"We make the bulk of our money from prostitutes"- Lagos Taxis

Hearing the sound of passing vehicles as one lays in the bed between midnight and dawn in some parts of the Lagos metropolis is likely to make one conclude that it is a city that never sleeps.

 For night crawlers, this is certainly so, especially if one ventures out to some areas like Ikeja, Ojuelegba and Victoria Island at that time when the rest of the city is fast asleep. The number of people at bus stops, passing vehicles and people milling around clubs will likely make one conclude that indeed, Lagos never sleeps. Saturday PUNCH has observed that majority of the vehicles plying the road as the rest of the city slumbers away at this period are cab drivers, who, through the determination to make ends meet with the harsh economic reality of the country, have taken to the dead of the night to ply their trade.

It is not that they are safer in the night, our correspondent learnt, but for these cab drivers, financial survival far outweighs the matter of safety. On a crusade to shed light on how the business runs, our correspondent went in search of some of the night cab drivers in Lagos. They took him on an eye-opening narrative about their trade. Forty-nine year-old Olanrewaju Sanni has only done the business of night cab driving for about eight months after losing his lucrative job in an aluminium company. But he has had two close shaves with death in the hands of dare-devil robbers as a night driver. One of such encounters was so bad that his family almost could not recognise him by the time he got home that morning.

"That was about two weeks ago. I was so brutally beaten by the robbers that everybody was asking what had happened to me because my face was badly swollen," Sanni said. He said on that day, he had taken a passenger to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja and picked another passenger from the same place. The man narrated, shaking his head with an incredulous smile, as he told our correspondent that he had thought that was the day he would die. Sanni said, "The young man I picked from the airport had just flown in. I was supposed to take him to Ikorodu. It was already 3 am.

"We were taking the bypass around the MKO Abiola Gardens at Ojota when we suddenly came upon a Volkswagen Golf car parked across the road. I immediately stopped at a distance. Two men came out of the car with guns. "I immediately reversed but as I did this, I saw two more men come out of hiding from behind. They too held guns. My head was working like a computer at this time. I saw a little opening beside their car through which I could make an escape. I told my passenger to lie flat on the seat. "I hit the accelerator and drove my vehicle into the Golf. The impact pushed it aside and I sped off.

The robbers released several shots in my direction as I sped away. But as I reached the overhead bridge, which is a few metres from the garden, I saw another vehicle, a Hilux van, parked across the road. 'This is it. I am dead,' I thought to myself. "It was clear the vehicle was not a police van. I stopped and two men came out of it with guns towards me. They started hitting my windshield asking me to come out. I quickly surrendered. I heard the Golf car approaching too." Sanni said the men ransacked his vehicle, took all his money and the N35,000 he had been sent to give to somebody. They also took N105,000 and two big bags belonging to his passenger. Then, it was time to deal with the errant driver.

"So, you know how to drive like Rambo? You must be an armed robber. You must know how to snatch vehicles. You see how you have damaged our vehicle?" Sanni said the robbers told him. They pounced on him and beat him mercilessly. "They kicked me on the ground, gave me many blows I cannot count and used the butts of their guns to hit me. They asked me to put my hands on the roof of my vehicle and one of them delivered numerous blows to my rib cage. I was bleeding from the ears," he said. The robbers eventually let Sanni go, our correspondent learnt, but not until they deliberated and resolved to leave him alive after numerous pleadings from him and his passenger. That was not the first time Sanni would be robbed.

"There was a time I took a young man from Ikeja to Ajah around 1 am. It was the ghetto part of the area. He had called a young lady before we arrived and the woman came to meet us at Jakande. I took them inside the area and he said he did not have money on him when we arrived. He said he would have to go in and bring money. "I told him to drop his phone,-BlackBerry-to be sure he would come back. He came back about 20 minutes later with the lady and two other men. He said he had forgotten something inside my car and while I searched for it, one of the men grabbed my neck from behind while the other pinned my arm behind me.

The young lady brought out a gun. They robbed me of all I had made that day and took a camera from my vehicle. "They did not snatch my cab but when they left me, I quickly left the area and reported to the first policemen I met on the way. They looked at me with disbelief. They asked me, "You mean you took passengers to that place? Don't you know the place is very dangerous? Thank your stars your vehicle was not snatched or you were not killed." Sanni said these encounters taught him lots of lesson but were not enough to make him stay off the trade.

Like Sanni, Odebunmi Asana has also had an encounter with armed robbers, who taught him one vital lesson of the trade: Never pick up more than two male passengers at the same time after midnight. Unlike Sanni, who spoke good English and said he was a graduate of YABATECH, Asana was not educated beyond secondary school level. When he met our correspondent in front of a club on Allen Avenue, a place that serves as his motor park before midnight when his work starts, he spoke pidgin. Asana said, "This job is about risks. Now I know better than to pick up three men at the same time. Even two men is a risk for me. I have to look at you very well before picking two men now and if their destination is a far and obscure place, I don't go.

"The encounter that taught me this lesson was in January, 2013 when I picked three men from Allen to Ikorodu. When we got to Agric area on the way to Ikorodu around 1.30 am, one of them held a knife to my neck and asked me to stop and get out of the vehicle. "I obeyed as I was almost paralysed with fear. I got out and they took my phones, the N7,000 I had made that day and other things they could take away. They even took my leather slippers.

They also punched me many times. "The men asked for the key and zoomed off in my car. But it was like the hand of God was at work. About a kilometre away, they stopped and abandoned my vehicle. I noticed when they stopped and got out. After about 30 minutes and they had not returned, I ran to the car, started it, made a U-turn and zoomed off.

"This kind of thing happens a lot to cab drivers in the night because when you pick passengers, you are at their mercy." It turned out that most cab drivers make clubs around Lagos their motor parks in the night because of the ease of getting passengers, who patronise such places. Our correspondent visited Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, where many cab drivers pick up passengers in the night. Many of the cars are parked in the front of the hotel, which provides an ample opportunity to make money from night crawlers who visit the hotel.

"The problem with this area is that majority of people who visit this place in the night always come in their own cars. But 'night girls' always need our services," one of the cab drivers, who gave his name as Rahman, said. In the front of a club at Ogba around 12.40 am on Monday, our correspondent met with another cab driver, Abiodun Shonoiki, 32, who promised to meet with our correspondent for an interview the following day. When our correspondent met him at a workshop at Agindingbi, he turned out to be a car painter. "I have been a car painter for 12 years but driving cab in the night is something I find far more lucrative than my main job," he said.

He says he makes up to N8,000 daily. Sanni, whom our correspondent spoke with earlier, had said on an average day, after buying the usual N3,000 fuel, he would be left with at least N7,000. "I can conveniently save N5,000 per day," he said. However, Shonoiki said he started the night cab business about two years ago when the bus he used for daytime transport was impounded by officials of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority and was asked to pay N35,000. He said, "I did not leave it just because of that. After many months during which I was trying to raise the money, the cost became too much for me to bear. I don't know what has happened to the bus there. I left the bus there and bought a small car.

"I realised that I could make in three days what I make in one month as a car painter if I got into night cab driving. I would also not have to worry about these overzealous and greedy government officials, who extort money from commercial drivers in the daytime. "The first day I went out, I nearly collapsed with excitement when I went home with N9,000. That was when I decided that it is a job I have to continue. "We stay in the front of clubs because 80 per cent of what we make comes from prostitutes. They are the ones who patronise us mostly.

That's why many people call us Oko Asewo (prostitutes' husbands)." Our correspondent asked Shonoiki if he had ever been robbed too but he said, unlike his colleagues who started the business after him and had had encounters with robbers, he had been lucky. "I fear robbers very much because other cab drivers always have stories about encounters with them. What you have to understand is that driving a cab in the night in a place like Lagos is one of the most dangerous jobs around because anything can happen to you. But how many white collar jobs can get you N10,000 per day? It is a lucrative job." Shonoiki is not educated beyond the secondary school level but he said he could provide for his family adequately even though he loses hours of sleep every day as a result of his two jobs.

The cab drivers said they believed unemployed youths in Lagos could do well in the trade if they were able to secure enough capital to buy a cheap used car, which they could also get through hire-purchase. For these men, some of whom are graduates of polytechnic and universities, who have not been able to secure white collar jobs, nowhere within the boundaries of Lagos is too far for them to drive to at hours seen as odd to other individuals. Sanni said he had once driven a passenger to as far as Epe at 2 am. Shonoiki said the farther he had gone was Lekki at about 1 am. Our correspondent also spoke with another cab driver, who said he had made two journeys to Ajah also at about 2 am. "Driving in the night is enjoyable.

Our only problem is the fear of armed robbers. Even your engine works well because the atmosphere is cool. The engine never overheats. Then we don't have to worry about traffic and LASTMA officials or Vehicle Inspection Officers," he said. But these men also acknowledged the fact that their families have not been so thrilled about their work schedule, which takes them away from home at such ungodly hours. Asked what his schedule is like on a normal day, another cab driver, Julius Chinalu, said he sleeps for most part of the day.

"When you are sleeping, that's when I am making my money. I sleep till 12 pm and when it is 5 pm, I start my night job. I pick up random passengers around the mainland till 12 am. "When it is 12 am, I return to the front of the club where I park at Ikeja and that's where most of the money of the night comes from. A lot of prostitutes are our friends. Transporting them from the club is where most of the money comes from. "My wife complains sometimes while my little children always ask why I don't stay at home in the night so that I could play with them," Chinalu said.

Our correspondent also visited the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, where many cab drivers also pick up passengers at night. Many of the drivers park in front of the hotel, which provides an ample opportunity to make lots of money from night crawlers, who visit the hotel. "The problem with this area is that majority of the people who visit this place in the night always come in their own cars. But 'night girls' always need our services," one of the cab drivers said. Silverbird Galleria, VI, is another spot, where many cab drivers find abundant passengers, many of whom come from very far parts of Lagos and need a ride back home in the dead of the night.