When I finished secondary school in Bauchi, I moved to Lagos and spent over a year there. I didn’t know anybody. I just went, thinking, as long as people are going there and getting their daily bread, I’ll go and try my best. I started working as a security guard. Then, one MOPOL officer I knew from the estate got me work in Ikeja-Alausa as a storekeeper. That was how I raised money to buy the okada I started riding in Abuja. The okada was ₦600,000 at the time – the normal Bajaj.
I have family at home. As the firstborn, I have a lot of responsibilities. I have five junior siblings. And I just got married in October last year.
You know how the okada business be, especially with VIO seizing bikes. I was afraid that one day, they would collect my bike and I would be back to square one. That’s why I decided to sell the okada and buy this one. It’s not been up to five months since I started working as a deliveryman.
This one I’m doing now, I can use it to enter anywhere in this Abuja. With the okada, you cannot ride on the express. And they come from time to time to seize bikes. The only way out is to have someone stand for you at their office, and even then, it’s not small money you’ll pay before you can get the bike back. You’ll pay up over ₦100,000. If it’s a new bike, over ₦200,000. And you see, the Bajaj is more expensive now. It’s over ₦1 million. I’ve seen many people I know getting their bikes seized, so I decided to leave the work before it happened to me, too. Many of those people are now working as labourers because they don’t have anything else to do.
When I was working as a storekeeper in Lagos, around 2016/17, I was earning ₦75,000. But they brought in a new manager who reduced the salary to ₦50,000. Also, the company had provided a place for me to stay, but the man said I would need to rent my own place. And I thought, ‘to rent a house for Lagos no be cho cho cho; me I no go fit o.’ So you want me to spend all the money I’d gathered on rent. No o. He said, Wetin happen? I said, Dem dey find me for village. That’s how I came to Abuja.
The okada work was hard. If you’re not careful, you won’t get a lot of money after working for the whole day. Because you will buy fuel, you will repair the bike, and you will eat. If one week, they don’t call you from the village, the next week they will call you. Any small thing you’ve gathered, you will send to them to support themselves.
I know how the village is. There is no income, nothing, except for small farm work. If there is no money, they will sell the food they’ve harvested. Later, when they’re hungry, you’ll have to send them money to buy food. E dey one kind. Even me now, I don’t want to go back to the village because they’ll think I’ve packed money come from Abuja – they don’t know there’s nothing. So, we’ll just keep managing our life small small like this. Our parents suffered for us, so whatever we get, we have to support them.
In the village, even if you go to school, getting an opportunity is not by what you know, it’s by who you know. You might think you went to school and you know what you’re doing, but they’ll rather give someone else, who doesn’t even know anything. If you go to school and you make your papers, you can travel outside to a place like this and get work. There is favouritism here too, but it’s not like it is over there. For that side, nothing concern them say your paper good. And it is not only with government jobs, it has circulated everywhere.
The Bauchi state governor is trying, but we still have issues with the herdsmen, whose cattle eat our crops. You can work on three farms and they will eat two, so you end up harvesting only one, which won’t be enough to even feed the family for one year or pay school fees. That’s how things are over there. There’s no income in the village. Even if you open a small shop, if they buy a carton of biscuits, it’ll take a long time before they can sell everything because everywhere is dry. So it is people like us who send money home monthly – ₦30k, ₦20k, like this. This is what they manage to survive and keep the children in school. Because of my junior brothers, I stopped in secondary school so I could do something to support the family. I swear.
People with money are advancing in their education, but we that don’t have, how we go do now? It’s where God has put us. Everything is about time. When our time reaches to go, even if we’re 50 years old, if the money comes, we’ll go back to school. I was a science student, so I would like to continue from where I stopped. If I don’t do that, I’d like to study business. Because they say if you want to go back to science school, it’s not small money. If you never guide like that, you won’t be able to go far. But with business, you can manage small small. If you read business, you can get work in various companies. Or if you have small money, you can get a loan, add to it, and start your own business. Before you know it, you’re done paying the loan.
“In the village, even if you go to school, getting an opportunity is not by what you know, it’s by who you know.”
You see, inside the ₦1,700 the food delivery app is charging you, we, the rider, might not get up to ₦1,000. I swear. And see how the fuel is now expensive. Other countries are fighting themselves, but we are the ones suffering the consequences. We have the oil and there is the Dangote refinery, but fuel is still expensive. We are just managing. Yesterday, I made ₦5,800 from [the food delivery app] from five deliveries, and then I got ₦7,000 from two orders from [the e-hailing app]. Everything wasn’t even up to ₦15,000. Then I bought fuel from inside the money, and today I will still buy fuel again. The fuel I bought yesterday was ₦5,000. Everything is just one kind. If [the e-hailing app] gives you an order of ₦2,000, they will deduct N400 or 500 from it. If the order is up to ₦4,000 or ₦4,500, they will remove a commission of ₦1,000. If you want them to keep giving you orders, you will have to pay their commission. Otherwise, they might only give you one order a day.
People who have been doing deliveries for a long time told us they don’t rely on the apps. They have offline customers who call them to deliver packages to different places. That way, they have all the money to themselves. Another thing is that only [the food delivery app] has increased the money for riders since the fuel hike, and it is just by a little. If before, they would have given you ₦1,000, they’ll add ₦200. The other app has not added anything. If you like carry, if you like leave it.
With [the food delivery app], there are multiple riders waiting for orders. They won’t give you directly. You will be dragging with someone else to accept the order and if the person’s phone is smarter than yours, they will collect the order, especially people using Samsung or people with a 5G network. If they tap it once, they’ll collect the order. You will still be there, dragging it and stressing yourself.
Life in Abuja is easy small, you can’t compare it with Lagos. If you are in Lagos, nobody will tell you anything until you see it with your eyes. And if you don’t know anybody and you’re doing salary work, you go see shege. In Abuja, just dey push am dey go, they manage am dey go. Everything nah time. One day one day, something go change. We just dey wait for that day. We thank God for life. As far as say we dey sleep, we dey chop.
As narrated by: Zakka Lliya (Abuja, Nigeria).
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