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Dan Achaba: Earning A Wage In Hell! By Abdullah Musakigongabas@yahoo.comIf you are so inclined to attach a tag to a human being in order to best understand him, you may be tempted to classify the black person as the most individualistic around. That black person may well be a Hausa man, a Yoruba, or even the angry Igbo: ( the Igbos are angry; venomously, for being shortchanged in the Nigerian equation by the Yoruba and the Hausa; this I gathered from the response of an Igbo based in USA, to my article in Daily Trust, where I wrote on ethnicity) I am also inclined like you to tag Nigerians as highly individualistic, particularly when it comes to their economic activities. How many small-holder farms are there: millions? How many shops abound, in and out of markets: millions? How many are engaged in the provision of transport services: millions? But do not be misled by this apparent tendency of each one of us to go our separate ways when we want to earn a living. When it suits us to turn ourselves into a highly cohesive destructive mob, we seem to fuse into such a formidable ‘weapon of mass destruction’, such that within hours, properties worth millions of naira in Local Government areas of Kano State are razed to the ground! A kind of coalition of the willing you may say! One leader of the Achaba riders once boasted of a membership of more than THREE MILLION riders in Kano alone! What he did not say was whether the whole three million operate in Kano metropolis or in the whole state. No matter what, consider the implication of three million out of a population of is it nine or twelve million providing such un-skilled job as driving a motor cycle! This figure does not include bus and taxi drivers. If as is touted that most of the rural population in Nigeria engages in agriculture, then how many are doing other things, which I may consider as being more desired by the society? Governments the world over are expected to care as to which occupations their citizens are most engaged in. If it is possible that there are many in a given society who desire the services of prostitutes, would we consider it as nothing to be alarmed at if more than 50% of our women and girls decide to be providers of such services? If the world were to be grateful, it would be to the Government of United States of America for funding research that led to the commercialization of the internet services. How many in the world today are there whose lives are touched positively by the internet? It has made banking services much easier with online banking, and money transfer services. But thanks to its unfortunate gangster politics, America today symbolizes to us what a murderous ‘civilization’ looks like. This is however a diversion. The point of interest here is the ability of a determined government to shape the direction, and the flow of energy of its people to the most desirable outcomes. Although free enterprise means not planning all the activities of the populace, yet the consolidation of the technological way of life in Europe and other technological societies was only possible because those in power decided to believe that people must be led into endeavors that are thought as best for the overall interest of the society. By “earning a wage in hell”, we are referring to the highly toxic environment within which all Achaba riders earn their living. One day I was driving along an extremely busy road. By extremely busy road in Kano, I mean any of the roads where Achaba riders outnumber other road users by a ratio of at least 10 to 1! Hell is that place called road junctions where all the road users are forced to stand to wait the passage of other users before they take their turns. There was so much fumes at this particular junction, such that I would be forgiven if I equated it with the chimney of the now phased out gwari train head, that was using coal-fired engine. So here we were all of us: the car riders who had no air conditioners in their cars; the Achaba riders; the Achaba passengers; the cyclists, a group on the road to extinction in many of Nigeria’s cities because the Achaba rider has no patience with the snail speed of the cyclists; and even pedestrians, busy inhaling the fumes simply because the riders had no choice but to bellow it out! I was inspired to write an article with caption: Kano’s hazy future, when one day I approached a junction from far and saw the clouds of fumes which I had no choice but to stay in when I made it to the junction. Of interest to me was however one act: inspite of the more than free smoke at the junction, a haggard looking Achaba rider was busy smoking, dragging on his cigarette with such intensity which made me feel like he wanted to make sure his lungs exploded for having nothing better to do with them. There is so much torment from the whether, from the environmental pollution, such that an Achaba rider loses his natural complexion the moment he starts the trade. His face becomes abnormally black, but kindly do not ask me about his eyes. Yet some governments refuse to acknowledge the problems faced by these unfortunate human beings, and they license more into the mutilating business. Why not let us ask this question: who created this business and why? There was a period in the life of this nation which was considered as the darkest of the dark periods. Many would describe the period as that of the military’s encroachment into governance. It witnessed unprecedented waste of public resources; and worse of all, no clear direction as to where society was to be led to. This generation of Achaba riders had their future truncated during this period. It was at this period that the nation experienced serious decline in the funding of infrastructure and public services. Due to severe economic downturn, many parents could not feed their children properly, and such children started drifting from schools in order to earn livelihood. With breakdown and neglect of infrastructure, the refineries were forgotten and petroleum supplies were epileptic. The black market for petroleum products was created within this dark ‘uterus.’ With so many cars and taxis spending days on end at petrol filling stations, the alternative transportation system using motorcycles begun. And who were best qualified to brave this hazardous trade better than the youths who defied death in order to create the black market as we know it? Many of them moved from petrol hawkers to Achaba riding. And the descent accelerated with return to democracy. Politicians had always found the thug as most useful ally. Intimidation through the use of terror or threat of it was used as a veritable tool to win elections. So once in power, they had no plan on how to empower the youths other than to purchase motorcycles and let them zoom off to either deaths or mutilation as had been their fate in many repeated accident cases. Achaba riders earn a wage in hell for they refuse to be governed by Shariah in their relationship with women. When we have un-planned cities, it is not easy for taxis or buses to take people to places closest to their abodes. Achaba riders could sneak in and out between traffic jams, and into the narrowest alleys of our cities. From there, the women started opening their legs to ride; the dividends that followed were varied: many girls found it convenient to ride Abacha to places of rendezvous with their clients. The clients were saved the problem of public scrutiny of being seen in company of girls who were not their wives; and the girl found a convenient way of advertising herself by riding Achaba and sitting in the most suggestive manner. Dan Achaba earns a wage in hell for falling prey to the nuances of such girls, or for making Marhaba Cinema his daily sojourn after the grueling engagement on the city’s highly toxic roads. We live in a society that pays lip service to care. I am of the opinion that there are bound to be serious social consequences from Yan Achaba and their progeny in the future. Yet many are now new entrants to the trade, meaning it has taken roots. Many a villager will get a free gift of motorcycle from the politician, and he says good bye to the taxing but healthy work on the farms, in order to come to the city as Achaba rider. We are not even giving attention to migrants from neighboring states and even countries into Kano for the Achaba business. We are that loose, where an immigrant would come into our city and start driving into the nook and crannies of the said city un-molested, unchecked. Any need for remedies? Well, if we are interested in the positive well-being of the society, we need remedies: for the practitioners and for other members of the society. There are questions to ask also. This business of Achaba, can it take one to old age; and are the returns sufficient to take care of the medical problems that must surface in old age? No study would be sanctioned because no policy maker’s son will ever engage in Achaba. He would either be properly educated to land a good job, or he would inherit his father’s loot in form of monies and landed properties, such that he would simply swim in luxury and may not have to earn a living. But policy makers should know that enjoying luxury pre-supposes certain basic minimum of security. Where you keep on creating conditions for the sprouting of Yan Achaba and their families, you are creating those who have no education, and are mostly drug-dependent. The ill-equipped and poorly remunerated police would hardly serve as the needed shield necessary to safeguard the ill-gotten wealth, and the undeserved enjoyment of the loot-financed luxuries. Policy makers, do yourself and your family a favor: block new entrants from this mind-numbing and debilitating trade. Train the trainable within them, and ban the use of motor cycles as means of public transportation through act of national Assembly, with grace period of eight years. The grace period should be enough to gradually rehabilitate the existing victims; while the door to new entrants closed for eight years would really be very difficult to open. As at now, according to Muslim clerics, not only are Achaba riders earning wage in hell, but they must of certainty serve a term in real hell in the Hereafter for enjoying the perpetual soft pressure from women and girls passengers’ thighs in defiance of Allah’s Shariah. How doubly unfortunate!
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