The other day, standing by Pen Cinema railway crossing in the Agege suburb of Lagos, a traffic warden, asking his friend to come join the force, pitched: “If you join, you will go home with something every day. No how, no how.” He added: “And you don’t have to invest money. Na the new ‘uzzle’ in town na.”
To “uzzle,” or hustle in Lagos, is to pursue something, usually money, or property, by earnest activity-without a capital outlay. “Lagos Is A Wicked Place,’ title of Niyi Oniororo’s acerbic satire on the harsh toll of living in Lagos, doesn’t reckon with the optimistic Lagos “uzzlers.” If you can “uzzle,” you can make it, or get by, in Lagos.
Lagos hustlers, who live by their wits, are some kind of brokers, who link those with means to those with needs. They have unsurpassed view for a killing. They grab all opportunity-with both hands.
Another word for hustling is “runs,” a term appropriated by commercial sex workers, and the “aristo” female students of tertiary institutions who meet their upkeep by dating rich, older men. A recent media report told of a novice, who admitted to being brought to Lagos by her “aunty” to hustle, was shown the ropes by a more experienced sex-worker.
These commercial sex workers and “aristos” have kindred spirit in the Japanese “joshidaisei,” female university students, who pay their tuition and living expenses from “runs” on Tokyo’s Red Light Zone. Even some teenagers have joined in what Japanese police describe as “epidemic prostitution.” These teens use their pay to buy miniskirts or visit Tokyo Disneyland.
A cut above street urchins are the “area boys,” some of whom dropped out of school, learnt no trade, are graduates of tertiary institutions, were repatriated from foreign countries for incomplete immigration documentation, are rehabilitated or non-rehabilitated drug addicts, and victims of the system. But you treat them as bozos to your peril.
To “scare” you into giving them money, they affect a stereophonic, or what one of them described as an “FM radio,” voice to get their subtle threat across. Sometimes, they could come at you with the explanation that they resorted to begging instead of stealing.
The Yoruba among them will say, “Enibajale lo b’omoje,” the thief (and not the beggar) is the greater disappointment. They just remind you of those young men who do the rounds on commuter buses in American cities begging for a “quarter,” or 25 cents off passengers.
There are touts who offer unsolicited assistance: At the passport offices of the Immigration Department, they help you procure all the documentation for a new passport. At the airports, they carry your luggage, purchase your flight ticket, obtain the boarding pass, and put you through the checking-in protocol, as they warn you against “airport rats.”
They swarm on you like locusts to “help” you obtain your driving licence at the Federal Road Safety Corps office; obtain your MoT roadworthiness papers; and swear an affidavit at the office of the Commissioner of Oaths. They also “help” you “fill forms,” “approach difficult oga,” and “expedite rapid movement” of files. You only pay a token, a “dash,” or “whatever-your-mind-tells-you.”
Then, the motor touts, “alagbarat’ounjeunita,” the tough that preys in the open: You often see them wrest N50 or more, or less, from the bus conductors with a rain of curses and abuses. The fee, some kind of “protection money,” is never receipted. Only God can tell how the touts account to their principals or union leaders.
And then, there are the “omooniles,” sons of the soil or natives of communities that are just opening up for urbanisation. If they don’t contest ownership with the “atounrinwa,” the stranger who bought the land, they demand ransom at every stage of the development of the property: At the foundation, decking, roofing, and dedication. You also pay as each load of building material is delivered to site.
At Apapa, the home of maritime business, whose sobriquet is “ileise,” Yoruba for workplace, you see all manner of hustle. Many who engage in clearing and forwarding business have neither offices, secretarial personnel, nor secretarial skills. They go about with briefcases loaded with company letterheads, stamps, all manner of forms, and sundry items.
Whenever they want to complete the forms or type necessary correspondence, they engage the young men or women with secretarial skills at the business centres. When the deal is done, the “emergency secretaries” get paid according to the quantum and quality of the job, as estimated by the businessman who works from his briefcase. This is the classic case of hustlers patronising hustlers.
Sometimes, you’ll see a young man seemingly loafing about in a parking lot of imported used vehicles along the Berger neck of the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway. Do not despise him. When he judges that you want to buy an automobile, he skilfully steers you to his principal. If you buy the car, he gets a “cut” after your exit.
As you are about to enter into a fast food restaurant or a banking hall, the securitymen -and women- greet you “Welcome Sir,” in a tone that suggests that you must be a cruel soul if you exit their premises without “dropping something” for them. The same applies to the security men guarding Lagos footbridges.
Security guards at the ATM gallery scare you with a stare that suggests that you better “settle” before you go; otherwise, you stand the risk of somebody accosting and separating you and the money you just withdrew.
One negative to this hustling business is that young men in Lagos seem to hope, sometimes, that a vehicle would either stall in the punishing city traffic, get stuck in mud during the rainy season, or fall into a gutter. Just so that they can extort an exorbitant levy from the driver before pushing the vehicle out of its dilemma. It never used to be so in Old Lagos; everyone looked out for each other.
But a “good” hustle that happens in the markets is that of usually enterprising young lasses, with no working capital, selling grocery items – peppers, tomatoes, onions, frozen fish or chicken, and vegetables – at the entrance to the market.
If you buy from them, you save time, and avoid dirtying your fancy clothes. But the catch is that you pay more to these scrappers, or “ore’mi,” in Yoruba. Also, those boys, who sell snacks, beverages, clothing, and other items on the streets, are in this racket. They have no capital, but trade on behalf of some faceless principals.
Psychologists and sociologists must do close psychographic study of these denizens of the Lagos underbelly, who run on a gutsy, but also optimistic, frame of mind. A social science PhD student should use the participant-observer study tool to mine great information from the streets for the benefit of the society.
If it had occurred to Tunde Fowler, erstwhile Chairman of Lagos Inland Revenue Service, now boss at the Federal Inland Revenue Service, he would have raked in plenteous taxation from this informal, invisible, “wall-gecko” aspect of the Lagos economy. You can only imagine how much “astute” Zacchaeus, the taxman in the Bible, would have made from this group, if he were operating in today’s Lagos.
Twitter @lekansote1
Punch
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