Editor’s note: Although Lagos state government is making frantic efforts to ensure the state becomes one the best mega cities in the world, the centre of excellence is replete with stories of street urchins, miscreants, street hawkers, touts, hooligans, corporate workers, prostitutes, thieves, okada riders, layabouts and window-stalking beggars. Different stories are told by different people about their encounters and experiences with these characters.
In this article, Olufemi Olofinmuagun, the ZENITHBLOG.com contributor, narrates an experience from encounter he had with street urchins and how he narrowly escaped being lynched.
More details in ZENITHBLOG.com’s step-by-step guide for guest bloggers.
On this fated afternoon, Lagos was bubbling with its normal hustles and bustles. The sun was so hot that it was shining so bright. People went about their daily business with an avowed determination to make money in one of Africa’s most populated city.
Street urchins protesting in Lagos
From the hemp-smoking touts on each bus-stop to the market woman at the stall attending to many buyers at once to the hawkers in the long traffic queue who had to run several metres in confined spaces. We were all enjoying the perfectly organised chaos that is Lagos.
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The social exuberance and irrepressible burst of energy that drives even the most hopeless of touts, street urchins and miscreants as well as the urbane, smart and smooth young graduates going for a presentation in a blue-chip company decked in a perfectly fitting blazer and the accomplished businessman headed to the port in his expensive chauffeur-driven car to clear new deliveries, represents the soul of Lagos vibrant socio-economic niche.
I was encapsulated in my thought while riding in the slow-moving public bus. Analyzing the city’s everyday struggle as with an unmistakable zest, danfo buses drivers, conductors, street hawkers, touts, urchins, hooligans, corporate workers, prostitutes, thieves, okada riders, layabouts, window-stalking beggars and several other classes of people tries to eke out a living with its peculiar hardship in this enterprising city.
The conductor shouted “Iyana Isolo!!!” To which I replied “o wa oh”. The driver pulled over and 3 of us dropped from the rickety danfo bus.
As I alighted from the bus, I was frantically trying to locate my mobile phone. It was with mouth wide opened I watched my Tecno device sunk into the pit of dirt-littered, algae-breeding, greenish stagnant gutter water. As my phone sank in the dirty pool, it made a splatter of tiny droplets of the smelly water on me and a by-stander.
I was dumbstruck and fixated on a spot. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I wanted to cry but the tears were not coming. All my digital files and media gone in one fell swoop. I couldn’t stomach it. Before I could fully understand the enormity of the woe that just befell me, I saw street urchins, laybouts and touts gathering round me. I could sense that my help was coming soon, albeit from an unlikely source -and not without me parting with a heavy fee.
Immediately, they found a stick to test the depth of the irritable water. As soon as they found out the water was at a level they can safely “swim” in. They came back to me to negotiate price. They wanted N10, 000 to help bring out the device from the murky water. I protested that I could only pay N2, 000. I didn’t plan for this. No one will. It all happened so fast.
“N10, 000 ke, how much did I even buy the phone” I thought to myself.
On getting to know I wanted to pay 2K, most of them withdrew and went
“Roll up your trousers and dive in yourself, fool” they retorted in utter disdain.
They went back to their seat watching me from a distance. As fate would have it one of the urchins later offered to help me retrieve the phone for 2K. Actually I had just N1, 000 on me but I wasn’t going to spoil it. So I let him get to work.
After swimming forth and back in the repulsive, stomach-churning, sickening-smell dirty water, he fumbled with objects which had suffered similar fate like my ill-fated Tecno device and later stumbled on my phone with its back cover lost in the water.
I couldn’t manage a smile as he brought out my over-soaked phone. There were even suggestions I forget about the phone and go cop a new one. As soon as the other miscreants saw what happened they moved closer. Before I knew it, they swarmed me asking for money for the services they didn’t render.
Their thick voices thundered fear into my spine.
“We shouldn’t have even allowed you search for the phone without you paying first”, they said.
As the argument grew, some elderly women selling roasted corns and plantain in the bus-stop intervened and chided the hemp-smoking, red eyed touts for daring to collect money for what they didn’t do.
Some of the onlookers and two other hooligans who were reasonable enough shared the opinion of these elderly women and they made to stop the “hawks” from extorting me.
While a few sane minds wanted me to leave the scene without paying a dime, a large number of hungry, hopeless touts wants me to pay heavily and before I knew what was happening, fisticuffs, heavy pushing and pulling, blows are already being exchanged. Sticks were being wielded with ease and bottles were already being broken. The fight started in the blink of an eye.
I almost lost my left eye as a stick flew past me by a whisker. In the midst of the bedlam, some guys quickly whisked me away to a safe distance. I knew I should leave the scene so I quickly sneaked closer to the particular tout who helped me, squeezed a rumpled N1, 000 notes into his pocket and fled away in an on-rushing danfo bus.
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Lagos is actually full of people who will do anything to get money. I always have this love-hate feeling for Lagos!!!
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Zenithblog.com.
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