What Mobile Policeman told me about Oshodi street urchins
I was returning from the commendation service held in honour of the late father of my senior colleague, Mr. Gbenga Osinaike, at Ajegunle-Apapa, on Friday.
Pa Michael Ayodele Osinaike passed on at 91 in July. He was a retired teacher, grandfather and churchman who lived a peaceful life of impact. I remember when he was 80 and a service was held in his honour at the same church, which I attended without knowing that 11 years later, we would gather again for his last service in the same church he had served for decades. Of course, I missed his 90th birthday service there last year. Ever-smiling old man he was.
On my way back, I had to dash briefly to the Computer Village at Ikeja to drop a laptop for repair. At Oshodi, I boarded a seven-seater bus, popularly called korope in southwest Nigeria.
I was the first passenger, so I took the front seat as the conductor kept shouting and calling passengers in the usual restless manner.
On the dashboard, I noticed a plastic bottle of soft drink, whose name I won’t mention to avoid giving it free advertisement.
It took a while before the boy, dressed in a singlet and shorts, with short dreadlocks, could get the bus filled. Eventually, it was full and we were ready to start the journey.
The driver reminded him of the bottled drink and he promised to pick it up while hustling to get some Naira notes to balance the driver, a mobile policeman who looked like he was off duty.
The driver paid him his commission and he picked the drink, then jumped across the highway, promising to wait for him on the return trip.
“Is he not your bus conductor?” I asked.
“No, he is not. He only loaded the bus,” he replied, and I remembered that this was the usual practice.
I engaged the driver. “The guy worked very hard to load this bus, as there don’t seem to be many passengers this morning,” I observed.
“Yes, he’s a hard worker and a very kind boy. He is very diligent too. He’s been working for me for a while,” said the policeman. We then began talking about the street boys.
We agreed that the condition of homes and the country at large continues to produce these boys, who are supposed to be in school or gainfully employed.
The boy in question should be in his mid-20s and must have been born around the beginning of the century. People in his age group are bank tellers and fintech workers. Others are youths currently serving the nation under the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Some are even trading in less hostile environments like the boy.
The driver sighed and said the situation in the country was producing these boys. “At night, on this same spot, these boys are different beings. But this particular one is a good boy,” he remarked.
I thought that, as a policeman who deals with perpetrators of crime, he must know what he was saying.
I felt for boys in this category and only wished God would intervene in their lives. Then the policeman told me about another boy who once worked with him on the same route.
“A boy once worked for me and he was also focused. After working at Oshodi motor park for a few years, he was able to raise enough money to rent a shop. He is doing well in his business today. So I believe this one will also do likewise,” he said.
He kept reeling out examples of the good, the bad and the ugly from his encounters with Oshodi street boys until we got to my destination and called it a day.
