Though people look down on us, we’re proud of our job – Lagos female bus conductors

Like a lion’s roar, her baritone voice reverberated across the crowded Ikorodu bus-stop last Tuesday morning in a manner that easily drew attention. Even with the rain hitting the ground so fiercely, producing a distorted rhythm that added a bizarre percussion to the cacophony of sounds around the area, her ‘thick’ voice still pierced through the seeming chaos like hot knife, with chants of “Ketu/Mile 12, Ojota/Oshodi” forcing prospective passengers out of hiding and towards the long commercial vehicle she called from. Time was 7:00am – rush hour for many of the community’s teeming residents, who work several kilometres away from Ikorodu, one of the Lagos’ fastest growing towns.

But while dozens of such commuters had only been out of bed for about one to two hours, Olabisi Adekoya had been on the road for three and a half hours at that time of the day, attending to early risers desperate to escape the city’s monstrous morning traffic. Despite having to prepare her three children for school before leaving home at 3:30am to join her team members – an elderly driver and another female – at Oshodi, a densely populated section of the metropolis where crime is rife, the 33-year-old does not falter in her job of wooing and ensuring the prompt payments by passengers, who board their commercial bus throughout the day.

Like her ‘thick’ and fearsome voice, Adekoya has become tough – staring obstacles in the face in her role as one of Lagos’ growing army of female bus conductors.

Happily married until the death of her husband, Sumbo, a few years ago, Adekoya’s journey into one of the city’s toughest professions didn’t come by her own design. Once a thriving businesswoman engaged in medium-scale trading, the 33-year-old found herself along a terrible path in life when she lost money to some crooks. With three mouths to feed and assistance coming from nowhere, the young widow contended with pressure and frustration from every angle. The ideas that sauntered into her head unfortunately had no finance upon which to thrive. It was a delicate situation.

“This job came to me at the lowest point in my life, by accident in fact,” the chubby young lady told our correspondent, as she moved from seat to seat to demand for transport fare from passengers as the bus made its journey from Ikorodu to Oshodi last Tuesday morning. “On a particular day, I was going to Oworonsoki to visit someone who promised to get me a job and the bus I boarded didn’t have a conductor. I volunteered to assist the driver to collect fares from passengers. The way I coordinated the bus really impressed the driver who later asked if I had had knowledge of the job or if I would love to work with him. I told him I didn’t have any knowledge of the job and that I wasn’t interested in that type of work as a woman. He told me to take his number in case I changed my mind. I grudgingly took it down.

“So, after some days and efforts to lay hands on any of the jobs I had expected, a few people encouraged me not to be shy and take the conductor job if the man was still in need of one. Even when I called the man and he told me to come and work with him, I didn’t plan to do this for long. At that time, I was just desperate to provide food for my children, raise some money and start petty trading. But here I am, still in the job after over five years. I have worked with different drivers and vehicle owners, taking each day as it comes,” she said.

But fascinating as the job has come to be for Adekoya, going by the number of years she has been into it, there are still several aspects she detests and that gives her serious concern. While the generosity and kindness of some passengers sometimes provide a soothing relief from all the pains associated with the vocation, harassment from unruly ‘customers’ and sometimes ‘agberos’, cast a dark shadow over such benefits.

“Harassment from crazy passengers, male and female, is one of the biggest problems we face in this job,” the mother of three said as she sunk her entire body weight into a vacant seat next to our correspondent after nearly 20 minutes of fare collection inside the packed 40-seater bus. “Apart from passengers, ‘agberos’ are also another group that makes life difficult for us.

“But it wasn’t like that in the past. Those days, passengers would tell us to keep their balance, gift us fabric materials and even shoes just to appreciate and encourage us for the work we do. But that has changed now.

“As a matter of fact, there are different types of passengers and it requires wisdom to be able to deal with them especially being a woman because there are some who would tell you that even though they have money, they will not pay because Nigeria belongs to every one of us.

“There are others who would even tell us we’re crazy for daring to ask them for money when male conductors don’t try such with them. On several occasions, we drag it out with such passengers just to let them know that we cannot be intimidated because we are women. If it requires fight, we give it to them.

Punch