By Vivian Onyebukwa
When others go to vigils or engage in fasting and prayers to ask God to prosper their businesses, what kind of prayers do casket-makers pray and how do they expect the prayers to be answered? That was the question Saturday Sun took to coffin makers recently. But they found it somehow embarrassing to provide an answer. A few who agreed to speak on the matter confessed that they had never thought of the question until they were approached. But in the course of providing an answer, they also spoke about the challenges and gains of doing the business.
Some of the coffin-makers admitted that they actually pray that God should prosper their business, but they said they never want families to be plunged into the abyss of sorrow so that their business can grow. They pointed out that death is a fact of life, and so the dead should be given a decent burial when the Grim Reaper calls. But there should be people whose business it is to help make that decent burial possible. This is where they come in, they insisted.
Death, an inevitable phenomenon
Makanjuola Aramide from Ikere, Ekiti, Ekiti State and owner of Rainbow Casket, Isolo, Lagos, was busy decorating the interior of a white casket in his showroom when this reporter showed up with the question. He confessed that he found the question intriguing but noted that while He prays concerning his business every morning, he has never thought of how the prayers would be answered.
He explained: “God providing for me depends on how He wants to do it. But come to think of it, whether I pray or not, people are going to die. And they would need to be buried. But in my own way, I do sympathise with the bereaved family in that when they demand a discount, I do give them one sometimes. I don’t use the opportunity to exploit them. I do also ask them to bring customers or clients to me. Sometimes the customers would promise to recommend customers to me depending on how I treated them. At times, that introduction does work as I have often got calls from someone I don’t know asking one question or another and wanting to buy coffins.”
Married with four children (two boys and two girls), Aramide said he would not want any of his children to go into the business, noting he would rather want them to be highly educated and go into professional careers. He admitted that there are challenges on the job especially when the business is dull. He explained how his business experiences moments of dullness. It is not about people dying or not dying, he said.
“People are dying. But they are being kept in the mortuary for a longer time than necessary maybe because of the economic situation in the country. But that affects our business.”
He described the coffin-making business as lucrative if one has a good location for it. “Big people would find you. There are some people who might want to buy a casket. But they wouldn’t know that you are a professional if you are not in a decent environment.” You asked how he feels when decorating a casket for a corpse. His response: “I don’t feel anything. I only feel that I am doing my job.
I only feel it when I am in the mortuary and people are bringing in the dead body to put in the casket.” Still, on the issue of prayer, he added: “When I am not making sales, I see it as one of those things with business: sometimes, you sell, sometimes you don’t. But this business is one in which you make sales unexpectedly”. He revealed that he was not the one that built the caskets. “I have carpenters and sprayers that do that; I only do the decoration, the interior and exterior.”
Prayers and challenges of a coffin-maker
Amused by the question, Aliu Omolara, owner of Vera Casket, Mushin, Lagos, said that as a Christian, whenever he prays, he is not expecting anybody to die. But all the same, death is an inevitable appointment that man was bound to keep with his Creator. According to him, the best way to keep that appointment is to have your corpse put in a good and befitting casket the moment you breathe your last. He noted that when he prays the Lord’s Prayer in the morning, he does not forget to ask for his daily bread which can come in any way. His argument: “It is written in the Bible that you should not give food to a lazy man. Out of your sweat, you shall eat. I advertise my business card anywhere. I am not doing an illegal business. I am not saying that someone should die but that God should answer my prayer and prosper me. But death is a must as long as people are giving birth every day.”
Talking about challenges, he recalled an incident in which he was nearly thrown into jail. “It involved a military man and it took the intervention of his mother before I could be released. What happened was that owing to Lagos traffic, I was a bit late to the mortuary. In fact, I had taken the casket to the morgue a day before that day. But I was supposed to be there to decorate it and do some other things by 7 am before the corpse could be lowered into it. But I got there at past 8 am. I was also at the burial.
But they ordered my pallbearers to stop dancing with the corpse, or else they would be shot. Sometimes, we also face spiritual attacks. I personally followed a corpse to Abia State in 2014. But we started having flat tyres here and there as soon as we left. That’s how a journey that was supposed to take us eight hours took 12. That was until a man came and asked the driver to give the dead man some hard drink. As a Christian, I don’t believe in this ritual stuff. But that day, I witnessed one. He put some of the drink in the dead man’s mouth, and spoke to the corpse in the Igbo language, querying why he should disturb the people that wanted to take him home. Then he gave it three hot slaps, turned it upside down and asked us to put it back into the casket. He then asked the driver to move. Until we got to Abia, and back to Lagos, nothing else happened to the car again. I once watched a video where an ‘ambulance’, a Volvo car, carrying a corpse, was driving itself. There was no driver inside. My sister, the more you look the less you see.”
Omolara, who is married and has two girls and one boy, would not mind if any of his children decides to follow his footstep by taking up the business. He said: “You don’t need to advise them to join the business. They are even worrying me that I should introduce them to it. I don’t hide the kind of business I do. In the church, school, home, market, I let people know what I do for a living. I am proud of my business. Many people in Nigeria do not like to talk about death and funeral. But overseas, people prepare for it, even pay for it before they die. That was what happened the other day when Queen Elizabeth died and was buried. She prepared for it. It is only in Africa that we are afraid to prepare for our funeral.”
Cut your suit according to the cloth’s size
“Everybody prays for a successful business, everybody including doctors, lawyers and police officers.” Those were the words of another coffin-maker called Nuru Ahmed. A trained carpenter, he learnt the art of casket-making in 2013 but set up his own business in 2016.
He said: “If you are setting out for the day’s business, you ask God to provide for you to be able to take care of your needs and those of your family. Nobody prays for bad things to happen. What do I ask God when I pray? Well, I don’t pray for a young person to die because I am also young. I have lost my relations, including my father, sisters, and many of my brothers. But I know that, that is how life is. Someone must die one day, old or young. All of us will go when God wants us to go.” A married man, he revealed how he started the casket business which he said runs in the family. “When my grandfather died, my father took over the business. After my father died, I also took over from him. So, the business has been handed down from one member of the family to the other. It’s a lucrative business. Whether you like it or not, dead people must be buried, and their families must buy caskets. The only thing I advised is: buy the one you can afford. Don’t because you loved your sister or husband, become indebted while burying them. There is no credit as far as casket buying is concerned.”
Asked about the challenges he faces, he advised that one should not look at problems but focus one’s attention on how to improve the business. He also said he’s willing to pass knowledge of the craft to his children who he would expect to in turn pass it to their own children, especially boys. He said: “I don’t want the business to die. If everyone runs away from it, who is going to do it?”
But he confessed that his wife wasn’t initially comfortable with his kind of job when he asked for her hand in marriage.
“When I wanted to marry her, she was afraid, saying she was not quite sure whether she would be able to marry someone that sells caskets. We had known each other for about ten years. Before we got married, if she saw me carrying a casket, she would be abusing me, saying I was carrying dead bodies everywhere. But now that we are married, she is no longer afraid,” he recalled.