THE CONFESSION OF A DANFO DRIVER My name is Malo and I am a driver -commercial bus driver in Lagos. Let me put it the way of our road parlance; I am a Danfo driver. You think something is wrong with that? Because I can see you frown. Why should that be? Whats wrong with being a commercial bus driver? Not even the tag Danfo driver. Not even that. Driving is a noble job. You wake as early as 4 o clock in the morning, take care of your bus, your home and yourself before hitting the street with your conductor just for strange faces in the form of commuters who want to meet up with early appointments. What is more noble than picking people here and there and taking them to their destinations? Agreed, they pay for this service but what are they paying for actually? Our ability to concentrate on the road, using the wheel well, taking the lights seriously and letting our minds work accordingly? Or the fact that we take them to their destination regardless of how we get there? Ours is a sensitive job! However, an average Nigerian, especially a Lagosian, thinks something is wrong with a bus driver- a Danfo driver- and his conductor. They think we are not normal and are weird. Why? Surely not because most of our buses are painted predominantly yellow (Lagos colour) or because we have inscriptions like, All routes, CMS to Oshodi, Agege to Iyana Ipaja, etc, on the body of our buses. People do not despise us because of stickers and calenders of musicians and footballers in strategic parts of the bus or the No King As God, King of Boyz graphics at the back. There is more to why a lot of people dislike us(even though they cannot do without us) and think we are nut case. And some of these reasons, as much as they make me sad and angry, are true about us. I always talk to my fellow drivers and conductors at the park, in the traffic or at the joint. I ask them; why should you look dirty like this always? Why not wear a decent cloth? Why should you not comb your hair; cut your nails? That we are drivers and conductors is not an excuse for looking unkempt. In fact, this work should be a motivation for us to look our best. Dress well and smell nicely. We meet people everyday. People of different tastes, temperaments and understandings who judge us by the way we appear and compose ourselves. Its a civil society not some primitive hamlet like Kuvuki-land (reference to that movie Mr Bones). Why do I have to wear only an under-shirt driving about twenty passengers, comprising women, men and children from Ajah to Oshodi? Why should my conductor sag his trousers; revealing dirty boxers? Its a shame that people look down on us but are we not the cause? I think its a case of self-afflicted humiliation? Sometimes ago, I travelled to Kano from Lagos, now as a passenger. Our bus suddenly developed a mechanical fault and we parked at a workshop to check it, only to realise that water had drained inside the radiator. My head flew away! So this driver did not check the water gauge before we moved? Maybe he did not check the oil gauge too. And this was a man who would driver over 15 passengers for about 15 hours...As we proceeded, the problem persisted after Kogi only for men of FRSC to stop us. They demanded our drivers identity and lo and behold, he did not have a drivers licence! Is that not bizarre? Commuters, in their hurry, always have blind faith in drivers. Have you ever seen a passenger approach a driver to demand his identity and particulars before joining a bus? As a driver, I have never experienced a situation where a passenger would check me, thoroughly, to know if I had smoked hemp, taken alomo, shepe, ogogoro and the likes before sitting behind the wheel. Passengers do not even look at the faces of drivers to observe their visual conditions. Blind faith. But blind faith has led a lot of people to the hospitals and/or their graves as a result of accidents. Accidents that are caused. What an oxymoron! Most of my colleagues enjoy taking hard stuff even before breakfast. As early as seven in the morning they have started smelling like brewerys tank. Some smoke so much that you can trace insanity to their minds only by looking at their faces. After getting high, we drive recklessly, dis obey traffic lights, traffic laws and try to outsmart other road users, traffic officers and road marshals. We fight everyone: from our conductors to the passengers. We are fond of using obscene and vulgar expressions as if they are prayers and songs. Out of our impatience and lack of concentrations, we cause accidents, thereby disrupting road activities and in most cases, causing fatal situations for everyone, including ourselves. Tell me why we would be liked or considered noble individuals. Passengers have different attitudes and idiosyncrasies. Some are friendly and good to journey with while some are irritating and abusive while a ton of them can be instructive and misleading as if they are instructors of driving school. But we dont have to be distracted by them. We are culpable before the law if anything goes wrong with them regardless of their orchestration. Do not mind them when they laugh you for pronouncing radiator as ragilato, steering as shiarin, ignition as iginisan or alternator as wotaleto. Let them mock you in as much as they understand you mean shock absorber when you say, soka suffer. If you can learn the right way to say it, fine, otherwise learn to control your temper behind the wheel. Thats key. Thats an education the biggest vocabulary or terminology cannot push aside. No passenger will see you looking dirty with unpleasant odour and feel good sitting beside you. I remember a lady dodging my conductor during the Ebola outbreak. It was so embarrassingly obvious that at a time, she screamed, Abeg dress no give me ebola. He looked truly dirty. She might have over reacted but its in human nature to think that way. After all, she was leaning close to a well dressed man every time she dodged my conductor. No one says a well dressed man is immune to Ebola but he did not look it. The way you dress, in most cases, determines the way people address you. I agree a lot of factors account for what we do: Living in a city like Lagos is challenging. Not to mention having to survive on the roads where people of different needs, motives and survival instincts ply twenty four hours, everyday. What with your bus owner wanting you to pay his deliver regardless of what happens on the roads? There are the Agberos who go about with cane to beat you up like goat if you refuse to give them their undefined due. What about passengers who do not want to pay? And the ones who try to ask for change even after paying the exact fare? Or those LASTMA officers and their partners in extortion (police) who deliberately find troubles for you just to make you beg them with your hard earned money? I do not want to even mention the collaboration between Agberos and LASTMA these days. However, all these, nonetheless, we can still check ourselves. Check our excesses and refrain from moving beyond the boundary of decency because our work is a noble one. We use it to support our families: feed, send our children to schools, buy our wives their needs and help our parents. Our families are presentable in the society, so we have to make them proud of us too. We have to love our work and make people see the pride we have in it. Do you know how people feel when your wife or children say their husband or father is a bus conductor? If you think its derogatory to your person, what their remarks are, then start a campaign to sensitize your colleagues and sanitise the profession. Yes, driving is a profession. A noble profession. Perhaps people need to know that there are soldiers, policemen, bankers and people of supposedly noble professions, who have buses and drive them for commercial purpose too. This goes a long way to tell us that ours is a productive exercise. Drivers make daily money and in consequence solve daily economic problems. We contribute a lot to economic growth of our country. So, instead of letting people see this, why are we painting a yellow bus with black oil? This piece is not written based on hasty generalisation because I am aware of most of my colleagues who are men/women of enviable character, polished countenance, pure breed and classical charisma. Those who refuse to allow the motor park distractions to take away their pride. Some are well educated while many are just cultured and reserved. With this article, I am actually referring to those miscreants among us who make observers believe every Danfo driver and conductor is a school drop out, hoodlum, gangster, never-do-well, collaborator to thieves and kidnappers. Those who give us bad names in the society by their appearances, words and disposition. My anger is on those who make Lagos traffic laws to be constantly amended because the government has deemed it fit to curb our excessive attitudes by regulating our conducts. I am concerned about our colleagues who will turn a small bus to a disco ground by placing big speakers and amplifiers in the bus blasting away music when they should concentrate to know the situation with their buses, passengers and other road users. Those who give agberos(members of the NURTW) the reason to think we need cane to get things straight. Are some of us not the reason why police prefer the highways to crime scenes? I want a change- a positive one and I am going to champion a cause towards that, starting with this piece. I am going to stop answering to my alias, Malo because its not as sweet as what my parents call me, Emmanuel. I shall keep this campaign going until it reaches everyone concerned, and until, one day, a member of our association is considered good enough to become Commissioner for Transportation. OLARIBIDESI ARIBIDESI 2014 ransometrulyawesome@yahoo olaribidesi@gmail
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 06:23:10 +0000
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