The mix-bags story of Lagos dumpsite community

Chika Abanobi, Lawrence Enyoghasu

As the deejay-mixed songs blaring from a loudspeaker mounted on a makeshift stand in the small community town situated on the refuse dumpsite changed from Remi Aluko’s juju music to a collabo by Oritsefemi, Wizkid and Tiwa Savage, a black-complexioned young man in faded blue jeans, kinky hairdo, and wearing an ear-ring in the left ear, jumped out from where he was sitting, drinking, discussing and having a good time with some ladies on this Monday morning. He came executing a dexterous, nimble-foot dance step that attracted to him the admiration of people sitting around the arena.

They include a buxom Yoruba woman who was selling assorted small packs of gin and aphrodisiacs. She was smoking what you initially assumed to be a stick of cigarette but which later turned out to be a white wrap of weed. She wore faded stripped pink T-shirt on one-piece print wrapper.

Introduction to pastime of a community

Seated on her right were two young ladies, also holding between their fingers, like the petty-trader woman did, a white wrap of the substance and gladly puffing into the air around them the smoke from it. One of them, fair complexioned, wore low cut and tattoos all over her arms, the other, dark-complexioned, Afro hairdo.

At their far right, you found a young man and a teenage girl in flowered T-shirt, engaged in tete-a-tete while looking at you, quizzically, as if asking what you were doing there. The girls looked like call girls looking for relaxation. They sat on a bench and a plastic chair in a way that formed a semi-circle on the right arm side of the gin-selling woman.

From time to time, the ladies’ eyes would stray from their dancing boyfriend, to where we were seated. We noticed that they were regarding us with a mixture of interest and boredom. The dark complexioned lady made a come-hither wink at me. I temporarily looked away to avoid being enticed. But as the music changed to an unknown artiste, their dancing boyfriend went back to his seat among them.

Welcome to Bola community of Oke-Afa, Isolo, Lagos. Welcome to Oba Osolo International Market. This community is unlike any other community you know in Lagos or elsewhere in that the members live, love, marry, intermarry, and do their businesses atop a dumpsite, far removed from civilization, of nice houses, good tarred roads, paved street, side walk, potable drinking water and public power. But they are ok, they would tell you. Where there is life, there is hope.

The history of Bola

The thriving community which Prince Nurudeen Lawal Arowoye, the Babaloja and Seriki of ram sellers, said occupies about 12 hectares of land space and have residents that comprise men, women, children from various part of Nigeria – Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Efik, living and trading together to eke out a living for themselves, is so hidden atop the refuse dump, that a passersby/visitor coming from the Cele bus-stop end of the Oshodi – Apapa Expressway or the Isolo Express direction of the Mushin – Ikotun Road or from Jakande Estate side of the Ikotun/Ejigbo Road, may not know that such a place exists. 

If you look at it from the ground below, you may likely see one or two structures made of corrugated iron sheets and people defecating or urinating, but a climb up the refuse mountain and a closer look, guided by some boys who live and make their living from such tour, would reveal a panoramic view of life that you never knew existed.

Houses here numbering about 100 to 200 are made up of zinc, seemingly retrieved from discarded ones. With them, the residents are able to raise makeshift structures that can accommodate them and their families. In-between the structures are alleys running from one end of the dumpsite to another. In fact, they crisscross the entire length and breadth of the community. In some outer lays of the structure, you find dirty and discarded rugs used to ‘beautify’ the place. In some others, you find jute bags, disused sacks to supplement whatever is missing in the roofs and walls of the structures. In all, you see rot and decay all around in a way that makes you wonder what the place would look like in rainy season.

As if reading your thought, Prince Arowoye informed that the market used to be dumpsite before their mother, Alhaja Moradeen Agbabiaka, got the approval of then military governor of Lagos, Gen. Buba Marwa, in the 90s to turn it into a market. She named it Oba Osolo International Market. “She owns the market,” he announced. “After her death, one of our sisters took charge and became the Iya Oloja. She did the foundation of this place. After the approval, she brought caterpillar and wrote LAWMA to stop dumping refuse here. The first slaughterhouse where butchers could come and do their business was located here before it was established in other places. The likes of Mushin, Ikotun, Egbe and, Ebute Meta and Surulere and the rest were formerly under this place.”

Many tribes in Nigeria and even from neighbouring countries like Ghana, Togolese, Congo and Sudan, come to do business and to live at Bola, he said. And, ram, clothes, wood, foam, leather, plastic and scrap selling are some of the businesses that thrive here, he added.

Prince Nurudeen Bello, the chairman of the market, while corroborating Prince Arowoye’s view, brought in some elucidation. “During Buba Marwa’s regime, we had only the slaughterhouse,” he informed. “Our mother saw that the refuse was not proper for it, so she bargained with him and got the place. Marwa approved the place because he saw it as a kind of progress for the state. During that time there was no single person that could pass this side or on the main road below there without being robbed. It was full of thieves and robbers but now things have changed.”

He attributed the feat to the security provided by the joint efforts of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and the local vigilance group. “To eradicate such a thing in this area was not easy, it took us long time,” he confessed. “People could not buy and pay for their goods here in those days. But now it is different. The amount spent on security every year cannot be quantified. But we are happy that today we are here talking and chatting.”

An encounter with united Nigeria

One thing you are bound to find fascinating in this little community is the unity that exists among the various tribes that make up the residents. Some Fulani living here also rear cows, which you can see grazing leisurely somewhere below the refuse dump. In fact, Arowoye confirmed that the head of the Hausa community here is a Fulani. But totally absent is the kind of acrimonious relationship and misunderstanding that leads to massacre, from time to time, in places like Benue, Kaduna and Plateau states.

“We have religious elders who preach unity to them,” Bello said. “There is no discrimination here. Nobody calls another by his tribe, like, “that Hausa man” or “that Yoruba man” or “that Igbo man.” It is by name. Although we do have some quarrels and misunderstanding, but it does not take time to be settled.”

Residents like Mrs. Nneka Anyanwu, Sylvester Nwachukwu and Isah Jibo, Seriki Hausa confirmed Bello’s statement. “We see ourselves as one here. I have spent four years here with my husband and three children since we moved from Ajegunle to this place but I have not seen any fight or quarrel as a result of tribe,” she said. Anyanwu who attributed her family’s movement from Ajegunle to the place to spiritual attacks that left a mark on the neck of her daughter said that since she came to live there she’d never had any quarrel with anybody. “I have been having my peace and doing my business and taking to Aswani to sell.” To augment her husband’s income who, she said, is a truck pusher, she makes and sells “hair attachment,” she told us. Although she hears and speaks Yoruba fluently, she insists that she doesn’t even need to speak it “for them (other residents) to understand me. I can communicate with simple pidgin and all will be well.”

Unlike Anyanwu, Mr. Sylvester Nwachukwu, from Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State, doesn’t speak nor understand a word in Yoruba or in Hausa or any other Nigerian language. Yet, he lives and works there with his wife who we found on the day we visited washing and cleaning shoes, from babies’, to men and women’s and other leather products while her husband amends and turn them into brand new ones.

“I had been in Lagos for a time working for one company before I was sacked,” Nwachukwu said. “I have been on this business for two years and I have not have any problem with anybody here. Communication is not a problem because everybody seems to understand one another.”

We wanted to know how they source for goods and products which they resuscitate and sell since they said they no longer dump refuse there, he admitted that while refuse trucks don’t come there anymore, cart and truck pushers regularly bring disused and abandoned goods to them to buy.

“We don’t have problem here,”Jibo, a scrap seller added. “Everybody faces his business here. Anybody coming here has one thing at the back of his mind: to do business. It is a free place to come in and belong, as a family. The person only needs to go through the proper channel.  I have been doing business here since 1991. We marry and bring up our children here. There are many people who have married and many more are yet to do so among our Hausa community. I married here and my children are here. My wife gave birth at Orita hospital and she was taken there because that is where the hospital is. If the hospital is here I bet it some people would not have any business outside.”

The Hausa community members who occupy a large area of the place have a zinc-made large mosque, on the “floor” which were spread praying mats.  Saturday Sun also learnt of a church located on top of the dumpsite and meant to serve the interest of Christians.

Living and falling in love atop dumpsite

We could not talk with Jibo’s wife because of the law that exists among the Hausas, especially the Muslims, that forbids a man from looking at another man’s wife in the face or even talking to her. But Ibrahim Yakubu, a National Diploma student of Lagos State Polytechnic and who acted as one of our guides, confirmed that real love exists among the female and male members of the community. “There is no place that love does not exist, even in hell,” he said. “I was born close to this place and brought up here. I have been here right from childhood and know how things are here. I met my girlfriend, Ajoke, and we are in love because we share the same goal in life but we are not equal in education. I have many of my friends who fell in love here and they still live happily.”

“The impression outsiders have about people who live on dumpsite is not good,” Prince Bello said. “The situation in the country brought some people here. They are here to do genuine business, not to steal. These people have a life; the life they live inside here is better than the ones some people live outside. I am talking about the reasonable ones. Not the bad ones. There is nothing they want that they can’t have here. The gospel according to this place is: ‘don’t think you can’t do better.’ Everyday, we encourage them to behave well, that’s why we have church and mosque. The residents don’t pay house rent but they contribute money to solve common problem.”

A fair complexioned woman,  Nneka, who you discovered, through interaction, to be of Igbo stock, was washing clothes while her two children engaged in a play around her. She wore faded grey-jean trousers. A look at the sole of her feet that she placed on a wooden bench in front of her one-room zinc apartment showed that they were covered with soot from the carbon stains of decaying substances on the dumpsite. A slightly dirty milk colour curtain that hung from the door of the room guaranteed some form of privacy for her and her family.

From where we sat, we could see below us the police traffic wardens directing vehicles at the Oke-Afa road T-junction. From the look on the faces of some of the residents, they are happy dwelling here although some of them said they don’t live there but only come, from time to time, to transact business. But what gives them joy is the feeling of camaraderie that exists among them. While you looked on, a young man and woman walked past to a corner to engage in talks. You looked away as he put his arms around the girl’s waist. A man wearing a native dress and carrying a baby in his arms, quickly passed by them and waved an “E karo” (good morning), to an acquaintance he sighted at distance from there.

Buying and selling

Market here is divided according to areas of specialization: some specialize in the sale of disused plastics, which are weighed and sold according to their scale. Others specialize in the sale of discarded motor parts, electronics, WCs, cartons, shoes, bags/sacks, plastic bottles, etc.

Where we sat down and waiting to be taking round some places by our guides, the smoke coming from the weed being puffed by both the young men and women kept finding its way into our nostrils and making us passive smokers. A girl wearing spiked hairdo came walking by. The music changed first to Adekunle Gold and next to Lil Kesh. At a point, one of us bought two bottles of chilled water from the bosomy petty trader woman and she was grateful for the patronage. The music changed to Phyno and Olamide’s “Ala roro ni e.”

A young man saw Temitope’s camera and became very curious. He questioned what we were up to. From which station, he asked, obviously mistaking the zoom for a TV camera. One of us answered that he found his question very funny. “My question is funny, abi?,” he said a bit menacingly. “I dey ask, from which station?” “Petrol station, mo ti nbo”, Ibrahim answered. “TOTAL or NNPC?,” he wanted to know. Somebody answered TOTAL, another countered with NNPC.

Ignoring us, the young man brought some substance from his pocket poured it on a small piece of white paper he was holding, folded it before lighting it up and after inhaling deeply, puffed the smoke into our faces. Beside us, a lady in blue jeans and yellow tops busied herself with putting some ingredients into a big pot of soup she was making. It sat atop live charcoals. A commercial food vendor, she stirred hard, scooped some into her palm and tasted it, in preparation for the day’s sale. Scattered all over Bola are eateries of various sizes and shapes where residents and traders could go to arm their stomachs with food for a revenge attack whenever hunger struck.

One of the food canteen operators who goes by the name, Iya Ibeji, confided in us that food business is lucrative here. “It has been more than a year I started selling,” she said in Yoruba. “These people here demand the best food. That they work or live here does not mean they eat poor food. We have assorted types of food. We make as much as N20, 000 per day. And, we even go outside to take up catering services when people call on us for events. We have local fish that cost N300 and people here buy.”

A bizarre encounter with angry residents

As we continued to move from place to place either looking for people to interview or a place from where we to take a good shot, curious eyes kept fixed on us. Trust Nigerians with rumour! Very soon, word spread round that one of us is an actor. “I have seen his face before in a film,” someone alleged. One of our guides wanted to know whether that is true. The fellow promptly denied the claim and challenged the accuser to prove it, to say the title of the film and the role he played in the film he was talking about. When he could not, we moved on.

Temitope, our photographer who regretted carrying a big bag that could easily give him away, surreptitiously aimed his camera in a particular direction and did some clicks. Suddenly, an enraged young man in his 20s came running to either beat him up or smash his camera or do both. In fact, he had already grabbed his shirt, and was pulling him towards himself, while demanding for the camera when Abiodun Agbabiaka, one of our guides, simply known as Abe, a trainee boxer with Lagos-based Galaxy Ring, moved in to rescue him by prizing him away from his grips. He followed it up by sternly warning the guy to keep off. Completely intimidated by Abe who eagerly looks forward, one day, to becoming another Anthony Joshua, the Nigerian-British professional boxer and the current world heavyweight champion (“I have not made much success in boxing because I don’t have the connection,” he said), the guy reluctantly let go of Temitope.

“Yes, I saw him take my shots too,” an older fellow wearing shirt and shorts full of dirt and grimes said, with a mixture of grin and anger. “You must delete my photo from that camera.” Another member of our guides descended on him and waved him off. But, all of a sudden, the guy who gave his name as John Osagie from Edo State changed his hostile attitude towards us after, realizing that we are journalists. At that point, though, he couldn’t tell whether we are from the print or electronic, as one of them had earlier assumed.

Smiling, he drew closer to us, and, without prompting, said to us: “I treat bones and I am good. I didn’t go to school to learn it. It has been my family business in Edo State where I come from and I have been doing it here. I have patients who can testify to this. I use herbs. Most of the leaves and roots I use are not here, so I go to Mushin market or travel home to get them. I treat cancer of the bone. I also know how to treat stroke but I can’t do it because I am not married.”

We looked at ourselves and wondered what to make of his claim. On seeing the incredulous look on our faces, one of our guides readily confirmed what he said. “The guy sabi am well, well, no be lie,” he added in Pidgin English. But what is he doing here, one of us managed to ask. Without waiting for anybody to serve as his mouthpiece this time around, he almost snatched the question from his mouth.

“It was when (Raji Babatunde) Fashola (immediate past governor of Lagos State) destroyed Apapa Hostel where I was residing that I moved down to this place. All I had was lost on that day and I could not commit suicide. I had to look for an alternative. I was coming here to smoke but later I saw an opportunity to make money and I took it. I buy bags and mend them. My kind does not stay here and that is why I am working very hard to leave this place. But in all, I thank God that I am still alive.”

Face to face with law enforcement, the community style

At this point, our conversation became interrupted by the pit-pat sound of running feet. We looked on and saw heavily armed men of F-SARS (Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad), Scorpion Division, Lagos, in hot pursuit of some miscreants. As the young men ran, they gave signals to their fellows to start doing the same. Soon, everywhere came alive with sight and sound of running feet. Temitope tried to get a good shot of the scene but the fear of attracting undue attention seriously gnawed at his courage and forced him to give up. He took one shot, looked at it and shook his head: he did not get the kind of photo he hoped for, he sighed, because of the angle from which he took the shot.

All the same, from the food canteen of Iya Ibeji where we sat to escape from the heat of the blazing sun as well as to watch the situation, we were curious to know what the problem was? Why is everybody running? Why are the law enforcement pursuing people? Our guides had no satisfactory answer to give us except to say that SARS usually come there from time to time to conduct raids. “Don’t worry, sha, one of them said, matter-of-factly, with a shrug. “We will settle the problem.”

On our way out, we overheard some of the boys saying that the police had demanded N50, 000 bail for each of the two boys they arrested and took away with them. But the look on their faces, showed that what happened was nothing new: they were used to witnessing such scenes. We learnt that the residents usually contribute money to bail whoever was arrested there by either the police, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) or any other security agency.

Between ‘mortuary’ and ‘mass burial’

As we were being escorted out of the place by our guides who granted us access into the place, and who, at the same time, served as guards to us against some roughnecks who could easily have had us for a dinner, a mock quarrel broke out between two of them over some unresolved issues. “If you say any further rubbish to me, I will do something to you that will make you to choose between mortuary (pointing in the direction of Isolo General Hospital) and mass burial (pointing in the direction of the Oke-Afa Memorial Park), the fellow threatened while angrily fixing his gaze on his offender. That one took a look at him and decided to allow the sleeping dog to lie.

Thinking about what he said, his metaphors came home to roost. The General Hospital, Isolo, reminds one of its mortuary facilities that are said to be always overflowing with dead bodies, some of which are sometimes kept on the bare floor, due to lack of space. To prevent the corpses from being treated with what some may view as indignity, their relatives are forced to part with varying sums of money as bribes to mortuary attendants, to help keep theirs in proper place.

The reference to “mass burial,” points, of course, to the burial park/memorial arcade of the Ikeja bomb blasts of Sunday, January 27, 2002, that claimed over one thousand souls that drowned while trying to make their way to “safety,” through the murky water of the nearby Oke-Afa canal, from the earthshaking din-din sound of the blasts.

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An Igbo boy from Obosi, Anambra State, who gave his name as Shuaibu, (“I am a Muslim,” he insists) appealed to us not to write anything that can tarnish their good image. “Dem say we dey smoke dey drink. Na only dat area you fit say we spoil” he added in Pidgin English. “Odawise, na our daily bread we came here to find.”

As the deejay-mixed songs blaring from a loudspeaker mounted on a makeshift stand in the small community town situated on the refuse dumpsite changed from Remi Aluko’s juju music to a collabo by Oritsefemi, Wizkid and Tiwa Savage, a black-complexioned young man in faded blue jeans, kinky hairdo, and wearing an ear-ring in the left ear, jumped out from where he was sitting, drinking, discussing and having a good time with some ladies on this Monday morning. He came executing a dexterous, nimble-foot dance step that attracted to him the admiration of people sitting around the arena.

They include a buxom Yoruba woman who was selling assorted small packs of gin and aphrodisiacs. She was smoking what you initially assumed to be a stick of cigarette but which later turned out to be a white wrap of weed. She wore faded stripped pink T-shirt on one-piece print wrapper.

Introduction to pastime of a community

Seated on her right were two young ladies, also holding between their fingers, like the petty-trader woman did, a white wrap of the substance and gladly puffing into the air around them the smoke from it. One of them, fair complexioned, wore low cut and tattoos all over her arms, the other, dark-complexioned, Afro hairdo.

At their far right, you found a young man and a teenage girl in flowered T-shirt, engaged in tete-a-tete while looking at you, quizzically, as if asking what you were doing there. The girls looked like call girls looking for relaxation. They sat on a bench and a plastic chair in a way that formed a semi-circle on the right arm side of the gin-selling woman.

From time to time, the ladies’ eyes would stray from their dancing boyfriend, to where we were seated. We noticed that they were regarding us with a mixture of interest and boredom. The dark complexioned lady made a come-hither wink at me. I temporarily looked away to avoid being enticed. But as the music changed to an unknown artiste, their dancing boyfriend went back to his seat among them.

Welcome to Bola community of Oke-Afa, Isolo, Lagos. Welcome to Oba Osolo International Market. This community is unlike any other community you know in Lagos or elsewhere in that the members live, love, marry, intermarry, and do their businesses atop a dumpsite, far removed from civilization, of nice houses, good tarred roads, paved street, side walk, potable drinking water and public power. But they are ok, they would tell you. Where there is life, there is hope.

The history of Bola

The thriving community which Prince Nurudeen Lawal Arowoye, the Babaloja and Seriki of ram sellers, said occupies about 12 hectares of land space and have residents that comprise men, women, children from various part of Nigeria – Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Efik, living and trading together to eke out a living for themselves, is so hidden atop the refuse dump, that a passersby/visitor coming from the Cele bus-stop end of the Oshodi – Apapa Expressway or the Isolo Express direction of the Mushin – Ikotun Road or from Jakande Estate side of the Ikotun/Ejigbo Road, may not know that such a place exists. 

If you look at it from the ground below, you may likely see one or two structures made of corrugated iron sheets and people defecating or urinating, but a climb up the refuse mountain and a closer look, guided by some boys who live and make their living from such tour, would reveal a panoramic view of life that you never knew existed.

Houses here numbering about 100 to 200 are made up of zinc, seemingly retrieved from discarded ones. With them, the residents are able to raise makeshift structures that can accommodate them and their families. In-between the structures are alleys running from one end of the dumpsite to another. In fact, they crisscross the entire length and breadth of the community. In some outer lays of the structure, you find dirty and discarded rugs used to ‘beautify’ the place. In some others, you find jute bags, disused sacks to supplement whatever is missing in the roofs and walls of the structures. In all, you see rot and decay all around in a way that makes you wonder what the place would look like in rainy season.

As if reading your thought, Prince Arowoye informed that the market used to be dumpsite before their mother, Alhaja Moradeen Agbabiaka, got the approval of then military governor of Lagos, Gen. Buba Marwa, in the 90s to turn it into a market. She named it Oba Osolo International Market. “She owns the market,” he announced. “After her death, one of our sisters took charge and became the Iya Oloja. She did the foundation of this place. After the approval, she brought caterpillar and wrote LAWMA to stop dumping refuse here. The first slaughterhouse where butchers could come and do their business was located here before it was established in other places. The likes of Mushin, Ikotun, Egbe and, Ebute Meta and Surulere and the rest were formerly under this place.”

Many tribes in Nigeria and even from neighbouring countries like Ghana, Togolese, Congo and Sudan, come to do business and to live at Bola, he said. And, ram, clothes, wood, foam, leather, plastic and scrap selling are some of the businesses that thrive here, he added.

Prince Nurudeen Bello, the chairman of the market, while corroborating Prince Arowoye’s view, brought in some elucidation. “During Buba Marwa’s regime, we had only the slaughterhouse,” he informed. “Our mother saw that the refuse was not proper for it, so she bargained with him and got the place. Marwa approved the place because he saw it as a kind of progress for the state. During that time there was no single person that could pass this side or on the main road below there without being robbed. It was full of thieves and robbers but now things have changed.”

He attributed the feat to the security provided by the joint efforts of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and the local vigilance group. “To eradicate such a thing in this area was not easy, it took us long time,” he confessed. “People could not buy and pay for their goods here in those days. But now it is different. The amount spent on security every year cannot be quantified. But we are happy that today we are here talking and chatting.”

An encounter with united Nigeria

One thing you are bound to find fascinating in this little community is the unity that exists among the various tribes that make up the residents. Some Fulani living here also rear cows, which you can see grazing leisurely somewhere below the refuse dump. In fact, Arowoye confirmed that the head of the Hausa community here is a Fulani. But totally absent is the kind of acrimonious relationship and misunderstanding that leads to massacre, from time to time, in places like Benue, Kaduna and Plateau states.

“We have religious elders who preach unity to them,” Bello said. “There is no discrimination here. Nobody calls another by his tribe, like, “that Hausa man” or “that Yoruba man” or “that Igbo man.” It is by name. Although we do have some quarrels and misunderstanding, but it does not take time to be settled.”

Residents like Mrs. Nneka Anyanwu, Sylvester Nwachukwu and Isah Jibo, Seriki Hausa confirmed Bello’s statement. “We see ourselves as one here. I have spent four years here with my husband and three children since we moved from Ajegunle to this place but I have not seen any fight or quarrel as a result of tribe,” she said. Anyanwu who attributed her family’s movement from Ajegunle to the place to spiritual attacks that left a mark on the neck of her daughter said that since she came to live there she’d never had any quarrel with anybody. “I have been having my peace and doing my business and taking to Aswani to sell.” To augment her husband’s income who, she said, is a truck pusher, she makes and sells “hair attachment,” she told us. Although she hears and speaks Yoruba fluently, she insists that she doesn’t even need to speak it “for them (other residents) to understand me. I can communicate with simple pidgin and all will be well.”

Unlike Anyanwu, Mr. Sylvester Nwachukwu, from Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State, doesn’t speak nor understand a word in Yoruba or in Hausa or any other Nigerian language. Yet, he lives and works there with his wife who we found on the day we visited washing and cleaning shoes, from babies’, to men and women’s and other leather products while her husband amends and turn them into brand new ones.

“I had been in Lagos for a time working for one company before I was sacked,” Nwachukwu said. “I have been on this business for two years and I have not have any problem with anybody here. Communication is not a problem because everybody seems to understand one another.”

We wanted to know how they source for goods and products which they resuscitate and sell since they said they no longer dump refuse there, he admitted that while refuse trucks don’t come there anymore, cart and truck pushers regularly bring disused and abandoned goods to them to buy.

“We don’t have problem here,”Jibo, a scrap seller added. “Everybody faces his business here. Anybody coming here has one thing at the back of his mind: to do business. It is a free place to come in and belong, as a family. The person only needs to go through the proper channel.  I have been doing business here since 1991. We marry and bring up our children here. There are many people who have married and many more are yet to do so among our Hausa community. I married here and my children are here. My wife gave birth at Orita hospital and she was taken there because that is where the hospital is. If the hospital is here I bet it some people would not have any business outside.”

The Hausa community members who occupy a large area of the place have a zinc-made large mosque, on the “floor” which were spread praying mats.  Saturday Sun also learnt of a church located on top of the dumpsite and meant to serve the interest of Christians.

Living and falling in love atop dumpsite

We could not talk with Jibo’s wife because of the law that exists among the Hausas, especially the Muslims, that forbids a man from looking at another man’s wife in the face or even talking to her. But Ibrahim Yakubu, a National Diploma student of Lagos State Polytechnic and who acted as one of our guides, confirmed that real love exists among the female and male members of the community. “There is no place that love does not exist, even in hell,” he said. “I was born close to this place and brought up here. I have been here right from childhood and know how things are here. I met my girlfriend, Ajoke, and we are in love because we share the same goal in life but we are not equal in education. I have many of my friends who fell in love here and they still live happily.”

“The impression outsiders have about people who live on dumpsite is not good,” Prince Bello said. “The situation in the country brought some people here. They are here to do genuine business, not to steal. These people have a life; the life they live inside here is better than the ones some people live outside. I am talking about the reasonable ones. Not the bad ones. There is nothing they want that they can’t have here. The gospel according to this place is: ‘don’t think you can’t do better.’ Everyday, we encourage them to behave well, that’s why we have church and mosque. The residents don’t pay house rent but they contribute money to solve common problem.”

A fair complexioned woman,  Nneka, who you discovered, through interaction, to be of Igbo stock, was washing clothes while her two children engaged in a play around her. She wore faded grey-jean trousers. A look at the sole of her feet that she placed on a wooden bench in front of her one-room zinc apartment showed that they were covered with soot from the carbon stains of decaying substances on the dumpsite. A slightly dirty milk colour curtain that hung from the door of the room guaranteed some form of privacy for her and her family.

From where we sat, we could see below us the police traffic wardens directing vehicles at the Oke-Afa road T-junction. From the look on the faces of some of the residents, they are happy dwelling here although some of them said they don’t live there but only come, from time to time, to transact business. But what gives them joy is the feeling of camaraderie that exists among them. While you looked on, a young man and woman walked past to a corner to engage in talks. You looked away as he put his arms around the girl’s waist. A man wearing a native dress and carrying a baby in his arms, quickly passed by them and waved an “E karo” (good morning), to an acquaintance he sighted at distance from there.

Buying and selling

Market here is divided according to areas of specialization: some specialize in the sale of disused plastics, which are weighed and sold according to their scale. Others specialize in the sale of discarded motor parts, electronics, WCs, cartons, shoes, bags/sacks, plastic bottles, etc.

Where we sat down and waiting to be taking round some places by our guides, the smoke coming from the weed being puffed by both the young men and women kept finding its way into our nostrils and making us passive smokers. A girl wearing spiked hairdo came walking by. The music changed first to Adekunle Gold and next to Lil Kesh. At a point, one of us bought two bottles of chilled water from the bosomy petty trader woman and she was grateful for the patronage. The music changed to Phyno and Olamide’s “Ala roro ni e.”

A young man saw Temitope’s camera and became very curious. He questioned what we were up to. From which station, he asked, obviously mistaking the zoom for a TV camera. One of us answered that he found his question very funny. “My question is funny, abi?,” he said a bit menacingly. “I dey ask, from which station?” “Petrol station, mo ti nbo”, Ibrahim answered. “TOTAL or NNPC?,” he wanted to know. Somebody answered TOTAL, another countered with NNPC.

Ignoring us, the young man brought some substance from his pocket poured it on a small piece of white paper he was holding, folded it before lighting it up and after inhaling deeply, puffed the smoke into our faces. Beside us, a lady in blue jeans and yellow tops busied herself with putting some ingredients into a big pot of soup she was making. It sat atop live charcoals. A commercial food vendor, she stirred hard, scooped some into her palm and tasted it, in preparation for the day’s sale. Scattered all over Bola are eateries of various sizes and shapes where residents and traders could go to arm their stomachs with food for a revenge attack whenever hunger struck.

One of the food canteen operators who goes by the name, Iya Ibeji, confided in us that food business is lucrative here. “It has been more than a year I started selling,” she said in Yoruba. “These people here demand the best food. That they work or live here does not mean they eat poor food. We have assorted types of food. We make as much as N20, 000 per day. And, we even go outside to take up catering services when people call on us for events. We have local fish that cost N300 and people here buy.”

A bizarre encounter with angry residents

As we continued to move from place to place either looking for people to interview or a place from where we to take a good shot, curious eyes kept fixed on us. Trust Nigerians with rumour! Very soon, word spread round that one of us is an actor. “I have seen his face before in a film,” someone alleged. One of our guides wanted to know whether that is true. The fellow promptly denied the claim and challenged the accuser to prove it, to say the title of the film and the role he played in the film he was talking about. When he could not, we moved on.

Temitope, our photographer who regretted carrying a big bag that could easily give him away, surreptitiously aimed his camera in a particular direction and did some clicks. Suddenly, an enraged young man in his 20s came running to either beat him up or smash his camera or do both. In fact, he had already grabbed his shirt, and was pulling him towards himself, while demanding for the camera when Abiodun Agbabiaka, one of our guides, simply known as Abe, a trainee boxer with Lagos-based Galaxy Ring, moved in to rescue him by prizing him away from his grips. He followed it up by sternly warning the guy to keep off. Completely intimidated by Abe who eagerly looks forward, one day, to becoming another Anthony Joshua, the Nigerian-British professional boxer and the current world heavyweight champion (“I have not made much success in boxing because I don’t have the connection,” he said), the guy reluctantly let go of Temitope.

“Yes, I saw him take my shots too,” an older fellow wearing shirt and shorts full of dirt and grimes said, with a mixture of grin and anger. “You must delete my photo from that camera.” Another member of our guides descended on him and waved him off. But, all of a sudden, the guy who gave his name as John Osagie from Edo State changed his hostile attitude towards us after, realizing that we are journalists. At that point, though, he couldn’t tell whether we are from the print or electronic, as one of them had earlier assumed.

Smiling, he drew closer to us, and, without prompting, said to us: “I treat bones and I am good. I didn’t go to school to learn it. It has been my family business in Edo State where I come from and I have been doing it here. I have patients who can testify to this. I use herbs. Most of the leaves and roots I use are not here, so I go to Mushin market or travel home to get them. I treat cancer of the bone. I also know how to treat stroke but I can’t do it because I am not married.”

We looked at ourselves and wondered what to make of his claim. On seeing the incredulous look on our faces, one of our guides readily confirmed what he said. “The guy sabi am well, well, no be lie,” he added in Pidgin English. But what is he doing here, one of us managed to ask. Without waiting for anybody to serve as his mouthpiece this time around, he almost snatched the question from his mouth.

“It was when (Raji Babatunde) Fashola (immediate past governor of Lagos State) destroyed Apapa Hostel where I was residing that I moved down to this place. All I had was lost on that day and I could not commit suicide. I had to look for an alternative. I was coming here to smoke but later I saw an opportunity to make money and I took it. I buy bags and mend them. My kind does not stay here and that is why I am working very hard to leave this place. But in all, I thank God that I am still alive.”

Face to face with law enforcement, the community style

At this point, our conversation became interrupted by the pit-pat sound of running feet. We looked on and saw heavily armed men of F-SARS (Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad), Scorpion Division, Lagos, in hot pursuit of some miscreants. As the young men ran, they gave signals to their fellows to start doing the same. Soon, everywhere came alive with sight and sound of running feet. Temitope tried to get a good shot of the scene but the fear of attracting undue attention seriously gnawed at his courage and forced him to give up. He took one shot, looked at it and shook his head: he did not get the kind of photo he hoped for, he sighed, because of the angle from which he took the shot.

All the same, from the food canteen of Iya Ibeji where we sat to escape from the heat of the blazing sun as well as to watch the situation, we were curious to know what the problem was? Why is everybody running? Why are the law enforcement pursuing people? Our guides had no satisfactory answer to give us except to say that SARS usually come there from time to time to conduct raids. “Don’t worry, sha, one of them said, matter-of-factly, with a shrug. “We will settle the problem.”

On our way out, we overheard some of the boys saying that the police had demanded N50, 000 bail for each of the two boys they arrested and took away with them. But the look on their faces, showed that what happened was nothing new: they were used to witnessing such scenes. We learnt that the residents usually contribute money to bail whoever was arrested there by either the police, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) or any other security agency.

Between ‘mortuary’ and ‘mass burial’

As we were being escorted out of the place by our guides who granted us access into the place, and who, at the same time, served as guards to us against some roughnecks who could easily have had us for a dinner, a mock quarrel broke out between two of them over some unresolved issues. “If you say any further rubbish to me, I will do something to you that will make you to choose between mortuary (pointing in the direction of Isolo General Hospital) and mass burial (pointing in the direction of the Oke-Afa Memorial Park), the fellow threatened while angrily fixing his gaze on his offender. That one took a look at him and decided to allow the sleeping dog to lie.

Thinking about what he said, his metaphors came home to roost. The General Hospital, Isolo, reminds one of its mortuary facilities that are said to be always overflowing with dead bodies, some of which are sometimes kept on the bare floor, due to lack of space. To prevent the corpses from being treated with what some may view as indignity, their relatives are forced to part with varying sums of money as bribes to mortuary attendants, to help keep theirs in proper place.

The reference to “mass burial,” points, of course, to the burial park/memorial arcade of the Ikeja bomb blasts of Sunday, January 27, 2002, that claimed over one thousand souls that drowned while trying to make their way to “safety,” through the murky water of the nearby Oke-Afa canal, from the earthshaking din-din sound of the blasts.

An Igbo boy from Obosi, Anambra State, who gave his name as Shuaibu, (“I am a Muslim,” he insists) appealed to us not to write anything that can tarnish their good image. “Dem say we dey smoke dey drink. Na only dat area you fit say we spoil” he added in Pidgin English. “Odawise, na our daily bread we came here to find.”