Surviving on the fringes of a mega-city

Bashir Musa shakes his fist menacingly at me as if gearing up for a fight as he sights me across the road positioning my camera to take a shot of the heaps of metal scraps and end-of-life vehicles on which he and several other young men sit chatting away in Hausa. They all turn their attention on me and join in the protest as I cross over and walk towards them.

It is a beautiful Sunday morning in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. Alakija, the intersection where Festac and Satellite Towns embrace the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, is devoid of its characteristic heavy traffic. Only private cars and occasional yellow (commercial) buses criss-cross the ever-busy expressway taking mostly church-goers to the numerous worship centres scattered around town.
“Why you dey snap us foto?” he says in heavily-accented Pidgin, querying why I was taking a shot of them. His voice is a growl filled with venomous bile. “Dem no dey snap foto for here. Abi you wan spoil our business?”
Their noise attracts the attention of the traffic police and Lagos State Transport Management Agency (LASTMA) officials positioned near the bus-stop.
I rummage for the choicest words to douse the tension and assure them I come in peace, but the police and LASTMA officials are already there. They too have this inexplicable morbid fear of cameras.
“I hope you’re not snapping us,” a LASTMA official says, rather inquiringly.
“No, I’m not,” I assure them. “I’m only a journalist on duty.”
I flash my identity card and a police officer snatches it for proper scrutiny.
“Press man,” he says, and hands it back to me.
But apparently not satisfied, he asks in a commanding tone, “Can we see the pictures you have taken?”
These ones are not leaving anything to chance, I think, as I scroll through the camera to show them the most recent photos. Seeing it has nothing to do with them, they quietly walk away with a plea, “Don’t snap us o, abeg!”
By this time, Bashir and his men are relaxed seeing that even official authorities really have no grouse with me and that I mean no harm.
“I don’t want to spoil your business,” I say as they gather around me. “I mean no harm.”
I ask to see the overall boss here but I’m told he is not in. He travelled to Arewa (Northern Nigeria), I am told. I have a word with the second in command, a very understanding guy named Abdullahi, who gives me the go-ahead to take as many shots as I want, so long as it is not meant to cast them in a negative light.
As a regular user of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, I have never ceased to wonder what exactly goes on on this side of the expressway. This is a green area stretching from Festac First Gate to Alakija. In a 2011 interview, Jola Ogunlusi, then president of Festival Town Residents Association (FTRA), who said he moved into Festac in 1978, told this writer that the area was originally meant to serve as a buffer zone between Festac Town and the expressway, with a waste water channel in-between flowing into the canal at Mile 2.
But this green area has virtually been degraded. While the Festac side of it is now home to numerous mechanic workshops, car marts, churches, and a variety of shanties which serve as either shops or residential homes, the expressway side of it, a long, swampy stretch which has long been used as landfill sites, has been overtaken by refuse, and clusters of shanties now sit atop these dumps. This is where Bashir and hundreds of young men like him live and make a living.
Heaps of metal scraps scattered here and there, random end-of-life vehicles, disused plastics, heaps of PET bottles stacked in big transparent cellophane bags, disused odds and ends, occasional lorries picking up these heaps and scraps, and hordes of dirty-looking young men on the hustle with their trucks are a regular sight on this stretch.
Passing through at any time of day, you are sure to see these young men either hustling, stretched out inside some of the vehicles marked for butchering, or simply loitering in front of the shanties. At night, they are there. Sometimes you see streaks of light glowing in and around the makeshift houses. This place is their home. It is a community within a community.

Nature of business

After a few random shots, I engage Bashir, who has now become friendly, in a chat. I ask him the exact nature of their business.
“We buy all kinds of metal scraps. If you have a car that you can no longer use because repairing it is a waste of money, you can call us to come and buy it. When we buy it, we butcher it and sort the metal according to quality – iron, copper, brass, aluminium. Then we carry them to company,” Bashir, who says he was introduced to the business and taught all the secrets by one of his brothers who had been into it, tells me.
But that’s just one side of it. The majority of the young men there go out every morning with their trucks scavenging refuse dumps and road construction sites and picking whatever valuable wastes they can find, such as metal scraps and plastics. At other times they take their trucks around town in search of disused household items – refrigerators, metal water containers, plastics, air-conditioners, car batteries, etc – to buy at cheap rates and resell at a profit. The ongoing expansion and reconstruction of the expressway has been a boost to their business as it has involved massive excavation of age-old landfill sites. It is common to see these young men literarily feasting on the scraps at these excavation sites like flies on heaps of dung.
“They are our boys. Their work is to go around town with their trucks looking for condemned iron, aluminium, engines, condemned batteries, and so on. They bring them and we scale for them and pay them per kilo. We buy a kilo of iron like N40, and aluminium N250,” Bashir informs me.
He is not sure where the plastics are taken to. He and his colleagues at Alakija do not deal in plastics – only metals. But the guys towards Oluti do.
He says the metal scraps are taken to a company at Apple Junction or another at Ikorodu. They sell these scraps to the company at a profit.
“Any business you see someone doing, there must be profit. If they are not making profit, they will just end the business. This is our business. We have no other business than this,” he says.
I ask how good the profit is, but Bashir is not willing to say. However, he gives me an idea of how much they buy an end-of-life vehicle depending on their valuation of it.
“We will look at the car and assess it before we can price it. Cars are different. Some are small, some are big. We look at its iron, aluminium, copper or brass components – that is what determines how we price it,” he says.
Pointing at a BMW saloon car parked by the corner that has been marked for butchering, he says he could offer N100,000 or N110,000 for it, and after butchering it and separating its different metal components, he could make a gain of N20,000.
Homes on swampy dumpsites
“We are always here because it is a home to all of us. This is where we sleep, eat, take our bath; this is where we do our business,” Bashir says.
But there is an exception. The big bosses who own the boys do not sleep in these shanties. They have more comfortable places where they spend their nights.
“All of us sleep here. It is only our masters that go to Alaba to sleep,” he says.
Indeed, it is common to see some of these young men either late at night or early in the morning taking their bath in the open, apparently oblivious of prying eyes of curious passers-by. At times they are seen also defecating by the roadside. Every tuft of grass by the roadside that can provide cover for their nether region is a toilet. Needless to stress, the entire uncompleted portions of that stretch of the expressway has become none giant public toilet.
A huge potential

Waste recycling, no doubt, has grown into a huge economic activity in Nigeria over time, creating employment and generating income for many young people like Bashir.
Analysts say there is a huge potential for recycling business going by Nigeria’s per capita consumption for steel and aluminium. The annual per capita consumption of steel in the country as at 2013 was about 10kg, while for aluminium it was 0.3kg.
In 2011, aluminium ingots and alloys worth $137 million were exported from Nigeria to mainly Japan, India and Ghana. A kilogramme (kg) of aluminium at 2013 sold for between N130 and N150, copper N700, and steel N20.
Dangote Agrosacks exported $396,750 worth of polypropylene recycled pellets to the United States in 2011.
As at 2015, the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) estimated that the state’s 23 million inhabitants produce 13,000 metric tonnes of solid waste daily in the form of paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, food and other materials. This is bound to increase as the human population grows. Incidentally, only a fraction these wastes are recycled as just a handful of companies are into the recycling business. Integrated Recycling Limited, Wecyclers, Alkem Nigeria Ltd and a number of others play actively in PET bottles and plastics recycling, leaving a lot of room for new entrants.
Meeting Salisu
Leaving Bashir and his cohorts, I step out onto the road and make to walk in the direction of Oluti, a short distance from Alakija, to see that side of things, but not done with my photography, I pause to take some panoramic shots. That’s when I hear the protesting voice of Salisu Ahmed from his rather isolated shanty sitting on a base swamp reclaimed with heaps of rubbish. But before I can say a word, Bashir and his men wave at him, telling him in Hausa that I am as a friend. I approach his ‘home’ and find a seat in front to interact with him.
Kano State-born Salisu, popularly called Emirate by his business associates, has been in the business of collecting and selling metal scraps for about 15 years. His present location, Alakija, has been his base in all those years. His boss, a man named Alhaji Umar, he says, pioneered the metal scrap collection business at Alakija before others came to join in.
“Anything you are no longer using, any scrap whatsoever that you have no need of, if you call us we will come and buy. We take them to the company in Ikorodu, a Lagos suburb, and sell them to some white men who melt them and use them as raw materials to manufacture new products,” Salisu informs me.

 
Even though many may see the business as dirty, in the sense that one has to soil one’s hands, Salisu says they have no option but to survive.
“We cannot just sit and wait for government. And there is money in the business. There are over 1,000 of us here and this is our means of livelihood. Most of us have wives and children, we left them and other members of our family in faraway North and came here to hustle, and I thank God for my life. God has been faithful. With this work I feed my family and I can say I am living well,” he says.
Opportunity for growth
Salisu started out as a truck pusher scavenging rubbish heaps for valuable wastes but over time he has grown; now many customers call him to come and buy scraps from them. He tells me, for instance, that he is the major buyer of all metal scraps at Young Shall Grow Motors’ main bus terminus at Old Ojo Road. These days he pushes trucks only once in a while when there is nothing else doing.
His boss, Alhaji Umar, is the owner of all the trucks that these young men push around town looking for disused household items and metal scraps to buy. Each morning Alhaji gathers them and gives each one N5,000 or N6,000 to go into town and buy whatever scrap the money can afford. They return in the evening to account to the boss. If along the way they pick other items outside the money given to them, such items are weighed and they are paid accordingly.
“This is our business and like every other business, some days are good and some days are not so good. Sometimes it’s luck. Any day God favours you, you can get something bigger than your expectation and one day can even make you a millionaire in this business,” he says.
“For instance, one company can call you now and tell you to come and buy all their scraps. Sometimes you can stay for a month and nothing. It’s only by the power of God.”
The capital factor
Salisu says to succeed in the business, one requires some capital. This is because what you are able to buy depends on how much you have at hand.
“You may get a call from a company to come and buy their scraps, but if you don’t even have money to pay, they will call another person. And that might be the business that will make you rich,” he says.
“So, how much you have at hand sometimes determines your success. If you don’t have money, it’s difficult. Capital matters a lot,” he says.
It is easy to relate with this. I recently had to sell a disused car battery to one of these truck pushers at N3,500. He did not have the cash, so he called a colleague of his who came with the money.
“If you buy scraps of N10,000, for instance, if it is good market, you can make a gain of N10,000 on top. That’s how it is – your N2 will increase to N4, from N4 to N8, and that’s how the business grows,” he says.
Rule of the game
Salisu says the business is far from being an all-comers’ affair. Anyone who wants to join must meet the chairman who vets him and decides whether he stays or leaves.
Beyond that, much as they are looking for profitable market, they avoid buying anything suspected to be stolen property.
“We have a time that we open for market. We set our scale around 8am and close around 6pm. After that, no more market. If you bring anything outside these hours, no matter how good it is, we cannot buy. We prefer to buy in the day time when everywhere is bright so that the seller and the buyer will see each other eye to eye,” he says.
“We avoid being on the wrong side of the law. The police are aware of our business, they know my master. We cooperate with them very well. If they come with any complaints, we try to address them. If we also have complaints or some people come to disturb our business, we call the police to come and intervene.”
Relationship with government
Salisu says they know that the land on which they live and do their business belongs to government.
“Some people come here from time to time to disturb, saying the land belongs to them. But government has told us not to give any money to anyone who comes to harass us or ask us for money because the land belongs to government,” he says.
But before they came to this realisation, he says, some people had cheated his master and collected huge sums of money from him claiming that the land belonged to them.
“We understand the government may take over its property anytime and whenever the government says it wants its land back, we will go and look for somewhere else,” he says.