beggars Plastic bowls in hand, often chanting religious texts, growing numbers of child beggars are roaming Kano, Nigeria’s second city, in a trend that is worrying authorities and residents.  

The number of child beggars in Kano state has nearly doubled in five years to about two million, the bulk of them wandering the streets of the eponymous state capital. Fearing a "social time bomb" waiting to explode, residents are starting to create pressure groups to stem the tide of beggars, but they also worry that the move may backfire and encourage more children from poverty-stricken homes to try their luck. In filthy, tattered clothes, these children move door to door across this city, hang around traffic lights or cluster outside expensive private schools asking for food and money.

"The presence of these children is a social time bomb which if not defused will certainly consume everyone when it explodes, because these children know nothing about parental care, love and affection and therefore see everybody as an enemy and responsible for their deprivation," said Abdullahi Yusuf, a resident of Kano.

He was speaking outside a mall where a group of two dozen children were holding out their bowls toward shoppers. For generations it has been tradition in Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria for parents to send their sons from as young as six to local Islamic scholars known as Malams to learn the Koran. Koran lessons are free, but the children must fend for themselves, usually by begging and in some cases through menial jobs.

"Some are dumped with the Malams by their parents who never show up again," said Jibrin Gunduwawa, a 70-year-old cleric who has been running his Koranic seminary for 30 years.