After a whole day in the traffic, racing and shunting with a poly bag packed full of assorted soft drinks weighing over 50 litres, Chike reclined at the roadside kerb, one hand over his packed drinks, and his chin resting on the other, exhausted from the heat of the sun and the weight and exertion from chasing moving vehicles in traffic back and forth, trying to sell his products.
"Another bad day", Chike sat there, pondering. Sales had been very poor again today, after a long week. On a Friday and the day, far spent, Chike is worried about how he will provide for his family back home.
This is reminiscent of the life of a hawker on every street all around the country. There are hundreds of thousands of them clustering the corners of our streets and in traffic on highways trying to heck out a living selling items ranging from groundnuts, handkerchief to cheap immitation electronic gadgets.
The very sight of such large numbers of grown adult in traffic hawking just to make a living fills me with fear. I am afraid because I imagine how much profit can come out of selling oranges in a day. Maybe a few hundreds of Naira, for all that work in the hot scourging sun.
We hear stories of car owners being robbed of their valuables in traffic, and the unfortunate onces dispossessed of their cars, beaten up or sometimes murdered. Security reports have often times, warned road users of crimes perpetuated by hawkers in designated black spots around the country.
They are hawkers during the day and at night they turn to street orchins. The verocity and brutal manner they go about dispossessing car owners and pedestrians of their belongings, shows that they are a very big threat to society.
Armed with cutlasses and guns, these hudlums are not afraid of even armed security personnels. In some notorious areas, the Police take extra caution when confronting them. They are more or less street soldiers.
Sometimes, I look at the faces of these hawkers in traffic, and all you see is anger, and they are not hesitant to vent their anger on unsuspecting road users. I wonder how easy it would be for men of the underworld to recruit these guys. Giving the large number of strong young men lurking around the streets ready to do anything to make a living. I am therefore not surprised how criminal gangs are able to assemble large groups of young men of up to fifty or more in number during a single robbery operation.
These elements pose a big threat to lives and property in our towns and cities, and are indeed a serious security risk to the nation. If things are left the way they are presently, the security situation will get worse and there will be more violent crimes carried out in our towns and cities.
Urgent redress is inevitable. The immediate introduction of a systematic method of taking these young men and women off the streets should commence. Firstly, the Labour department should take a censors of unemployed youths to ascertain the number of unemployed persons in the country, before progressing to actual creation of jobs to remove them from the streets.
To make urgent and meaningful impact, a massive recruitment exercise must be carried out by the federal and state governments, in areas such as agriculture, construction and manufacturing. Other employment channels in the ministries and government parastatals should be opened to graduates, particularly from the NYSC scheme.
