₦airaland Forum

When a Driver Kills His Employer: Socio-Economic Implications of Unemployment in Nigeria

By: Deji Yesufu

I was visiting a friend in Lagos recently. The plan was for me to meet up with him at home. The estate where he lives has security guards who would usually conduct light searches on persons entering the Estate. But that day, things were different. The security men at the gate demanded that I get my host to call them and ascertain that I am indeed a visitor. After I had gained entry, my friend sent me a text: there was a murder in the estate a few weeks back. A driver had killed his boss and stolen his car. I did a quick search online for this story, and it revealed that the name of the victim was Kola Adun, a middle-aged man who lived alone in his house in the estate, while his wife and children lived abroad. The driver and murderer, Ayomide Oluwadamilare, had been alone with his boss one faithful day in June 2025, when he had suddenly descended on his boss and stabbed him to death in his room. He then acquired the keys to the man’s Toyota Camry vehicle and drove it out. He shut the dead man inside the house, shut the gate, and fled. Weeks later, he approached a car dealer in Ikorodu, who immediately suspected that the vehicle was stolen. It was the car dealer who alerted the police, who then arrested the thief and murderer. Ayomide confessed to the crime of killing his boss and led the police to the house. By this time, neighbors had been complaining of a foul smell enveloping the area. The police broke into the house to meet the decaying corpse of Wale Adun.

Society reacts to crime in different ways. The estate, where Adun lived, has now beefed-up security. Other people, particularly those employing house-helps and drivers, will begin to make efforts to ensure that the histories of their employees are well known. My friend said that the same driver who killed Adun, had left the same job some months back. He then returned to work and carried out the dastardly act. My friend suggested that perhaps it is better never to take back an employee who had once deserted you. The solutions to such actions will continue until we remember that our society is not the first society that occupied planet Earth. Nigerian cities are not the first cities to exist in our world. Crimes are not peculiar to Nigeria. The wickedness of men’s hearts is not unique to Nigerians alone. Disloyalty, hate, and murder is not a unique Nigerian preserve. These issues have long existed, and many theories have been propounded to deal with them. I hope to share just one of them in this article. Some of my readers are getting tired of my often-quoting Obafemi Awolowo. Well, until my reading list moves to another person’s work and life, you will have to bear with me for now.

When Awolowo was sent to prison in 1963, he was determined to make the best use of his ten-year prison term. He decided to write three books: “Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution”, “The People’s Republic of Nigeria”, and “The Strategy and Tactics of the People’s Republic of Nigeria”. In the last book just mentioned, Obafemi Awolowo suggested a few things that our nation can do to achieve its aims and goals of making this country a prosperous and progressive nation. He listed 15 strategies for achieving this. The first on that list was “Full and Gainful Employment” for every Nigerian. The sage argued in that book that it is the duty of Nigerian governments at all levels to ensure that every Nigerian who is fit and able to work has a job to do. He also argued that the government must ensure that there is a minimum wage that all employers of labor adhere to in the country. He said that the only way there can be peace and harmony in a kennel is if six bones are available for the six dogs in that kennel. If four bones are provided for six dogs, there will not be peace and quiet in that space. The socialists add to Awolowo’s point by saying that when the poor have nothing else to eat, they will eat the rich. A society is breeding crime when they do not allow its fit and able young men to be gainfully employed.

A few years ago, I wrote an article where I decried the modern slave camps that bestride the Oluyole industrial estate in Ibadan. I brought it to the attention of the state government that many of the Lebanese owners of these companies are not paying attention to modern employment laws. Nigerians are employed in these companies as contract workers, without any health securities or benefits, and they are made to work from 8 am to 4pm, standing on their feet, with only as much as a break of half an hour. Those whose health fail, are summarily sacked and quickly replaced from the pool of an army of unemployed youths that bestride the Nigerian landscape. I was reliably informed that my article got to the table of the Oyo State Governor. Still, nothing has been done to improve the situation of workers in that section of Ibadan. Contract workers are still being used in Nigeria, and we expect for us to have peace in our societies? You employ a driver and pay him N50,000 a month. You employ a cook and house-help, and pay them N55,000 a month. And you expect these people to be pleased with you? They watch you spend that same amount of money on one meal with your friends, while these people struggle to keep their own families fed and sheltered for a month. These people are human beings too, and some of them do not have the fortitude to bear with such injustice. A society becomes functional when every working individual earns a living wage – it does not matter what they do. If you employ somebody to abandon all he is doing and commit his time and energy to you for a month, you must be able to pay him or her something that will make it possible for him not to go begging before the next month begins. If this is not the case, crimes like the one that took the life of Wale Adun will not diminish in society. I have not said that Adun mistreated his driver. I am only reminding the rich that when the poor have nothing else to eat, they will usually descend on the rich. It is what brought about the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, and if we are not careful in this country, we will see a similar societal upheaval. What is the way forward?

First. Nigerians must cease talking and begin doing. There are no ends to sociological theories for peaceful existence in this country. There is such a course in Nigerian universities called “Peace and Conflict Resolution”. We continue to talk in this country, and we do not do. People love the sound of their own voices; some of us opinion writers revel in the idea of being referred to as “eggheads”, “professors”, etc. We love the sound of our own voice, but we are not intent on carrying out actions to solve societal problems. The Nigerian society will continue to produce unemployed youths. One day, this country will reach a tipping point, and those young people will put actions to words. They will solve their own problems themselves, however violent means they employ in the process. Before that happens, it behoove this country to begin to implement the hundreds of ideas either stockpiled in our universities to solve these country’s problems.

Second. The government must commit to doing certain minimums within society that will allow for its smooth running and progress. Obafemi Awolowo identified two of these: they are education and health. When government invests in securing the health of its people, it gives the workforce vitality and the ability to produce, thereby ensuring the overall prosperity of the country. When government invests in education, it builds the minds of the people up, such that these same people can proffer ideas for the overall good of society. What we usually see coming from the stable of many governments in Nigeria is a commitment to building infrastructure or paying salaries – things that will usually put the government in a positive light. They do not realize that it is possible to pay salaries, build infrastructures, and also invest in long-term benefits to society like health and education. It is said that an investment in educating a child will usually yield no less than twentyfold down the years.

Third. Nigeria must return to agriculture. It is a truism that a people that refuse to work their land so that it might give them food, will flee that land to other countries that work their own land. It is called japa. State governments in this country, along with their various local government counterparts, must begin to invest in agriculture in scientific and sustainable ways. They could go as far as even [quote]paying the youths to farm the lands that are given to them. Something has to be done. In the same book quoted above, Awolowo said that it is better to employ people to carry out white elephant jobs like the building of pyramids than not to have them do anything at all. It is idle hands that become the devil’s tool. In the case of agriculture, when the young people are employed in this manner and also paid for it, the government is getting them to use their time and energy productively, and at the same time, they can earn money from the products that the land yields to them. The mass migration of young people from rural areas to the cities, who then end up becoming miscreants to city dwellers, can be curtailed by the government, through the local government, by gainfully employing these young people on the farm lands.

I believe that the Nigerian societal challenges are yet to reach their peak. We are still discussing these issues in little-known blog articles like mine because incidents like those of Wale Adun are still quite rare in our society. I hope that they do not become more commonplace before we give the attention that these matters require.

oyeb15:
Learn to summarize. Don't expect people to use their little energy to read story.

gracealonev:
The Nigerian government does not have the moral rights to fight casual or contract employment . The Traffic Wardens that we love to refer to as ‘’Yellow Fever” are not entitled to pensions. And even the Supreme Court had justified the FG’s unconscionable stance.

appleous:

If you had even bothered reading the post, you wouldn't be asking this question.

Intellectually lazy, quick to jump to conclusions, ignorant, and full of confidence anchored to nothingness.

"If you wish to hide something from a black man, put it in a book."

TrustMM:
This is very bad I hope perpetrator will be brought the book

Pascal9:
No magic can solve the problem of country that keeps breeding like rabbits, it's like a licking pipe, it will keep spoiling as more pressure is put on it

OlujobaSamuel:
Are you kidding me, I thought they are regular police officers working within the traffic unit
Can you please shed light on the case

Rexymania:
I think he copied and pasted it.

Anyway, it's good he created some awareness