For about eight years, Mansour Shafa, popularly called MD Shafa, crisscrossed the twin towns of Warri and Effurun in Warri South and Uvwie local government areas of Delta State, pushing his wheelbarrow serving as a stall for his goods—coconuts, tiger nuts and dates.
Unlike some months back, a single, sizable coconut now goes for N1,000 while a piece of tiny slices of the commodity being hawked on the wheelbarrow goes for N200 and N100, respectively.
Shafar left his parents, siblings, wife and children in Katsina State to seek greener pastures at a time bandits were running riot in Katsina in 2017.
“My name is MD Shafar from Katsina State. My parents are in Katsina State.
“I am 26 years old and I’m the first child of my parents. We are six in number—three girls and three boys. My siblings are in Zamfara State.
“I came to Warri in 2017 and I have been here for the past eight years. I was around 16 when I left Katsina to come hustle here in Delta State,” he affirmed.
Having been in the oil-rich city of Warri, what’s his take about the people and the place? “My view about Warri is that it’s a good place. The people are good people. They don’t stop people from doing their businesses like they do in Lagos. In Lagos, they harass traders like us a lot, but it’s not like that here.
“To hustle in Lagos is a problem but here, nobody is disturbing anybody. If anybody wants to disturb us, someone else will stand up for you, so I like Warri people.
“We can’t really say that there is no money here. The thing is if you don’t have, you don’t have and if you have, you have. People package a lot here, so you won’t know who has money and who doesn’t.”
On the current state of the economy among petty traders like him, Shafa, who said his village name is KKY, business is drab and not profitable.
“My business is booming but not like before. People are crying that there is suffering and it’s not peculiar to one state alone but it’s all over the country.
“People are crying about the prices of things as a result of what Tinubu caused. The reason the prices of things, ranging from transportation, foodstuffs and every other thing in the country have skyrocketed, is basically the removal of fuel subsidy.
“I live at Hausa Quarters, Warri. I share a room with about 15 people. We don’t sleep in the room, when it is dusk, we sleep in people’s shops. Even though we sleep outside, we are safe and we feel safe because there are vigilante people guarding the area.
“Though I didn’t go to school, I can read a little bit. I couldn’t go to school because of lack of money and insecurity as a result of kidnappers and bandits in Katsina. It is not safe over there at all. Someone can shoot you over a disagreement of N1,000.
“I lived in Abuja for two years before I came here. I stayed with my family but had to leave them when they moved back to Katsina State.
“I wake up around 8:00a.m and move from market to market to sell my wares every day.
Shafa wasn’t too certain on his choice of future career peradventure help comes his way. “There are so many businesses I will like to do but I can’t because of lack of money. If anyone wants to help me, I will request a tricycle that I can use commercially. After gathering enough money from that, I will like to open a shop and continue what I’m selling now.
“If the person offers to train me in school, I will like it. If I can have food to eat without thinking of all the bills that come with adulthood, I will like to be in school. None of my siblings went to school. It has just been hustling for all of us.
“If I see Tinubu now, I will tell him to keep to his promise to make Nigerians live comfortably. To make life easy for people like me, to make people like me go to school and have something doing when they leave school.
“He should make an effort to reduce the rate of crimes, especially stealing. Most of the people stealing, today, are not doing it because they want to, but because they have no choice and they have no jobs. Hunger is what is pushing them into crime.”
Asked if he’s still single at 26, knowing full that younger folks of his stock already have wives and kids, Shafa would not be swayed into further burden as he retorted:
“I don’t have a girlfriend. I am a Muslim. I don’t have money for a woman yet. Where I come from, when you have a woman, you are responsible for her total upkeep because she must stay indoors while I go hustling. So, I want to be ready to bear that burden and to take good care of my wife when the time comes,” he affirmed.
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