Barely two weeks after the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development rescued three babies and apprehended two women for using less than a month old babies to beg for alms, the Ministry on Thursday arrested a middle-aged woman, Umoru Adiza, for allegedly renting a set of twin children for the same purpose.

Adiza was nabbed while using the twin children believed to be less than two- years-old, to beg for alms at the Costain area of the state.

The Ministry, in a statement to newsmen said the suspect, an indigene of Niger State, was arrested after the Commissioner in charge of the ministry, Uzamat Akinbile-Yussuf, ordered a crackdown on perpetrators of such crime.

The suspect first claimed her younger sister named Aminat was the biological mother of the babies.

She, however, confessed that she rents the children from their mother and pays per day whenever she uses them to beg.

While expressing the desire to pursue a zero tolerance for begging in the state, Commissioner in said, “Efforts are on to locate the real biological mother of the babies who must have fled her residence for fear of being arrested.

“It is an established law in Lagos State; Section 168 of Criminal Code of Lagos State 2015 amended prohibiting street begging.

“We don’t want anyone going on the street and be begging. We have told people times without number that it is illegal to be begging on the streets of Lagos.

“If anyone wants to give, they should go to government resettlement centres,” Akinbile-Yussuf added.