The recent mass arrest of street children across parts of Lagos, particularly along the Lekki–Epe Expressway, has sparked widespread debate, with prominent social advocates, celebrities, and the Lagos State Government expressing sharply differing views on how the issue should be addressed.
Nigerian chess player and coach Tunde Onakoya condemned the arrests as inhumane and ineffective. He argued that repeated crackdowns fail to resolve the deep-rooted causes of child homelessness. Onakoya, who said he has spent eight years working closely with street and homeless children, warned that harassment and arrests only offer temporary relief and allow the problem to fester. He noted that many of the children eventually return to the streets, having nowhere else to go. According to him, the crisis is driven by multiple factors, including extreme poverty, failure of the public education system and broken family structures. He claimed that a significant number of the children are migrants from neighbouring states such as Ogun, Oyo and Kwara, who travel to Lagos in search of better opportunities that never materialise.
“What you’re doing is inhumane and an absolute waste of everyone’s time,” Onakoya said on X. “A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. This will become an even bigger crisis with time and it’s happening insidiously. it’s the very genesis of why we have such proliferation of Area boys and thugs in every corner of the streets of Lagos. We forget that no one becomes an area boy as an adult, it’s the children neglected overtime that grow up to become the thugs and area boys we complain bitterly about.”
Reality TV star and influencer, Anita ‘Tacha’ Akide, also criticised the government’s approach, insisting that the focus should be on why children are on the streets rather than on arresting them. Tacha described the situation along the Lekki–Epe Expressway as a daily reminder of government failure, noting that hundreds of children beg and wash car windows in dangerous traffic conditions, with some sustaining injuries or losing their lives. https://thewhistler.ng/onakoya-tacha-slam-lagos-crackdown-on-street-children/