Come to Nyanya tipper garage: Abuja’s Soddom and Gomorrah
From GODWIN TSA, Abuja
Monday, September 7, 2009


•Food restaurant
Photo: Sun News Publishing
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A cacophony of noise and heavy human traffic welcomes one to Nyanya Tipper Garage, a growing ghetto at the Nyanya axis of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. From mini commercial activities to the most dreaded and bizarre human transactions, the bustling community is wrapped in an underbelly of an evil seed.

Deprived of the beautiful architectural edifice and infrastructural development in the city centre, the ghetto, also known as Angwan-Hausawa, still remains a noticeable feature for both petty businessmen and fun seekers.

From the little Mosque tucked at the main entrance, overlooking the Nyanya-Keffi road to the muddy paths and rusty structures with a cluster of Churches, at the tail end, the area is alive! Twenty-four hours.
Enclosed by different worship centres, its notoriety in immoral lifestyle is unparalleled despite the singsong of preachers against such indulgence.
Densely populated by artisans, thugs and jobless youths, the area is notorious for high-wired prostitution and homosexual activities.

Local food joints, mini kiosk dotted the sneaky pathways that linked into the cluster of shafts used as residential houses by artisans and women of easy virtues.
At these local food joints, flies and filth compete vigorously with customers as they perched around indiscriminately. Nearly 95 percent of the houses and shafts lack toilet facilities. This compels residents including women and children to pass excreta in any available space not caring about privacy. But the brave ones amongst them run to uncompleted buildings to answer the call of nature.

After the rains, pools of water usually scatter everywhere, serving as fertile breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Residents of this ghetto, suffer regularly from malaria attacks. Also the area lacks functional health centre to tackle the numerous health problems of the less privileged people. Beside the fear of contagious diseases, the stench that oozes from the collection of waters is everything but nauseating.
But the most dreaded problem in the area is not malaria fever or typhoid. It is the activities of “bad guys” who sell hard drugs in the area in broad daylight. They are dangerous and deadly! This reporter was warned.

Daily Sun observed that these drugs are concealed in folded cardboard paper as a decoy and passed over to potential buyers after a fee has been paid.
Sex life in this ghetto is not restricted to sex, age or a particular time of the day. The large number of women and teenagers, who hawk around calm down people with high libido at a ridiculous fee.
These women, predominately from the Northern part of the country are seen sitting in front of their make-shift accommodation constructed with rusty corrugated iron sheets. Some work as food vendors. During one of the visits to the area, this reporter saw a man and woman locked in each other’s arm in ecstasy as they murmured in uncoordinated voices. At a distance, another couple was seen entangled in the stomach of a 911 truck that was parked opposite a shaft.

While the reporter stood stiff, surprised at the brazen acts, a man with kolanut-coated teeth, intuitively murmured in Hausa language thus: “Mallam, mai ka tsaya kalo haka, kai sabo zuwa ne? (Meaning: Why do you stand gazing at them, are you a visitor here?)
Dressed in a stained over flowing caftan that exhibited a strained relationship with water, the man, whose name was later identified as Yusuf, a popular mai-shai (tea seller) at the area, told Daily Sun that it was part of life that makes Angwan-Hausawa a lively place.

He explained that at the ghetto, anything goes and people are expected to mind their businesses. Corroborating this position, a lanky but lively Usman, a cobbler of many years standing said life at Angwan Hausawa is a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly as anything goes. “If you want woman, you get am for here, anything fa,” he quipped.
The extreme of the suburb is used as an arena for entertainment where drama and dance competitions are performed by Muslim youths. Here, empty sacks, which are cut into pieces, are joined together to cover the arena.

Admission fee into the arena is N50. Long wooden seats are erected inside the arena as sitting arrangement for spectators.
Inside the arena, it is music, dance and drama galore. It is an entertainment joint for the rich and the poor. No discrimination here. While expensive cars feel the presence of the rich in the society, motorcycles (Okada) on the other hand, are the trademark of the less privileged ones.
The dance competition is usually between a girl and a boy at the centre of the arena to the admiration of the spectators. Hausa disco music is played to a tempo as the dancers wangle their bodies to the rhythm. At the end of the competition, winners are announced by a team of judges who usually take their seats at the far corner of the stage.

Usually, participants are identified by their guy names such as “Lady B”, Tu Face, African Michael Jackson etc.” It is usually a nightlong affair.
Pickpockets and allied crimes are common features that keep spectators on their toes. Cigarette smokes in tiny ropes, roll into the sky and descend in a wave-like movement. They finally curl on the faces of people.
Beside these, disagreements that usually end in scuffles and activities of some urchins are also noticeable at the dance arena.
All these features and many more are what make Nyanya Tipper Garage, another Sodom and Gomorra

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