Abstract
This book delves into corruption and exploitation within the transportation sector in Nigeria and Africa. The author argues that the informal transportation sector is essential for various reasons, such as its economic significance, contribution to the political and social landscape of African cities, and opportunities it offers for interaction and economic survival.
The book employs a multidisciplinary approach, utilizing discourse analysis, sociolinguistic framing and interpretative perspectives to analyse the theme of corruption within the African transport union, with a particular focus on Nigeria. It also sheds light on the lack of research on the informal transport sector in Africa and explores the experiences of young people in Nigeria who embody the lifestyle of corruption and extortion as a means to avoid ‘social death’ (p. 212) and guarantee urban survival.
The book contextualizes corruption within a social and linguistic framework by analysing various languages and idioms used to describe corruption in several African countries. The use of a comparative approach that compares corruption within Nigeria’s transportation sector to that of other African countries, such as Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone, presents a balanced perspective and sparks broader discussion on the comparison of informal transportation networks throughout Africa.
The title of the book embodies both art and literature, drawing from the spatial vernacular of corruption in Africa and elsewhere. The concept of ‘eating’ encompasses ‘nourishment, accumulation, exploitation, plunder, attack, and defeat’ (p. 80). The book explores corruption in Nigeria through the lens of eating, a symbol rooted in cultural practices and values. Eating is thus used to demonstrate sociality and self-identification in Africa.
The book adopts an anthropological approach to corruption, offering a pluralistic perspective on the concept and reality of corruption in Africa, specifically within the informal transportation sector. It uncovers the politics of the belly that exist in many African societies, where youth are marginalized and excluded. Young people have abandoned their virtues of patience and hard work and instead resorted to fraudulent and get-rich-quick schemes. Because of their lack of access to infrastructure, education, and amenities, they are frequently seeking means to survive. Additionally, exposure to corruption among the elite has influenced young people’s view of corruption as a means of survival, shaping their worldview.
The book also explores the theme of the political economy of youth violence in Nigeria, particularly in the agbero-subculture. Resulting from an ethnographic study in Oshodi and Alimosho – areas with a significant amount of youth and agbero, the book details original experiences of youth in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria as agents of racketeering and state capture responsible for extortion and election-related violence. Young people working as agberos have become potent weapons in the hands of local politicians who use them to kill or threaten political opponents, rig elections, and spread disinformation during elections.
An agbero is described as ‘dreaded urban youths who survive through their parasitic dependence on the spatial regulation of public transport in Lagos’ (p. 146). They can be found in the spaces of motor parks, bus stops, and junctions across Lagos – their operational base where they extort cash bribes from Danfo drivers on behalf of the violent National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).
Youth and agberoism (sic) are products of bad governance traceable to the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) era of the 1980s, characterized by dwindling socio-economic opportunities that pushed many youths to the fringe of survival. The economic crisis witnessed during this period led to disaffection among Nigerian youth. The resultant lack of social protection meant that many youths dropped out of school, while those that managed to graduate found it difficult to obtain gainful employment. The experience of youth during the SAP years contributed to the institutionalization of organized street gangs as a means for youth to negotiate economic distress and social exclusion.
The lack of gainful employment in Nigeria has forced jobless youth and university graduates to become informal transport workers and foot soldiers in the union’s dirty work, thus representing an embedding of corruption. Approximately 500,000 youths work as danfo drivers, okada riders, mechanics, and spare part dealers, with informal trade unions acting as agents of order and specialists in violence. However, they are not only victims of corruption, but they also perform corrupt acts, which the book describes using the model of the ‘collective action social trap’ (p. 211).
The experience of young people in the transport sector morphed into violence with the creation of the NURTW in 1978 and its central role in the Second Republic (1979-1983). NURTW now operates as a mafia union responsible for thuggery, extortion, robbery, and murder. The union now advances an urban youth clientelism model: dependence on the patronage of youth in the face of failure to provide for their social and economic needs.
The book’s categorization of the politicization of the union is enlightening, as it depicts youth as both agents and victims of manipulation. The use of vivid examples of youth complicity in fomenting trouble and routinizing violence under the aegis of NURTW makes the book completely relatable. It literarily situates the reader within the context of the happenstance as an observer. Moreover, the book’s distinction between area boys and Agbero is brilliant. This demonstrates the book’s commitment to exploring often neglected, albeit important, narratives in Nigerian youth studies. Locating the difference within the context of their proclivity for violence also makes room for interrogation on what social, economic, and political factors separate them, as well as the factors that drive the transformation from an area boy to an agbero.
Furthermore, the book captures the experience of young girls as paraga (alcohol) and igbo (hard drug) vendors in motor parks and garages (p. 126). The agbero subculture is characterized by violence, routinization of extortion, and malfunction of public transport in Lagos. Meanwhile, the government’s efforts to curb their excesses have been met with stiff opposition and violence.
While germane concepts such as godfatherism, stomach infrastructure, and shadow economy were discussed, placing them in the context of corruption in the transport sector would have been more appropriate. This would show how these concepts motivate and are reinforced by actors in the informal transport sector and open a debate in that direction.
More so, the book’s analysis of the informal transport sector in Nigeria does not capture the Keke Marwa (tricycle) riders, who represent a crucial force in the sector. The means of transportation was introduced by the military Governor of Lagos State in the mid to late 1990s, Col. Mohammed Buba Marwa, hence the name Keke Marwa. The exclusion of this group detracts from a full understanding of the dynamics of youth, violence, and agbero subculture. Keke riders are primarily youths who have turned to this means of transportation because of high unemployment rates. Similar to danfo and okada riders, this group has also been implicated in violent incidents, including clashes with transport unions and involvement in thuggery. It is worth noting that the ban on okada by state governments, including Lagos and Edo, prompted many to shift to the keke business. Unfortunately, this trend has perpetuated the problematic behaviours of thuggery, extortion, and violence.
Finally, against the backdrop that ‘agberos are, in fact, the included youth who play a central role as conduits for the daily extortion rackets of the NURTW’ (p. 154), it would have been greatly beneficial to underscore the age composition of agberos and the extent of youth involvement in the union’s racketeering activities and proclivity toward violence. This is imperative in understanding the level of youth complicity in the Shenanigan, lest we assume that all agberos are youth.