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  • ‘Agbero’, transport unions and public order

    ‘Agbero’, transport unions and public order

    • Adesegun Ogundeji

    Popularly referred to as Agbero, operators of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road Transport Employers of Nigeria   (RTEAN), are major actors in the transportation sector of Lagos State, and indeed other States across the country.

    To some, Agberos are into legitimate undertakings, while others simply see them as interlopers who compound the State’s transportation challenges. 

    However, irrespective of contrary opinions, in the real sense of it, Agbero, by its original concept, is doing a legitimate business. Shocked? No doubt, I am sure a lot will be surprised to hear this, but don’t crucify me yet.

    Just wait a minute!  Is a travel agent doing a legitimate business? Well, the answer is yes. By implication, if a travel agent is doing a legitimate business, then an Agbero is equally into a legitimate business. The point is that our understanding of Agbero does not tally with its original conception.

    What an Agbero (commuter’s link man) does is not different, by inference, from what a travel agent does. Agberos have been operating in the transport sector since the days of the yore, acting as middlemen between the transporters and commuters.  It is quite plausible that the ‘Gen Z’ might find it tough to understand this narrative because time has changed.

    In those days, willing travelers booked seats ahead with the Agbero who in turn informed the transporter to reserve a specific number of seats for people who had booked ahead with him. The implication is that if you are not on that itinerary you go nowhere.

    Are you getting the gist?

    Therefore, for his time and efforts in gathering passengers for the vehicle, the transporter gives him an agreed percentage of the fare. In-fact, in the olden days, travelers who live far from the Agbero’s (travel agent) abode sleeps over in his house so as not to miss the flight. Did I say flight? Sorry, I meant bus.

    I experienced this in my series of travels to Ikuehi, Ihima in the now Adavi Local government of Kogi State. Adi Jimoh was the transport agent of Suru Ohu ni (Surulere) Transport Company in Ikorodu. His base was Ojogbe, while Idi Mangoro in Agege was the major loading point for vehicles going to Ebiraland, generally referred to as Okene.

    As school resumption approached, the agent informed our parents when a vehicle will be available. The same happened upon vacation.

    What I have laboured to establish from the foregoing is to give legitimacy to the business of Agbero both historically and legitimately.

    But then, with relation to the concept established thus far, does Agbero still exist in Lagos?

    I dare to say no. Those roughnecks, guttural voices and fierce looking men we now call Agberos are mere opportunistic elements extorting money from hardworking drivers.

    Today, no one acts again as a travel agent for anyone, at least those travelling by road. Not even on the inter-state routes. In the modern era, there are designated parks (public and private) where vehicles are ready for boarding. The traveler is, therefore, at liberty to plan his trip without the help of an agent.

    Read Also: ‘Agberos’, transport unions and public order

    Therefore, Agbero, in its present form, is nothing but a fraud. But what of the NURTW and RTEAN?  Are they still relevant? In my view, they are. They are not different from the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and even the Nigeria Labour Congress. They were established and registered to protect the interest of their members.

    The major difference, however, lies in the fact that while the road transport associations deploy crude methods to collect their dues on the roads, others do the same through more dignifying tactics. Their members pay through monthly deductions. They maintain a verifiable membership list and relate with their members decently.

    This is one area that the transport unions need to work on as the only nexus between them and their members (drivers) is the daily ‘extortion’.

    Thus, the modus operandi of transport unions and the boys unleashed on the transport workers as revenue collectors on the roads is antithetical to the posture of being an association for the welfare of the road workers. Incessant violent clashes between the “welfarists” (unions) and the supposed beneficiaries (drivers) speaks volume about their relationship.

  • The agbero way

    The agbero way

    Let us not quibble about this. Joe Ajaero had a black eye from some roughnecks. That was despicable. Why should a labour leader be dragged out like a shoplifter and tossed away to some unknown hovel and beaten black and blue? It is not the path of civilization. It is the register of the brute.

    But wait a minute, is that why Joe Ajaero and his labour group should give the nation a black eye, too? Is that not Agbero syndrome, a revenge on the street? Is this activism in pursuit of personal vendetta?

    What we are witnessing is not labour activism but the hijacking of a noble idea. It is no nod to the greats, the rebellious majesty of Imoudu or the trenchant sublimity of Sunmonu.  It is hysteria as protest and protest as radioactive force. Ajaero has seen the vehicle of protest, especially the deployment of strikes and national shutdown, as a tool and cudgel. He believes if he is angry, he calls for a strike. If he does not like the face of the president, he invokes a shutdown. Strikes have become his propeller, a motor for relevance.

    Does he know the value of a shutdown? Does he know that once a nation goes on strike, it is  like a human body in coma? The nation literally stops breathing. No light, no water, no jobs, no profit. A nation in paralysis.

    That means labour growls because the economy is not working. The strike means the economy is not working. It is fighting poverty with poverty. It is a sterility that Ajaero’s agbero style gives fuel. But the use of strikes signals an end of the imagination for labour. It shows they have no other way of thinking. It is the aggressor’s consolation and avenue.

    But this is because strikes have no consequence. If workers know that when they strike, they lose pay because no work means no profit, they will rethink. Recently, the autoworkers in the United States paralysed industry with a protracted strike. It was a coalition of the injured. But they were prepared to lose pay. They saw it as a risk, and they did not lose in the end because they got much of what they wanted. Strike is an investment, not a harvest.

    Strikes here have no regard for consequences. It is just a way to browbeat the government. We must see strikes as a mutual risk between government and workers. Or else such persons as Ajaero will happen to us. He is already happening.

    He turned labour into a grievance parlour. If you grieve Joe, you offend labour, and labour fumes and jousts. It is not about labour. It is not about fuel subsidy, or worker’s pay, or about lifestyles in decline. It is about a personality cult. He wants to turn himself into a godfather of labour. He has succeeded in corralling Festus Osifo. The TUC guy started with a nuanced and methodical approach. They have somehow convinced him that he should stop acting like a weakling. It is the way the bully convinces the nice guy to punch a friend in the jaw.

    Recently Osifo made a point we must not allow slip. He asserted that labour did not need to follow the court order over strike. Their reason? The government does not follow the rule of law. This government is too young to make that claim. It has not done so yet. So, Osifo and his associates are probably referring to the Buhari government. That man had quite a few instances of defying the rule of law and court order.

    But do we answer impunity with impunity? Is labour trying to canonize lawlessness. Is its agenda anarchy? If that were the case, is Ajaero not justifying the rough arm that gave him a black eye? What happened to Ajaero is the sort of thing that happens when there is no law, when arbitrary muscle-flexing takes charge over commonsense and law. This same group believe when it flouts the law it is right. When others do, it is wrong. Is that not the autocrat’s logic? I believe Labour wanted to dare the federal government to arrest them, and torpedo the government on charges of fascism. But the administration did not bite. Is it not the path of honour to challenge the matter in court. Agberos like Agbaero know no other way.

    Read Also: Ajaero in the eye of storm

    In the Buhari era, the most famous act of defiance of the rule of law happened earlier this year over new currency notes. The Buhari government turned its back against the Supreme Court ruling to revert to the old notes. Labour did not go on strike over it. We did not see Ajaero in his offbeat attire and look of morose distress on the streets. No fascination with a shutdown then. The reason was obvious. The labour movement that endorsed Peter Obi saw the crisis as APC shooting itself in the foot. It was a campaign suicide for its candidate. They gloated in secret while workers groaned and moaned. But labour’s voice was a low murmur in those days. The huge uproar came from the APC candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, when he yelled that it was targeted at him. Even that crisis against the worker galvanized the workers against the candidate. It was the intervening voice of former Kaduna State governor El-Rufai that gave credibility to his accusation. Meanwhile, Obi and Abubakar Atiku did not hide their quiet enjoyment while the APC candidate stormed the airwaves with his frustration.

    So, why is Labour in arms now with strikes after strikes? We can find this in what I call the Imo formula. When Ajaero went to Imo, he did not present himself as a labour man, but a front man for Peter Obi’s party. That, I believe, is why someone changed the architecture of his face. I don’t support the bully’s sense of aesthetics. Joe’s face is good enough as God made it. I hope the doctors help restore it.

    But Ajaero only showed his strikes have been more politics than labour angst. He is angrier against the government than he loves the workers of this country. He is standing on the innocence of the worker to push a political party’s agenda.

    Hence Osifo exercised the effrontery to say that labour is above the law. It is a dangerous trend. This set of labour leaders have been accused of ethnicising protest. The word is out there that its leadership is ethnically skewed, and that accounts for its hypocritical belligerence. That is a matter for the entire labour spectrum to look at. They voted them into office, and if they are not satisfied with their conduct, they have to respond. So far, that demographic is mute on that matter for most part. But time shall tell. What is clear is that labour seems beholden to the party that bears its name.