Abstract

The situation of street begging in Nigeria is appreciated with different categories of beggars found at motor parks, religious worship centres, markets, road junctions, venue of ceremonies and worst still on the university campuses . The situation is quite embarrassing with efforts of governments in curbing the menace of street begging not yielding fruits. The present study examined the perceived social support of street beggars. It adopted the descriptive research of the ex-post facto type. A random sample of three LGAs was selected and 516 participants took part in the study.out of these participants there were 311 males and 205 females. Hausas were 284, Yorubas were 162, lbos were 40 and others were 30. The age ranged from 12-65 years with standard deviation of 38years. All the participants reported low perceieved social support. The findings revealed no significant difference in gender , tribes and age groups in perceived social support. It was recommended that families, government and non-governmental organisations should weave social support round the beggars. It was concluded that formal and informal organizations, as well as grass-roots movements, should be recognized as partners in the construction of social support for beggars