AYOMIDE OWONIBI-ODEKANYIN, BOLA BADMUS and AKIN ADEWAKUN engage the growing industry of free “ushering”.
They offer their ushering services for free. In fact, party and event organisers don’t even have to call for their free offer of ushering guests into gatherings, where they host the invited guests, before they make themselves available. They don’t even compel anyone to pay for their services. But they still go home smiling. Welcome to the world of free event ushers who are mostly not welcomed at events, but now an integral part of party colours in Lagos.
They are ubiquitous; a common spectacle at ceremonies and events, especially in the South Western part of Nigeria, but particularly a permanent feature of Lagos social circle, regardless of the size and status of those in attendance. Their target is always guests at events. They usher in a guest with very warm greetings and smiles and make for a ribbon, which they place on the chests of such visitors, for a fee. Interestingly, it is fast becoming an industry on its own with those involved, smiling to the bank.
At nearly all the venues where parties are thrown to celebrate one thing or the other, such as wedding, birthday, house-warming, thanksgiving and book launch, among others, one cannot but find this set of people. They, usually, would be your first contact as you make your way to enter and be part of the ceremony.
They are always those women, well dressed as well, who would approach to beg that you allow them to put a tag, usually made from ribbons, on your chest.
Ordinarily to a non- discerning person or anyone just coming in contact with them, they would appear to be part of the ceremony and, therefore, considered to be relations of those who are doing the celebration and are, therefore, angling to do that as a form of honour.
They would welcome you warmly and you will always want to acknowledge their greetings. You would think the tag is for free, but not so. As they are doing it, they would be passing the message that you can in good conscience, as a way of appreciating their ‘homeliness’, drop some money for them.
It is a practice that has become entrenched, but only among women, yet it is hard to tell when the practice started and who actually started it. But not a few would agree that they had, in the past, doled out money to those people gleefully. That was when they were yet to come to their senses that what the women and ladies were engaging in is pure corporate begging.
Remi, who spoke with Weekend Lagos, said the women, who live on experience and information to know where parties would be holding, are motivated by hunger and poverty to be involved in such trade to earn the little party goers are ready to offer them.
Remi said he had always offered something, especially any time he has smaller denomination. He said this is because they appeal to one’s emotion, adding that the prayer they would begin to offer would not allow them to be ignored, except one’s mind was already hardened.
“I have been giving them money like N100 or so, but if it is higher denomination I have on me I don’t give,” he said, describing the act as sheer corporate begging. “What they do is corporate begging; there is little difference between them and real beggars”, he declared.
Just like Remi, another respondent, who simply identified himself as Mr Tunde, attested to the fact that the affected women in the trade are not known to the party organisers. Mr Tunde, who said he had never patronised those ‘tag women’ at any function as he had always shunned them, could easily recall that they still found their way to venues of his son and daughter’s weddings, at different times.
“I don’t patronise them at all; I don’t know who invited them because I didn’t,” Mr Tunde said, even as he also opined that survival strategies could have been what led the women into engaging in such act.
Also speaking, Mr Tunji Adebire, an operator of a relaxation and rentals centre located in Ogudu, pointed out that most of the women engaged in the act because of the recession and lack of jobs.
“Some of these women do menial jobs during the week and also engage in tag practice just to make ends meets. We let them stay here because generally they have not constituted any nuisance so far,” he added.
Mrs Adebanjo Janet, a very prominent face at an event centre, very close to Awolowo Way in Ikeja, has been in this ‘business’ for the past five years. She decorates guests at events, especially wedding ceremonies with a ribbon and makes her money. After hanging the ribbon on the guest’s chest, she asks the guests for a token, an amount that is always at the guest’s discretion. And why she will not be too disposed to divulge her average take-home pay at the end of the day, she however believes that the income from the venture depends on how convincing and personable the person playing that role is to the guests.
Curiously, it is a trade that seems to be enjoying more converts by the day. Since Mrs Janet started five years ago, she could reel out the names of many others that are making brisk business doing this at events. According to her, the practitioners do not have to know the celebrants before ‘invading’ the venue.
“What we do is to have done our investigation to know whether an event is taking place and if such event is worth attending. And we are gradually being seen as part of an event. Even the celebrants believe we make their events tick, which I think accounts for the patronage and recognition we enjoy of late,” argued Janet, whose real profession is fashion-designing.
But, Mrs Owolabi Aanu, an event planner, sees the rise in the number of those that throng event venues for this purpose as a direct fall-out of the poor state of the nation’s economy.
“A lot of people are developing multiple streams of income and these people are no exception. It is their own survival strategy, even though sometimes they could be irritants at events, especially the way some of them comport themselves before these guests,” she argued.
She however agrees that they are fast becoming a part and parcel of any event. “Some are even very innovative about it. They hire one of two drummers with them to give the guests they are targeting some sense of importance before tagging him or her with the ribbon. All these will at the end of the day enhance the event, if well packaged,” stated the event planner.
Mrs Owolabi however would not see them as constituting any threat to her job as an event planner since they operate on the ‘fringes’.
Though it is almost an exclusive preserve of women, Weekend Lagos gathered that a sprinkle of men is beginning to invade the industry. A party ‘tagger’ revealed that “shame is not making men to trouble us here by joining in pinning ribbons on guests. You know many guests can be very rude and while we can take the insult, men may not be able to take it. But young boys are joining us and they always have their older sisters around who are our colleagues”.
On whether the free ushers have an association, she answered in the negative, disclosing that they however have groups who share information together and go to many events together.
“It is wrong to see us as beggars. We put money into making these ribbons, no matter how small and, at times, we run on a loss when we don’t get to make enough money to cover our expenses. We transport ourselves and bring in some expertise in fixing the ribbons to make them look nice. We are not beggars or nuisance,” she concluded.
It however remains to be seen how far the industry can go to sustain itself.
and then