Sometimes people gave them food while they were out begging. At other times they hung around restaurants and ate the leftovers or scavenged in dustbins.

“I was always hungry. During the daytime when you work, you hardly sit down to eat,” he recalls.

“I didn’t feel the beggars were bad. They wake up, beg, the way people wake up and go to work.”

Day after day, Samuel walked from one end of Lagos to the other with a beggar’s right hand gripping his shoulder.

Sometimes, they trekked to neighbouring states or across the border to Benin. If the beggars received news of potential benefactors gathered somewhere, they told Samuel and he took them there by bus.

“There were times when you get so tired and you start bypassing people, but blind people are very sensitive – their hearing – so they pick up sound. Sometimes they would twist your shoulder and say: ‘There is someone there. Why are you moving away?’

“They try to make as much money as they can.”

The ‘miracle’

In December 2000, a beggar he was guiding heard news of the programme at Winners Chapel where they ran into his sister.

At first, Firdausi was too shocked to reach out and touch her brother – who can still recall her scream.

“I fell down on the floor,” she says.

Samuel looked gaunt, his right shoulder was significantly tilted and he appeared dumb, not speaking a word. The sight caused Firdausi to burst into tears.

“It took a while but I knew that she was someone I knew – that this person was someone related to me,” Samuel says.

Soon a crowd gathered and drawn by the commotion, church officials also arrived. They managed to make sense of Firdausi’s barely coherent joy and decreed that it was a “miracle” worth sharing with the entire congregation.

They ferried Samuel to a corner and gave him a quick wash. They found him fresh clothes to wear and rushed them both to the stage of the 50,000-seat auditorium where Firdausi was given a microphone.

In tears, she narrated how she had just found her brother who had been missing for six years.

Firdausi recalls how the entire congregation leapt out of their chairs in shouts of praise and thanksgiving.

The founder of the church, David Oyedepo, then held Samuel and prayed for him.

That night they slept on the church premises in a car, as it was a long way to get back to where Firdausi lived.

She remembers waking up throughout the night and touching her brother to make sure he was real.

The recovery

Today Firdausi says that she regrets being so engrossed in finding her brother that she did not try to rescue the others from where he was kept.

Shortly before his rescue, a new young child had arrived in the yard, Samuel says.

At first, the boy wept non-stop and refused to eat. Suddenly, he became silent, leading Samuel to suspect that something had been done or given to the boy to quieten him.

“In a developed country, you would just go and tell the police. But, here, the police would ask you to give them money for fuel and all that, and I didn’t even have a job,” Firdausi says.

Besides, reintegrating her 13-year-old brother into normal life was proving more difficult than she had imagined. He had not returned to live with his father and she was taking care of him.

Boils and rashes had broken out all over his body, giving off a foul stench.

His right shoulder remained bent for more than a year, requiring X-rays and physiotherapy before it finally stopped showing signs of the pressure from years of being gripped by beggars.

Their mother did not recognise the youngest of her seven children – who was now rough and haggard.

She had to raise his arm and search for a birthmark before she finally believed that the person in front of her was actually her son.

The student

After six years of no formal education, Samuel was barely literate.

Firdausi was left frustrated with the search for a school – with many saying he was too old to join at primary level.

Just when she had almost lost hope, Firdausi met a school proprietor who had seen them on the stage at the church.

The woman agreed to admit him, while Firdausi made arrangements for additional private classes.

In  three months, Samuel zoomed from primary one to primary four. Within a year, he had passed the entrance exams to secondary school.

Samuel spent only three years in secondary school when, aged 17, he felt confident enough to sit for university entrance exams.

He passed with flying colours, attaining the best result in his entire school, and gained admission to study chemical engineering at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria.

But Samuel’s academic prowess would eventually lead to the sudden end to his studies.

Other students often sought his assistance with assignments and he was expelled during his fourth year after being caught writing another student’s answers during exams.

‘No grudges’

Samuel now works as a supervisor on construction sites.

“Someday when I am comfortable financially, I hope to continue my education,” he says, adding that computer science might be an option as he is good with gadgets.

Samuel holds no ill feelings about what he went through while in captivity. He believes that all those years shaped him and taught him to try to always be nice to people.

“Nothing that people do actually gets to me. I just see it as a way of life. I don’t hold grudges,” he says.

Memories of the constant hunger have affected the way he relates to beggars and their guides today. He never gives them money.

“I’d rather buy them food. Because, back then, it was better giving me food than money because the money went to the beggar and none came to me.”

Samuel hopes that, by sharing his story, people will pay more attention to beggars and the children who often guide them.

“When they see a beggar with someone, they should have a second thought that, possibly, this child could need help,” he says. “Don’t just see and give money and walk away.”