The ‘Area Boys’ of Lagos

A chance encounter with “Captain” recently set you thinking. You had attended a party held by a friend to celebrate his mum’s burial at one of the function halls in Agidingbi. And you were on your way out.

Waiting just outside the gate of the venue were a rag-tag army of area boys.

You held your phone tight as you headed for the car.

‘Baba!’ came their loud hailing, as they followed you.

As you reached the car and started the engine, taking pains to keep the side glass up, a voice called out your name from the back of the throng.

‘Our father from Alausa and St Nicholas!’ The voice was the gravelly, ‘masquerade’ drawl of the street. He pumped a fist in the air.

You instantly recognised the face – dark complexion, spare frame. Captain! He looked the same as he had done twenty years ago, when you regularly encountered him at government functions and other places you frequented.

‘He’s our Captain’ intoned the others, as he made his way forward. ‘Give him our money.’

His face was gaunt now, with the wear and tear of age and hardship. He had white flakes at the corners of his mouth that indicated some form of vitamin deficiency. He was growing old, but he was still an ‘Area Boy’, keeping his nose to the ground to sniff out where there was a wedding or a funeral, or a government function, and showing up to extort money from people with self-abasing panegyrics that carried a vague threat and a sense of entitlement, all in one.

‘You’re the one who has always looked after us…’

In a sense, he was almost like family, you thought, as you handed him some money and fled the scene, ruminating over the wasted lives of ‘Captain’ and others of his ilk.

The ‘Area Boy’ phenomenon is present in all the major cities of Nigeria. It has always been a cause for sociological concern in Lagos.

More than three decades ago, while carrying out research for the book ‘Nigeria at Work’, you were privileged to spend an afternoon at the home of Professor Olatunde Oloko, the great sociologist. It was an opportunity also to meet Mrs Oloko, a sociology researcher in her own right. She had been commissioned by the government to study the growing ‘Area Boys’ problem in the state and proffer solutions.

As you stood to leave after a pleasant afternoon with the couple, she gave you a bound copy of her ‘Area Boys’ report.

“The concept was based on the assumption that Area Boys could be turned into useful citizens by teaching them marketable skills such as plumbing, bricklaying and tiling.”

The definition of ‘Area Boy’ is as nebulous as assessing the impact of measures taken over the years to address the problem. The term traditionally referred to young people, often in the decrepit old centre of the city, who drop out of school or do not attend school at all, have learnt no skills to earn them a living, and who live rough on the streets, away from their families, in a subculture of drugs and petty crime. The problem has burgeoned over the years, despite serious efforts by succeeding governments to contain it.

The earliest iterations of societal response saw the building of Training and Rehabilitation centres for young adults, such as the one in Isheri. The concept was based on the assumption that Area Boys could be turned into useful citizens by teaching them marketable skills such as plumbing, bricklaying and tiling.

During the tenure of Buba Marwa as Military Governor, he tried a psychological sleight-of-hand to improve the self-image of ‘Area Boys’ by calling them ‘Good Boys And Girls.’ He scaled up the capabilities of the centres, extended their function to different local governments, and introduced training in more upmarket skills such as Bakery. Some of the area boys indeed acquired a positive self-image, and became useful citizen-bakers and plumbers. But many more remained on the streets.

The Asiwaju Tinubu era raised the bar by committing even more resources and introducing ‘tough love’ which saw recalcitrant ‘area boys’ being ‘deported’ to Tekunle, a gulag of a rehabilitation centre in Ibeju Lekki area which could only be reached by a boat ride over shark-infested waters.

Despite these efforts, the population of area boys has continued to grow. Statistics reveal that an increasing percentage of street dwellers, next only to the almajiri of the North, are young people in the South who can only be classed as ‘Area Boys’. Paradoxically, it is a way of life that is counter-cultural for the people of the South West, whose ‘Omoluabi’ ethos abhors sloth.

Area Boys are a visible reality everywhere from the city centre of Isale Eko, to Ikeja. They are in your face in the Lekki-Ajah-Epe axis as you navigate the roads. They manifest as dishevelled young men and women hanging about the streets, collecting ‘tolls’ from Marwa, Okada, Korope and Danfo drivers, and extorting money from trucks carrying furniture or building materials under the guise of being ‘Omo onile.’At the slightest emergence of a flash point, they become ready agents of chaos and mayhem.

Dr (Mrs) Oloko’s pioneering study and all the research since then indicate that massive grassroots local government-based social casework is required to encourage and enforce parental responsibility, to keep children in primary and secondary schools, and to enforce the training of technical and other skills from as early as ten years age to children who do not show inclination for formal study. This needs to be done in a carefully documented way where every growing adolescent in every local government is accounted for one way or another. A substantial fraction of those who are already on the streets need to be taken off into productive citizenship with a combination of carrot and stick, a mix of ‘Good Boys And Girls’ encouragement and ‘Ita Oko-Tekunle’ tough love.

In the drive to create a modern, healthy and prosperous nation, the unpleasant reality of ‘Area Boys’ creating a seamy cesspool on streets and neighbourhoods cannot be ignored, or condoned, forever.