“Do Giveaway!”: When Private Wealth Becomes Public Property

A recent clip showed Rahman Jago (Tiamiu Abdulrahman Kayode), a socialite and fashion entrepreneur, being held practically under duress by residents of Agege, his childhood community while he was visiting. What appeared to have been a sentimental visit to the community that raised him turned into a standoff of sorts. Residents and street boys encircled him, blocking his movement, insisting he “drop something” before he could leave. Phones were out, and insistent voices overlapped. The demand was not framed as a request; it carried the cadence of obligation. You are here. You have money. Therefore, you must give.

The video circulated widely, provoking the usual reactions: laughter from some corners, irritation from others, a resigned shrug from those who recognised the script. However, the interaction lingered because it distilled something familiar: a social reflex that has become increasingly visible — the expectation that visible wealth must be pried from its owner, negotiated, or extracted by all means.

Nigeria has developed a culture of asking in a way that no longer resembles appeal, but entitlement. What might once have been understood as begging now often  carries the tone of insistence. In some cases, that insistence is playful. In others, it is manipulative. And in certain spaces, it has hardened into organised extraction. The distance between persuasion and coercion is gradually closing.

It is important to separate phenomena that are often lazily collapsed together. Begging, in its most traditional sense, is an appeal to sympathy. It signals vulnerability and relies on the mercy of strangers. Touting operates differently. It is territorial. It is structured. It involves less pity and more leverage.

Lagos offers a clear illustration of this distinction. For years, Nollywood filmmakers have spoken about the inevitability of “settling” area boys before filming on location. Crews arrive with equipment and are met by area boys demanding payment to ensure that production proceeds undisturbed. In 2021, Toyin Abraham shared a video of unknown men halting her shoot until money exchanged hands. The outrage online was swift, but the practice itself was hardly new. It has long functioned as an informal levy — a parallel system of taxation imposed not by law but by presence.

Beyond film sets and well-off individuals, the problem persists. Market women have marched to local government offices to protest the daily harassment they face from touts who seize goods and destroy wares when they resist extortionate levies. Commercial bus drivers and conductors have organised demonstrations over relentless collections by agberos. These are not spontaneous acts of desperation by isolated individuals, they are coordinated systems that attach fees to movement and productivity, operating with startling confidence.

Even the state’s posture toward this reality suggests accommodation. When complaints from frustrated filmmakers gained traction in 2021, Lagos State governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu suggested that creatives consider obtaining permits or securing proper permissions to avoid harassment while working. The advice was patronizing, thoughtless, and revealed the extent to which extortion today is treated as a navigational hazard rather than a criminal disruption. The burden of adaptation shifted from those carrying out the extortion to those being extorted.

This is where the conversation becomes more layered. Because while touting is blatantly, overtly coercive, the broader culture of asking has also evolved — and not just among organised groups.

The expectation that private wealth should circulate publicly has seeped into everyday interactions. At airports, uniformed officials greet travellers with warmth that gradually bends toward suggestion. A casual “Anything for us?” may follow a routine check. If subtlety fails, the hint becomes explicit. The uniform sanitises the exchange, but the logic is consistent: proximity to perceived affluence must yield benefit.

Online, the language has been streamlined. “Urgent 2K.” “Do giveaway.” A public figure posts a photo, and the replies fill with requests. Popularity is interpreted as liquidity. That liquidity then becomes communal property. Refusal attracts rebuke and often, aggression. The ask is no longer a matter of need; it now involves worrying levels of entitlement.

Even encounters with foreign visitors expose this reflex. When American streamer iShowSpeed recently made his way through Lagos flanked by security and cameras, the chants that followed him carried the desperate weight of expectation; he has money, so he must drop money. The spectacle embarrassed many Nigerians and angered many more, but it was nonetheless a familiar calculation. Here was someone who appeared insulated — by money, by mobility, by the possibility of departure. His visit would simply be incomplete without an Asherkine-esque giveaway. 

It would be reductive to dismiss all of this as moral decay. Economic strain is real. Inflation has thinned patience and thickened desperation. But poverty alone does not account for the boldness of the demands. Nigeria has weathered hardship before. What feels distinct today is the normalisation of aggressive entitlement to someone else’s property.

In a system where institutions rarely deliver relief or fairness, people learn that politeness often yields little. Procedures stall, complaints disappear into bureaucracy, and social welfare becomes thin. When formal structures do not respond to need, informal tactics are used,  and when pressure works more for these individuals than patience, the pressure becomes rational.

Hustle culture reinforces this recalibration. Contemporary Nigerian vernacular celebrates the ability to “secure the bag” by any available means. Yet there is a contradiction at the heart of this culture. The same state that routinely demolishes informal settlements, burns street markets, and criminalises visible poverty simultaneously tolerates an extractive culture targeting those who have succeeded in spite of these anti-people policies. Makoko can be cleared in the name of order, but the daily levies imposed on market women persist. Beggars can be chased from highways, but organised touting continues in broad daylight. The message bolsters the entitlement towards private wealth. Poverty itself is policed, but the unfair extraction of wealth is deemed tolerable.

That contradiction breeds a particular kind of resentment. When the government appears indifferent to basic welfare, expectations shift sideways. Wealthy individuals — celebrities, politicians’ children, returnees — become substitute institutions for daily provisions. If the state will not redistribute, perhaps those who have visibly benefited from it should. The logic is flawed, but it is understandable. In the absence of reliable systems, people search for accessible targets.

Over time, the moral distinction between “abeg” and intimidation begins to erode. The pleas harden. The jokes carry an edge. The requests demand compliance. 

This is not to equate every outstretched hand with organised extortion. There remains a difference between visible vulnerability and territorial coercion. But the atmosphere around public wealth has shifted. Asking has grown louder and more threatening. The space between them has narrowed.

In a country where institutions frequently fail to protect or provide, visible wealth becomes both symbol and solution — something to admire, something to resent, something to access. Some needy may plead while others pressure or extract, but increasingly, the behaviours sit along the same continuum, shaped less by inherent vice than by a system that has taught its citizens that aggression gets results.

And so when the next celebrity is surrounded, when the next chant rises, when the next official leans in with a coded request, it will not be an isolated incident. It will be another iteration of a pattern. In Nigeria’s evolving street economy, the ask is rarely just an ask anymore. It is negotiation, opportunism, and often coercion — all born from the same underlying lesson: in a broken system, survival often belongs to the boldest stretched hands.