good day fellow nairalanders, am sure 90% of you people are aware of these particular set of people I and my close friend call NFA meaning no future ambition. in English we call them touts, in Yoruba they are called agberos .
these people are illiterates, ignorants, aggressive and a great deal of a nuisance in the society. and they are more of a menace in Lagos where I reside , let me tell you of my experience with a couple of them about 2 months ago.
I was sent to the market to get a few things for cooking , I am went to bariga market, now bariga market is though not the worst market with traffic jam and sellers choking up the road with their products/wares. I happened to be behind 3 people on the road side trying to get away between a parked vehicle (imagine on a road o) and the slowly moving traffic , then suddenly a tyre brushed my ankle, I looked back at the person that hit me and saw he was an okada man with a passenger, I was expecting him to apologies and move on but he threatened to beat me , I got pissed and berated him for his fault he then hit me by the neck with his back hand, I was shocked . on top of it all his passenger alighted and wanted to beat me up if not for the intervention of the marketers around begging them on my behalf (av suffered ) and telling me to move on, that those 2 are atberos and they don't care who they beat up whether old or young, men or women they will get away with it and even the police can't do anything as the agberos owned them. I did not know when I started crying, I never knew it will get to me.
now I wonder why no one is talking about removing these touts from the road, they have too much power over the police its not right, they collect money from commercial drivers, both taxi and danfo and including maruwa keke , for what ? is it for the roads which many are still bad? is it for protection as many people are still dying on the roads, or is it for organizing bus stops as there are still disorganized, disastrous parking and boarding spaces , check obalende and see how bad the drivers move in the evening. further more I heard these touts are working for the government, if Its so, I don't think there will be peace.