

See, before the embargo comes, when next you see such, please for God’s sake, don’t fall victim. Show them that: They are beggars, no doubt about that. And if they must beg, they must beg by begging not by forcing! Period.