STREET HAWKING: Why We Defy FCTA To Sell On Abuja Streets

ABUJA- It is 1:45pm on Herbert Macaulay Way, one of the busiest roads in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. Top ranging vehicles ply here as a routine because of the presence of the National Oil company on this road. On this particular day a black colour Sports Utility Vehicle idles outside the popular NNPC Towers. Men in suits pace around them, shouting into phones.

Across the road, cars crawl into a Total filling station. Horns blare ceaselessly in a bid to draw attention. But that causes more distraction of its own. However, beside the station, nylon sheets are spread on the ground. Sachet drinks, groundnuts, cucumber, roasted yam, boiled cassava and roasted corn are arranged in rows. Umbrellas and old campaign posters with faded faces provide shade for traders and customers. This is like a full market in session but it is not. It is actually the mini-market that hawkers have unwittingly created to make a living amid the soaring sun.

“This sun can fry an egg,” Paul, a regular at the roadside eatery, says as he fans himself with a file. He shops here as a means of avoiding the high stakes supermarkets that dot the length and breadth of the city.

Less than a metre away, Mama Ada, 52, arranges boiled corn and coconut in a plastic basin. Her customers are bankers, drivers and dispatch riders from offices in the old NITEL building. She is calling out prices when two white Abuja Environmental Protection Board, AEPB, vans screech to a stop nearby.

Fifteen-year-old Hauwa is coming from the other direction with a plastic bowl on her head. Inside the container are various goods for her customers – Water, Gala, chewing gum and sweets inside. Men in a black car jump down and Hauwa drops everything and flees with the speed of light to avoid being taken away. She disappears between taxis in seconds, leaving her tray and her goods behind. Sachets of water and other items scatter on the road. A driver menacingly swerves to avoid brushing them.

Other traders who see the task force in time also took off. Mama Ada drags her basin behind an SUV. A young man with phone chargers tucks his wares into a backpack and disappears into the crowd. In less than two minutes, the stretch is almost empty. This has become the daily routine of hawkers, who had since been barred by the FCTA and the Abuja Environmental Protection Board, AEPB. But they have refused to leave the road irrespective of measures churned out by the authorities.

They flog the busy areas such as Wuse, Garki, Area 1, Berger, Area 3, Jabi. Hawkers defy government bans to sell in traffic, at bus stops and around government buildings.

‘How Do We Feed?’

For Hauwa, life as a teenager has been difficult and requires struggling to survive. She shares a single room with her two siblings and three cousins in a slum outside Mpape. The room has no running water. They fetch from a borehole 10 minutes away. At night, they sleep on mats on the floor. Her parents are farmers in Niger State. Two years ago, bandits attacked their village. They took food, money and two goats. Months later, drought destroyed the rest of the harvest. “School finish for JSS2,” Hauwa says quietly. “No money again.”

She followed her aunt to Abuja. The aunt sells vegetables in Garki Market and sleeps in a shop. “People say money dey for Abuja. Nobody go tell you say e hard for poor person to get am,” she says, switching between broken English and Hausa as she sets up another tray 30 minutes after the raid. She borrowed the tray from another hawker.

She admits that on a good day she makes between N3,500 and N6,000. Every Friday she sends N10,000 to N15,000 home through a bus driver to her aged parents.

“My capital na N8,000,” she says, wiping sweat with the back of her hand. If they break my tray today, na two weeks food gone.”

Yet Hauwa is back on the same spot. “If I no come, how we go chop?” she asks.

Her story is not different from that of Felicia who hails from Nasarawa State. “I am a secondary school student. I am selling this groundnut to help my family.” According to her, she has been “lucky enough” to evade the several raids by AEPB enforcement officers because, “I only sell cooked groundnuts and I don’t go near areas where they patrol.”

‘Task Force Collect My Okada’

At Berger roundabout, Musa, 28, moves between cars selling phone chargers, screen guards, earphones and car perfumes. He is fast. He knows which window will open and which driver will wave him off.

“Colleagues say Area 1 dey move. I follow them,” he says.  Now he averages N3,000 to N4,000 daily. On days when task force raids are serious, he returns home with less than N1,000.

“Now if I see N4,000 I thank God. Government say no okada. Wetin I go do? I get wife and three children for Nyanya,” he says.  He finished primary school in Kankiya, Katsina State. He also studied Arabic under his late father, an imam.

“I go school. Now I dey run from task force like thief. But hunger no dey hear grammar,” he says.  He considered returning to farming during dry season. But his village is close to a forest where bandits operate. Two of his cousins were kidnapped last year. Ransom was paid before they were reluctantly freed and that memory still haunts him even after relocating from his state to Abuja.  He rents a room in Nyanya for N200,000 a year. He wakes at 4:30am to catch the first bus. He returns after 9pm.

“They seized my phone once, and I paid N7,000 to collect it. That week, my children no chop well.”  Musa says he has applied to several driving jobs. “They ask for experience, license, and money for ‘processing’. I no get.”

“Sometimes they say pay N10,000 before you collect am. If you no get, them go scatter everything. You go lucky if them no carry you go office,” she says.

She lives in Gwagwalada and manages to pay the annual rent of N350,000. She leaves home at 5am and returns after 10pm. Transport alone costs N1,500 daily.

“Na here better market dey,” she says when asked why she travels from the outskirts to come and sell in the city. “For Gwagwalada, people no dey buy like this.”

Her husband died in 2021 after a brief illness. They have three children, who are all in secondary school. The eldest wants to study nursing.

She tried selling in Gwagwalada market. “Sales no dey. People dey wait till month end. Here, even civil servant go buy N500 yam when traffic hold am.”