By Our Reporter
The number of homeless children in Lagos is growing daily as some parents are unable to provide three square meals for their children.
These homeless kids sleep in the open automatically the mercy of area boys who sometimes forced them to part with the money made from waste picking in the city.
Dreaded and loathed by many, they live on the streets of Lagos, particularly not too far from landfilled sites. Some of them sleep under bridges, while others sleep inside the small shelters built on landfill sites.
With ages between six and seventeen, the tales that put them on the streets are varied and bizarre. They roam the streets and live wild both night and day. They are even out a living running errands for the older waste pickers at landfill site, stealing, pilfering in some cases to survive.
They operate in groups of two, three or even more. Though they are found everywhere particularly on the mainland Lagos. They are usually in large numbers around the Lagos abattoir at Oko-Oba, near Agege and its environs.
As they wandered about, many people avoid them, even the law enforcement agencies keep a safe distance, conscious of the mischief the little miscreants can cause.
The operational modus of one group of these boys during the day may differ slightly from those of other groups. While some engage in running errands for Hausa traders around the abattoir, others go round a particular part of the large city to scavenge for iron rods, and other discarded metal materials, and plastics materials.
As a testament to the rough life they live, almost all these young waste pickers spoke with at weekend parades injuries sustained during brawls among themselves or inflicted by victims of their nefarious activities.
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One of them, Seidu Abdulaziz, 11 years old, has a deep cut running diagonally on the left side of his head close to his left ear.
Seidu claimed that he and his friend Jawwal were sleeping one night close to the abattoir when assailants came after them in the middle of the night.
He said, “Somebody pursue us, me and Jawwal, with knife one night when we go sleep for one shop near the abattoir. The assailant cut me for head and cut Jawwal for back. Only God save us that evening. The assailant is ready to kill us,” Seidu narrated to NatureNews.
The wound on Seidu’s head is roughly stitched, obviously by a quack. It still emits an awful stench and pus, but hardly does it bother Seidu. Rather, how to make money to buy some food was the only thing that preoccupied his mind. He tried to market a used handset which he possibly he may have stolen from someone somewhere and claimed to have fetched it from dustbin somewhere in Agege.
Asked what the content of the brown bag slung across his shoulders was, his quick response was “ iron”. When the reporter peeped into the bag, it revealed assortment of metal, iron, small cable, disused radio and television parts. All these, he said, he picked from dustbins, motor mechanic workshops, welders’ workshops and electronic repairers’ workshops and sell at Katangua market nearby Oke-Odo landfill, Abule-Egba area, Lagos.
Another young waste picker in Lagos is 12 years old Abdullahi from Zamfara State, Northwest, Nigeria. Abdullahi explained that his parents are both dead.
He said he followed one Munir from Zamfara to Lagos to make money.
According to him, he first started making money in the city by selling cold sachet water before he changed to picking plastic and metal waste across Agege area and its environs.
Seidu and Abdulahi have colleagues with whom they moved on groups on daily basis searching for used iron, metal and beverages plastics which they resell to recyclers. The job seems to have an attraction for these young Nigerians and many of them would do anything to continue doing the work.
Though they often sleep in the open, they will run away if you give them a comfortable and secured alternative because they will feel like being imprisoned.
