Ripples persist over union for bus conductors •We will meet soon on their fate –NURTW

OLALEKAN OLABULO followed the sequence of events leading to the coming of a new day in bus conducting in Lagos.
Bus conductors are supposed to be drivers in training but they now have a union in Lagos almost rivalling the ones of their bosses. They call it Bus Conductors Association of Nigeria (BCAN). The emergence of the union has been generating ripples in that state. Indeed, right from the formative stage, opposition to it came from the two drivers’ unions, the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN).

NURTW, through its chairman, Alhaji Tajudeen Agbede, had queried the rationale for the formation of the association when, by his own estimation, an average conductor is a driver in training, adding that since no one is, in reality, ready to take conducting vocation as a permanent job, the association would be needless.

Other issues raised by those opposed to the coming of the association include the problem that may arise from the payment of the proposed daily due of N100, those leading the association not being conductors themselves and the presumed proliferation of transport associations in the state.

Saturday Tribune learnt that when the association initially approached the state Ministry of Transport for registration, the leaders were referred to Agbede with the state government reportedly holding that only two transport unions were allowed in the state. The leaders were said to have been advised to operate under the umbrella of NURTW.

With NURTW seeing them as trainee drivers, its leadership under Agbede turned down the “autonomy” being sought by the conductors, telling them instead to wait until they become full-fledged drivers and simply join the NURTW.

A source in NURTW told Saturday Tribune that “the association is needless. Is there anyone who wants to be a conductor for life? After about a year of working as conductors and practicing how to move vehicles, they become expert drivers and become union members. Some politicians are behind them. It is all politics. The association won’t go anywhere. Who is going to be paying the daily due? Is it the driver or the conductor? From where, the little money given to the conductor by the driver? They have been at it for some time without getting anything done. I don’t think they will also get anything done in March.”

Despite the initial setback on registration, the conductors’ union eventually got registered by the state Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Cooperatives, drawing the battle line with the drivers.

However, there appears to have been a softening of stance from the NURTW. Agbede told Saturday Tribune on Thursday that the conductors’ union would now be critically examined.

“They (conductors) have been clamouring to have a union since the days of former Commissioner for Transport, Kayode Opeifa. At a time, we opposed it and at a time we wanted to critically look at what they want to do. A meeting will be held to discuss their issue,” Agbede said. He did not give a definite date for the proposed meeting.

Uniform for conductors

Starting from the first week of March, bus conducting business in Lagos will wear a new look. The practitioners are expected to commence the mandatory wearing of operational uniforms with badges and tag numbers. Although it is going to be a nationwide exercise, as sanctioned by the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, Lagos State had been chosen for the pilot project and there is excitement in the air with all stakeholders waiting for the promised rebranding.

During the launch of the official uniforms for the state chapter of BCAN on August 2, 2017 at Sheraton Hotels, Amaechi told the members: “You have to change the perception of the people; you have to create a positive impression about yourself and make yourself accessible.”

Politics of BCAN

The leadership of the association seems to have taken the words of the minister to heart and has been forging ahead with the rebranding agenda, despite undisguised opposition from both the NURTW and the RTEAN.

When the launch took place last year, the commencement date for the official uniforms was fixed for January 1, 2018. The skeptics, particularly the drivers who alleged that the association was being put together and manipulated for political reasons, were proved right when the new year began without the conductors in the state coming out in the expected aso ebi.

But the national president, Mr Israel Adeshola and his team are undaunted. In a recent media chat, Adeshola said the new date is March 1, adding that over 3,000 bona fide members of the association had secured the final nod of the state government to commence the rebranding project.

According to him, “we are in collaboration with the Lagos State government on the issue of badges and uniforms for commercial conductors, which was finalised on Monday (penultimate week). This is because we don’t want to start without government’s approval. So, by first week of March, we will roll the project out.”

He went further to list the benefits of the controversial project to include enforcement of decorum, ensuring safety of duly registered members and members of the public as well as getting vital information about the conductors to the public for identification sake when any of them is involved in a crime.

Conductors’ lifestyles

Bus conducting in Nigeria, especially in Lagos, is one source of living that often attracts repugnance from the average passenger of any commercial vehicle. Bus conductors are looked down on and generally seen as irresponsible and unserious. This is so because of their dishevelled appearance most of the time. Their conduct also usually attracts condemnation from nearly everyone. They are generally seen as vagabonds.

Graduate conductors

It is interesting to note, however, that bus conducting has become a ready-made source of living for the unemployed in the society. A bus conductor of over six years, who simply identified himself as Elejire, told Saturday Tribune that, “People think that bus conductors are hoodlums. What they don’t know is that many unemployed graduates and people who lost their jobs also conduct in buses. I have seen many responsible and educated people conducting in buses. The major differences between educated and illiterate bus conductors are work schedule, appearance and communication skill. Most educated bus conductors don’t work from morning till night unlike the uneducated ones. Educated bus conductors work early in the morning and late in the evening just to make a living. Most educated conductors also dress differently from the illiterate ones.

“You don’t have to dress formally to conduct in buses because of the condition of the roads and our interaction with transport union members and security operatives, but educated bus conductors still dress modestly unlike our boys. Your communication with some of the educated bus conductors will also help in differentiating between a refined educated bus conductor and a crude, illiterate one. The educated ones speak respectably in most cases but the crude ones use vulgar language. Most of the educated ones don’t jump down from the bus at every slight opportunity but the illiterate ones do.”

Ready-made source of income

Azeez Taiwo, popularly known as Olowolayemo at the Agege motor park, has been a bus conductor for almost five years now. He trained as a tailor but dumped the work for bus conducting. He told Saturday Tribune that “I was a tailor but had to start conducting in buses when I could not meet the needs of my family. I make at least N5,000 every day, depending on how much we make. I was not making as much as this when I was into tailoring. My joy in this job is that I make a lot of money any day I work. Some conductors here in Lagos make as much as N9,000 in one day.”

AZ, another conductor, said, “Bus conducting is one job you can just go to any major car park and make money as long as you are not lazy. There is money conducting in buses. Transportation is a big business in Lagos. Conductors can make up to N10,000. Many of us are breadwinners in our different homes. I have my wife and children and I take good care of them.

Challenges

Baba Osupa, a conductor working with a driver plying the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, said bus conducting was not without challenges. He said, “We have many problems but we still make our money daily. There are days when you encounter ill-mannered passengers and you feel like quitting the job. Some passengers can make life unbearable for you at the slightest provocation. They transfer the aggression they have carried from home to you.”

Olowolayemo, on his own part, said apart from bad-tempered passengers, conductors face the challenge of bad vehicles. According to him, “at times, you want to work to get something to take home and the vehicle becomes something else. You may spend the whole day fixing one problem or another and that can be very discouraging.”

Saturday Tribune also gathered that extortion from law enforcement officers and officials of transport union also poses a serious challenge to the operations of bus conductors in the state. “When you look at what we give to the personnel of police, LASTMA, VIO and others, you can imagine what we lose on a daily basis. We are also constrained to give different levies to transport union members,” a bus conductor, who pleaded for anonymity, said.

Short-changing passengers

“Most conductors short-change passengers. I do it, too, sometimes but it is usually caused by passengers. Let me give you an instance. There was a day I carried a lady from Mowe to Agege. The fare then was N200. That was what I told all the passengers but this lady begged me to allow her to pay N150 as that was all the money she had on her. I pitied her and let her in. I could not collect her money when I was collecting from other passengers because I didn’t want them to know how much she would pay. In the course of the journey, I forgot to collect the money from her and when we got to Agege, she got off and went away without paying. I got mad anytime I remembered that incident throughout that day. Because of that experience, I was ready to go away with passengers’ balance. Apart from that, some passengers deliberately will not pay. When you ask them for money, they will tell you to wait and after some time, you forget and they go away with the money. It is a matter of who is faster,” Olowolayemo said.

Lovefest?

It is a general opinion that bus conductors hardly return home and that they patronise brothels. Many of the conductors confirmed this but pointed out that not all conductors are wayward. Elejire said, “It is true that conductors patronise prostitutes but that is, still, better than indulging in rape and other sexual crimes. What actually happens is that most conductors are comfortable with prostitutes and some of us sleep in brothels.”

However, Olowolayemo said, “I don’t patronise prostitutes; I have a wife. A lot of our people do patronise them. Many of us don’t stay at a particular place for long. They move from one place to another, depending on their routes. With this, they find it difficult to maintain relations with their girlfriends. The only available way to get sexual pleasure is to sleep with prostitutes.”

On why they sleep in vehicles and other available open spaces, Olowolayemo claimed that it was a strategy to keep up with duty. “Most times, if you don’t sleep very close to where you park your vehicles, you may not be able to keep up with the driver in the morning. What most conductors do is to look for a place to sleep in the location where they park their vehicles.” He noted, however, that peer influence also forced many conductors to sleep in the open, saying “many of them want to stick with their friends just to smoke and to indulge in other anti-social behaviours.”

Growing influence

Elejire, while speaking on what has changed in the world of bus conducting in the last few years, said, “Conductors are now as powerful as the drivers. Some years back, it used to be the sole decision of the drivers to give conductors any amount at the end of the day’s work but now things have changed. Some conductors now insist on a 50–50 sharing formula after necessary deductions have been made. In the past, a conductor might have to wash the vehicle after the day’s work before he would be paid but now drivers take vehicles to the car wash.

AZ added: “Drivers back then were like demigods. You begged them before they allowed you to work but things are not like that anymore. There was a time I joined in thrift contributions with my driver. He refused to pay me when it was my turn to collect and when I became insistent, he threatened not to allow me work the next day. He eventually gave me my money in bits.

‘Reforms good but…’

On the coming daily reforms, Kazeem, 26, a native of Ayetoro in Ogun State who has been in the business for over five years, would not lose sleep over the new policy. He believes that such would go a long way in sanitising the sector, since it would afford the government the opportunity of having a dossier on every conductor in the state. He, however, queried the daily payment. “I think doing it annually would have been best. For instance, it is far more convenient since it saves the two parties, the conductor and the government, a lot of hassles. We all see the fights and quarrels that always accompany payment of levies in parks and bus stops and one would not want a policy that would worsen the situation,” the father of three, who plies the Iyana Ipaja-Oshodi route in the metropolis, argued.

Passengers’ experiences

A passenger who identified herself simply as Mrs Owoeye, speaking with Saturday Tribune on her experiences with conductors, said, “There are a few pleasant ones among them. The majority of them are rude and uncultured. Those few pleasant ones are a delight to travel with. They crack jokes for the duration of the journey. They show courtesy in their relationship with passengers but the uncultured ones can mar one’s day. I have had many nasty experiences with bus conductors. Do I say the one that deliberately made me to forget my change (balance) or the one that insulted me throughout the journey? On that particular day, I had tried to play the role of the Good Samaritan and I regretted it. The conductor was having a fierce argument with a schoolboy whose fare was incomplete. Apart from forcing me to complete the student’s fare, the conductor insulted me until I disembarked from the bus and the few passengers that dared to caution him also got a dose of his indecency. In fact, I regretted not stopping the bus to join another one to my destination.”

Another passenger, Wasiu Akinola, has this to say: “I have had interactions with bus conductors on many occasions and I can tell you that they are human beings like us. Some of them are lovely, while some of them are crude and uncouth. Many drivers cannot even control some of their conductors. You can imagine a situation where a driver persistently warned his conductor not to hang by the tail board of the vehicle because of the law enforcement officers. The driver insisted that his conductor must reserve a seat for himself and sit but the conductor turned a deaf ear to his plea until the vehicle was impounded by LASTMA officials. I had another experience where the vehicle broke down not too far from where we boarded it and instead of the conductor to refund our money, he absconded even to the surprise of his driver who suffered a serious assault from the angry passengers.”

He, however, posited that “they are like every other human being. There are some people you travel with and you regret that day for long and there are some people you will be happy to travel with. People have different characters. It is just that many of the bus conductors lack proper home training and people use that to judge them in general.”

Conductors’ uniform

Many of the conductors commended the move to introduce uniform among them but claimed that the cost of the uniform is expensive. The conductors also said that the responsibility of buying the uniform may lie with the bus owners and the drivers.

Collins, a bus conductor, said, “It is a good thing for conductors to wear uniforms. It will look attractive but the cost is too much for an average conductor. That is more than what some of us take home every day. Many of us cannot afford to pay such money, especially when we are not sure of the benefit of the uniform.

“I think, for starters, the government can give these uniforms to conductors for free and those who need new ones can buy it at designated places in all the local governments. Before you know it, they will tell us to come and be buying uniform in Alausa.”

Another conductor, who identified himself simply as Sulaimon, said, “It will be fine to wear uniform and it may not work. Many times, you need dirty clothes to conduct in buses. The roads are dusty and in the rainy season, the roads are muddy. Conductors do dirty work. They don’t just sit in the vehicle and collect money. They do a lot of running around. Almost all the conductors don’t work full day. Different drivers and conductors use a particular vehicle in a day and I don’t see all of them buying the uniform. The owner or the driver may buy the uniform and give to their conductors. A conductor cannot buy a N3,000 uniform.”