The time was 12.45 pm and the weather very unfriendly. Under the scorching sun, Daniel Ikeh, with a sack hung over his shoulder, made his way around the mountain of refuse at the dumpsite at Abule-Egba in Lagos, picking items of interest to him. Suddenly, a refuse truck rattled past into the inner recesses of the site to discharge its contents. Ikeh (15) rushed over, foraging in the waste for seemingly worthless items. He was not alone; scores of other scavengers, including old women, were doing the same — picking empty cans, bottles, glass and rubber items, metal scraps, discarded slippers, clothes, buckets, wires, and many others.
photo credit: swanksalot
To this growing army of scavengers, found in most cities across Nigeria, dumpsites are goldmines. For instance, Abdullahi Fagge (17), like many youngsters in Kano, makes a living on dumpsites. Every morning, when other children are preparing for school, he heads for the refuse site located on Airport Road in the Sabon Gari area of Kano, popularly called “No Man’s Land.” Fagge has been in the refuse business for five years since his parents separated, and has been left to fend for himself as his father has other wives and his mother has remarried. Like Fagge, Isikang Ezekiel was exposed to the business of scavenging through circumstances. Having dropped out of the university for lack of finance, Ezekiel travelled to Lagos to stay with Imoh Okon, his brother, who is into waste business — buying assorted items from scavengers. Shortly after, he secured a job as a grinder with Eleganza Industries. Unfortunately for him, he lost the job and decided to join Okon in the trade rather than stay idle at home. Ezekiel does not hide his disdain for the business, but he says that “it is better than stealing.”
In the eastern part of the country, Ifeanyi Osunwa (17) strives hard to make the best of a bad situation. A senior secondary school one (SSS 1) student of New Breed International School, Aba, Abia State, Osunwa has resolved not to allow the death of his father rob him of the chance of acquiring secondary education. His mother’s meagre earnings from trading in second-rated jewellery at Ariaria market, Aba, is grossly inadequate to cater for a family of seven. So, Osunwa has to go into picking metal scraps at refuse dumpsites to augment his family’s income. He leaves home early in the morning on weekends to pick scraps, and does not return until late in the evening. He makes between N500 and Nl,000 every weekend. “I have been doing this business since four years ago and I have no regrets,” said the Imo State-born scavenger.
But Edmund Osuji (26) is literally married to the business of waste. Osuji works seven days of the week picking plastics, bottles and metal scraps such as iron, copper, brass and aluminium. A father of one, Osuji says he makes enough money from picking metal scraps at refuse dumpsites in Aba. On a good day, he makes between Nl,500 and N2,000 from selling his wares. Osuji, who hails from Owerri, Imo State, is not in a hurry to dump the trade. “The money I expended to marry my wife was made from this business, so why should I be in a hurry to abandon it?” he queried.
Even among scavengers, there are leaders. Abubakar Yusuf, for instance, has become a veteran in the business, which partly explains why he is referred to as “Scrap Commander”. Though he started as a scavenger 12 years ago, Yusuf has risen to prominence; he is now an employer of labour. At his shop in Yan Tinka Market, Jos, the Plateau State capital, the scrap merchant has 28 male scavengers working for him. Every morning, each of them is given N500 as loan for feeding and transport fare to dumpsites within the metropolis to pick metal scraps, cans, discarded electrical parts, slippers and toothpaste tubes, among many others. When they return in the evening with their haul, the items are weighed and every one is paid according to what he has brought, after deducting the N500 loan.
Umar Mohammed, (43), the chairman of Yan Tinka Market, where various items like cooking pots, drinkers for poultry and many others are made from waste materials, says they have secondary school leavers in their midst, who are involved in small-scale entrepreneurship. Mohammed who has been in the business for over a decade, boasts, “I have a wife and eight children who are attending private schools that I cater for every day from this work (that) some see as unhygienic and I have built a house from it.” Suleiman Umar, whose shop serves as a depot for scraps at Yan Tinka Market, says he is able to take care of his two wives and six children from his earnings from waste and thus has no regrets going into the business.
Source: Cover Story from Tell
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