Introduction

Rethinking Corruption

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Scholarly works on corruption in postcolonial Africa harp excessively on the
failure of leadership. This bad leadership argument maps well onto muckraking
narratives of powerful political patrons and so-called “big men” in postcolonial
Africa gorging on state resources at the expense of the multitude who are gener-
ally assumed to be innocent victims of corruption. In The Trouble with Nigeria,
acclaimed author Chinua Achebe places the blame squarely on the failure of lead-
ership, maintaining that “(c)orruption goes with power, and whatever the average
man may have it is not power. Therefore, to hold any useful discussion of corrup-
tion we must first locate it where it properly belongs—in the ranks of the powerful”
(1983: 1). While Achebe’s work emphasizes the mutual intertwining of corruption
and elite power in Nigeria, it nonetheless robs non-elite groups of political agency
or the capacity for action (Mustapha 2002). The banality of power, as African-
ist scholars Achille Mbembe (1992), Jean-François Bayart (1993), and Célestine
Monga (1996) tell us, dwells precisely in the conviviality of the ruler and the ruled.
Rather than defining power in terms of narrow materialist rational choices of
African elites (a view offered by Booth & Cammack 2013), the logic of conviviality
reclaims Michel Foucault’s non-elitist notion of power as emanating everywhere
(1978: 93).
The clichéd image of the dysfunctional1 African state as the root of all evil pre-
cludes a complex understanding of corruption as a transgressive category that
implicates citizens as well as public officials, both of whom exercise a degree of
power and political expectation. As the Nigerian sociologist Ebenezer Obadare
points out, it would be disingenuous to limit corruption to the politics and busi-
ness of elite alone since, as he argues, corruption is the key thread that binds
elites and commoners in Nigeria’s political economy (Obadare 2019: 165). This
salient point is taken further by the economist Mushtaq Khan (1996a, 1996b,
2000), who argues that in many developing countries the state is weak relative to its
clients and hence it lacks the capacity to maintain autonomy from powerful busi-
ness interests, professionals, and other rent-seekers, giving rise to unproductive

1 The “good governance” agenda in Africa is based upon the idea of the dysfunctionality of African
states. This agenda rests simply upon an imagined disconnect between modern institutions and tradi-
tional African society, with the latter seen as precluding efficient and sustainable African bureaucracies
(Anders 2009: 3).

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0001
2 they eat our sweat

rent-seeking activities. Khan (1996a, 2000) calls this the “clientelist patron-client
networks” in contradistinction to “patrimonial patron-client networks,” charac-
terized by strong states able to maintain control over the management of rents.
Using the example of India, Khan shows how a range of intermediate classes have

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come to occupy powerful positions in civil society and have mastered the art of
exerting political pressures on the state. These intermediate classes have the power
to influence the process of rents disbursement by the state (in the form of subsi-
dies, tax breaks, and licenses) and prevent the state from eliminating unproductive
rents (Jeffery 2002: 22).
In Africa, clientelist patron-client networks and intermediate classes are
exemplified by powerful and politicized transport unions (e.g. Nigeria’s Union of
Road Transport Workers [NURTW] and Uganda’s Taxi Operators and Drivers
Association [UTODA]), which have come to wield disproportional power and
influence over the central state, according to a bidirectional logic described as
“double capture”2 (Goodfellow 2017). That concept of double capture runs athwart
the prevailing conception of interest groups and professional associations in Africa
as poorly organized and comparatively weak. As Nicholas van de Walle claims,
most African states are largely autonomous from social pressures because they
have managed to outlaw, emasculate, or co-opt economic interest groups such as
unions, business, and farmers associations (2001: 95). For van de Walle, the “ab-
sence of mass organizations in Africa weakens the political influence of lower-class
groups who have little leverage over the ‘patrons”’ (2001: 72). The idea of dou-
ble capture reinforces Erik Bähre’s empirical analysis of the violent and shifting
mutualities at the core of state-civil society relations, specifically the relationship
between Cape Town’s mafia-like taxi unions and state agencies (Bähre 2014). Far
from redistributive, the clientelist patron-client networks that arises from such po-
litical settlements and elite bargains produce a “trickle-up” economy that largely
benefits only a select few.
From Africa to South Asia and the Baltic, ethnographies of corruption have
shown that corruption is simultaneously banalized and denounced in daily life.
Anthropologist Daniel Jordan Smith argues that many average Nigerians who
condemn corruption also participate in its social reproduction, and that too with
ease (2007: 55). Comparing corruption in Ghana to the bodily function of coitus,
Jennifer Hasty (2005a: 360) describes how the act of corruption is simultaneously
decried and desired, hidden and exposed. In India, the same people who criticize
the nation’s weakened moral fabric are also open about the contradictions that
surrounds their own discourses of corruption (Das 2015: 323, 340). This paradox
of complicity is evident in Klavs Sedlenieks’ ethnographic study of corruption in
Latvia, where his informants expressed a disgust for corrupt activities alongside a

2 This concept moves us beyond a one-sided view of state capture, that is, African leaders using state
resources to co-opt different civil societies to maintain political stability (van de Walle, 2007: 50).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 3

readiness to participate in them if the opportunity were to arise (2004: 120). The
simultaneous criticism and complicity of corruption articulates with a growing
corpus of works that have conceptualized corruption as a “collective action-social
trap” problem (Mungiu-Pippidi 2006; Persson, Rothstein, & Teorell 2013), where

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any self-interested social actor will reason, “Well, if everybody seems corrupt, why
shouldn’t I be?” (Myrdal 1968: 409).
Theories of collective action postulate that when the dominant perception in
any society is that public officials are hopelessly corrupt, this generally creates a
social expectation that everybody pays a bribe, and therefore behavioral norms
tend to override any ethical objections that individuals may have. The direct out-
come is a “low-level equilibrium trap” (Rose & Peiffer 2014), in which people who
resent corruption are resigned to accept it since the decision not to engage in cor-
ruption is considered to be “illogical or even ridiculous” (Marquette 2012: 22).
The cost of not falling in line with the status quo is too high, as people risk being
treated as outsiders (Kuran 1997) or punished (Wade 1985: 483). When a soci-
ety is systemically corrupt, it becomes optimal to participate in corruption despite
the presence of anti-corruption policies and legislation. This way corrupt behav-
ior becomes the pragmatic norm (Mishra 2005: 30; cf. Booth & Commack 2013).
So entrenched is the social norm of corruption in many developing countries that
street-level bureaucrats (e.g. police) often find it difficult to resist the “erotics of
corruption” (Miller 2008). Of the characteristic policeman on the streets of India,
it is observed that his work puts him in constant interaction with people con-
sidered to be immoral. In a context where corruption is not only widespread,
but deeply enmeshed with the practice of everyday life, “the policeman need
not make opportunities; they are constantly being proffered to him routinely…”
(Bayley 1974: 88).
The collective action-social trap framework constitutes a compelling critique
and an alternative to the conventional “principle-agent” theory (seen in Klitgaard
1988; Rose-Ackerman 1978), which generally assumes the presence of “principled
principals” in civil society and in positions of power who, by their very nature, are
interested in holding agents to account and combating corruption (Marquette &
Peiffer 2015: 2). Yet, in many developing countries where corruption is systemic
and social and political trust are low, the absence of “principled principals” is con-
spicuous (Booth & Commack 2013; Booth 2012). Far from being a problem of
individual deviation from the system, corruption becomes the system and virtu-
ally everyone is implicated in corruption (Prasad et al. 2019: 99). As Anna Persson
et al. (2013: 457) explain, in a society in which corruption is the equilibrium norm,
we can expect anti-corruption laws to be largely ineffective since there is little to no
incentive to hold corrupt actors responsible. Across Africa, principals and agents
are bound by a conceptualization of public office and state resources in terms of
food (e.g. “national cake”), exemplified by the crudely avaricious mentalities of
“It’s our time to eat” (Kenya) and “I chop you chop” (I eat and let others eat also)
(Nigeria).
4 they eat our sweat

In a thoroughly corrupted Nigerian society where nine out of ten people say
public officials are corrupt and most people fear retaliation if they report cor-
ruption to local authorities (Afrobarometer 2018), the very instrumentalities of
survival by average citizens tend to mirror the ones adopted by leaders to accu-

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mulate wealth and power. The vivid and visceral display of power and predation
in contemporary Nigerian politics incorporates the dominant and the dominated,
the elite and the subaltern, in an “intimate tyranny [that] links them in the de-
sires that are shared across all its disparate groups” (Rowlands 1995: 38). In this
light, then, any serious study of corruption in Africa must go beyond written rules
and formal positions of power to examine how the practices of governments and
publics are interwoven and mutually reinforcing (Mbembe 2001a: 133).

The Social Norms and Moral Economies of Corruption

To curtail corruption, we have to reorder the mindset of all

[Nigerians]… those who are critics today are most times not better
than those they criticize. When they are availed the same or similar
opportunities, they act likewise. In other words, those who didn’t have
the opportunity criticize and blow whistle but when they get into of-
fice; they become victims of the same thing they criticize… This points
to the fact that curtailing corruption might require a more broadened
social engineering.
—President Muhammadu Buhari (Leadership 2015)

Buhari’s statement underlines the oft-neglected social element of corruption,

which is neither new nor specific to Nigeria. In fact, according to the World De-
velopment Report (2015: 60), there is a shared belief in many countries that “using
public office to benefit oneself and one’s family and friends is widespread, ex-
pected, and tolerated. In other words, corruption can be a social norm.” Norms
represent the standards of appropriate behavior in any society and have been
defined as patterns of behavior which people conform to on the condition that
they expect that most people in their reference network will conform to it also
(Bicchieri & Mercier 2014). Social norms dictate the extent to which individuals
engage and expect others to partake in corruption. In Nigeria, social norms have
cultivated a fertile ground for the breeding of corruption (Ocheje 2018); this partly
explains why corruption has defied post-1999 institutionalist anticorruption cam-
paigns, most prominently the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC)
and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In as much as so-
cial norms in the wider society continue to favor or even reward corrupt practices,
 introduction: rethinking corruption 5

anti-corruption institutions and campaigns, though well-intentioned, will remain

spineless and toothless.
At this juncture, a distinction must be made between moral norms and social
norms, lest we fall into the culturalist trap of seeing corruption as the “culture” (i.e.

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moral beliefs and value codes) of the people/nation, and lest we conflate corrup-
tion as ingrained in the moral fabric of a society and its people, with corruption
seen as a series of “standard operating procedures” that compels people to do
things that they think are morally wrong (Rothstein 2018: 41). On the one hand,
moral norms are clusters of moral judgements that justify the “relevant normative
principle,” while on the other hand, social norms are clusters of normative atti-
tudes that consist of the “presumed social practice” (Brennan et al. 2013: 89). The
significance of this distinction is confirmed by Bo Rothstein (2018: 40): “If travel-
ing in a country where the ‘presumed social practice’ for getting medical treatment
for one’s children is to pay bribes to health personnel; most parents would likely
pay the bribe. However, they could still be morally upset and convinced that do-
ing so is ethically wrong. Similarly, a doctor in a systematically corrupt health care
system may morally disapprove of the practice of taking money ‘hidden in an en-
velope,’ but it makes little sense to be the only honest player in a system where
there is the presumed social practice.” In a similar way, many average Nigerians
who participate in corruption feel the context of political and moral economies
in which they live compel them to do so. Although they recognize and denounce
corruption in the abstract, these lowly Nigerians feel locked in a patronage system
that determines the allocation of state resources (Smith 2007: 56). The political sci-
entist Rasma Karklins (2005) puts it succinctly: “The system made me do it.” To be
clear, the system we are talking about here is one that has deprived millions of able-
bodied people of jobs, food, and shelter, reducing them to bare life, to the struggle
for daily survival. This is what Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (1999: 48) describes
as “the general feeling of helplessness in the face of an infernal mechanism.” No
wonder Monica Prasad and colleague’s meticulous review of the corruption liter-
ature concluded that corruption often results from ordinary people trying to meet
their legitimate, day-to-day needs (2019: 99).
The concept of moral economy originated from historian E.P. Thompson’s sem-
inal work on the eighteenth century hunger riots in England. Thompson (1971)
defines moral economy as “a consistent traditional view of social norms and
obligations, of the proper economic functions of various parties within the com-
munity, which, taken together, can be said to constitute the moral economy of the
poor.” The concept of moral economy was later popularized in James C. Scott’s
influential work on peasant life-strategies in Southeast Asia. In this work, Scott
(1976: 167) apprehends moral economy as a kind of alternative social order based
on two core principles: “the right of everyone to have access to the means of sub-
sistence and survival, and the accompanying obligation to give and receive, thus
obeying the norms of reciprocity” (Wutich 2011: 5). Since this work was published,
6 they eat our sweat

a phalanx of scholars has applied moral economy to a broad selection of issues. In

Africa, moral economy has been applied to theft (Newell 2006), political imagina-
tion (Isichei 2004), witchcraft beliefs (Austen 1993), and the relationship between
famine, climate, and political economy (Watts 1983). Beyond Africa, moral econ-

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omy has been used to make sense of racial health disparities in the United States
(James 2003); poverty, immigration, and violence in France (Fassin 2005); the
culture of entrepreneurship in Nepal (Parker 1988); the reciprocity of water inse-
curity in Bolivia (Wutich 2011); and ancestral worship among Chinese migrants
(Kuah 1999). The broad application of moral economy has increasingly made it
something of an empty signifier, a popularly invoked concept without substantial
meaning. Scholars such as Didier Fassin (2009) and Chris Hann (2016: 3) have
criticized the trivialization and thoroughly muddled nature of moral economy in
the social sciences. Yet, behind the muddle lies a powerful analytic concept that
can help illuminate the dynamics of corruption.
Africanist scholars Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan and Steven Pierce have re-
claimed the concept of moral economy to understand the complexity of corrup-
tion. While Pierce’s (2016: 174) account invites us to pay close attention to how
and why particular public moral communities emerged over time, Olivier de Sar-
dan (1999: 26) puts the emphasis on “as subtle as possible a restitution of the
value systems and cultural codes by those who practice it.” For Olivier de Sardan
(1999: 32), corruption is difficult to address because it is engrained in social habits
and, thus, deeply inscribed in the moral economy. Habits constitute the moral fab-
ric of any society and the rational order of social relations (Camic 1986: 1057;
Weber 2012: 300). Habits connect social patterns, conventions, and orders with
everyday experience (Darmon & Warde 2018: 1039). Moral economy is loosely
interpreted in this study as “the production, distribution, circulation, and use of
moral sentiments, emotions and values, and norms and obligations in social space”
(Fassin 2009: 15). This interpretation enables us to focus on the social evaluation of
moral conduct and the moral judgment of social conduct (Smith 2016: 565). Mov-
ing us beyond the usual focus on material/economic conditions, Didier Fassin’s
interpretation allows us to interrogate voices and lived realities on the margins of
society. In short, the moral economy approach moves us beyond simplistic no-
tions of homo politicus and homo economicus by focusing on “the cognitive worlds
of the poor” (Isichei 2004: 10).
In adopting the notion of moral economy as an explanatory model, my aim is
to account for the ways in which corrupt practices are often embedded in socio-
political mutualities and cultural forms that grant them legitimacy. Furthermore,
I seek to interrogate corruption as a central arena in which the state and ideas
about interaction with it are discursively constructed in everyday life (Gupta 1995;
Masquelier 2001; Sedlenieks 2004: 119). Going beyond unitary, monolithic, and
sedentarist conceptions, the state is reimagined here as an inherently translocal in-
stitution, which localizes itself in a multiplicity of sites, encompassing the village
 introduction: rethinking corruption 7

land registry where the subaltern in India encounter corrupt bureaucrats (Gupta
1995: 379; Ferme 2013), the poor condition of roads or the vast mine-affected areas
of Angola’s Moxico province that frequently claim lives and keep passengers aware
of state abandonment (Neto 2017: 137), the checkpoints in Sri Lanka where both

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armed soldiers and civilians anticipate violence (Jeganathan 2000), and the local
dispensary in rural Niger whose emptiness reminds residents of the withdrawal
of the state (Masquelier 2001). Lastly, moral economy sheds light on how corrup-
tion gives rise to relationships of obligation and reciprocity (Carrier 2018: 30). A
moral economy approach advances our knowledge of how the ruler and the ruled
share the same “moral” universe whose values are not only linked to the ethic of
economic survival but also reciprocal exchanges that are embedded in and reflec-
tive of a wide range of social relations and norms (Mauss 2000; Polanyi 1968). As
James Scott notes:

This moral context consists of a set of expectations and preferences about rela-
tions between the rich and the poor. By and large, these expectations are cast in
the idioms of patronage, assistance, consideration, and helpfulness. They apply
to employment, tenancy, charity, feast giving, and the conduct of daily social en-
counters. They imply that those who meet these expectations will be treated with
respect, loyalty, and social recognition. (Scott 1985: 184)

The Politics of Corruption: Between the Grand and the Petty

Until now, there have been surprisingly few studies of corruption in relation to
the overlapping logics of negotiation, gift-giving, solidarity, predatory authority,
and redistributive accumulation (Olivier de Sardan 1999: 25). This is partly due
to the origins of research on corruption in the analytical toolkits of economics
and political science. Not so long ago, the field of anthropology accounted for a
mere two percent of existing literature on corruption. In fact, save for Scott’s early
work on clientelism, “corruption” was eerily muted in the anthropological litera-
ture until the 1990s, when we saw a “corruption eruption” (Naim 1995; Torsello
2016: 1). On the one hand, economists are interested in examining the structures
of economic incentives that make corruption more likely and assessing the im-
pact of corruption on efficient economic outcomes (Mauro 1995; Bardhan 2015).
Economists expect to see corruption when the benefits are high and the costs are
low (Rose-Ackerman 1975). The costs of corruption are seen as primarily rent-
seeking and social in nature. While the former describes the cost of the resources
expended in seeking the rents or navigating around the restrictions, the latter de-
rives from the rents and restrictions created by public officials (Khan 2006). On
the other hand, the task of analyzing the roots of corruption has fallen to polit-
ical scientists, who tend to define corruption in relation to state legitimacy, civil
8 they eat our sweat

society engagement, and the manner in which political power is imagined, exer-
cised, and contested (Szeftel 1998; Heidenheimer et al. 1989). Political scientists
argue that corruption is a problem of weak states, which are characterized by se-
curity, capacity, and legitimacy gaps. Both economists and political scientists are

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united in the view of corruption as illegality, that is, the violation of the formal
rules governing the allocation of public resources by officials in response to offers
of financial gain or political support (Khan 1998; Nye 1967). This conventional no-
tion of corruption—which overlooks how people everywhere come in contact with
the state and imagine it—is directed by Max Weber’s conception of the modern
bureaucracy, particularly its bifurcation of the public and private realms:

Legally and actually, office holding is not considered ownership of a course of

income, to be exploited for rents or emoluments in exchange for the rendering
of certain services… Rather, entrance into an office… is considered an accep-
tance of a specific duty of fealty to the purpose of the office (Amstreue) in return
for the grant of a secure existence. It is decisive for the modern loyalty to an of-
fice that, in the pure type, it does not establish a relationship to a person, like
the vassal’s or disciple’s faith under feudal or patrimonial authority, but rather is
devoted to impersonal and functional purposes… The political official—at least
in the fully developed modern state—is not considered the personal servant of a
ruler. (Weber 1978: 959)

Political scientists and economists typically converge on a basic distinction be-

tween two corruption typologies: grand (high-level) and petty (everyday) corrup-
tion. Grand corruption involves large financial sums. The most extreme forms are
instances where the state becomes an “apparatus of capture” (Ferme 2013: 957) and
a conduit for private accumulation (Joseph 1987; Scott 1972; Osoba 1996). In Nige-
ria, for instance, political coalitions and clusters have historically been engaged in
determined efforts to capture the state apparatus3 for the purpose of using its re-
distributive powers to enrich themselves and their cronies (Joseph 1987). Between
1960 and 1999, an estimated USD400 billion was stolen from Nigeria’s public ac-
counts, and between 2005 and 2014, about USD182 billion was lost through illicit
financial flows from the country (Hoffmann & Patel 2017: iv). Given its vital role
in capital accumulation, efforts to capture the state in order to deploy a set of rent-
seeking practices have intensified in the wake of the oil boom of the 1970s, when

3 Like the concept of corruption, Foucault’s concept of “apparatus” (dispositif in French) is at once
a most ubiquitous and nebulous concept. However, in his What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays,
Giorgio Agamben illuminates the notion. “I will call an apparatus,” he writes, “literally anything that
has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the
gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings” (2009: 14).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 9

the expanded national revenue base from oil earnings rose dramatically, account-
ing for about 75 percent of national revenues (Lewis 1996). Accordingly, political
capital became intertwined with economic power, so much so that the premium
on the former soon became a matter of life and death. As Nigerian historian Toyin

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Falola notes:

The only way to grow rich was through state patronage. Consequently, today’s
business elite struggles to identify with power in a variety of ways: by joining po-
litical parties, befriending military chieftains, and humoring the people in power.
Either to protect wealth acquired corruptly, or to prevent their rivals from us-
ing power to destroy them, the entrepreneur class continues to strengthen its
connections with the protective powers in the government. (Falola 1998: 63–64)

It has been argued that public officials in sub-Saharan Africa barely view them-
selves as rule-bound bureaucrats in the Weberian sense but instead have a pri-
mordial loyalty to family, kin, ethnic groups, and party supporters (Chabal &
Daloz 1999). The logic for this so-called deviant behavior was explained by the
Nigerian sociologist Peter Ekeh; his central thesis is that the legacy of colonial-
ism in Africa culminated in the coexistence of two distinct publics: the primordial
and the civic. The former is perceived to be amoral and devoid of the generalized
moral imperatives at play in the private realm and in the promoridal public (Ekeh
1975: 92). While Africans experienced a moral obligation to the ethnic primor-
dial public, the westernized civic public was largely seen as a contested terrain
for private accumulation. The dialectics of the two publics are implicated in the
distinctive woes that troubles Africa today, where people’s first loyalty is to their
ethnic identities at the expense of the nation state (Ekeh 1975: 92). Corruption
is the “acme of the dialectics,” and derives directly from the legitimation of the
need to nourish the primordial public (e.g. one’s kin) with largesse seized from
the civic public (Ekeh 1975: 110). Public officials in Africa are generally expected
by their own community and adherents to acquire fortunes through corruption
and cronyism. In Uganda for instance, stealing state funds is commonly seen as
“smart,” not immoral. The one who fails to cash in on his position might be told,
Ngor nyak I boto pa lawok (literally, “peas yield in a toothless person’s garden”)
(Baez-Camargo et al. 2017: 27). In DR Congo, a policeman who does not accept
bribes is called yuma, which means stupid (Alexandre 2018: 568).
Ekeh’s thesis rings true in contemporary Africa, where people often express far
stronger loyalty to their ethnic kinsmen than to the nation state. In Nigeria, the
only time when people appear to share a sense of national identity is when the
national football team—nicknamed the “Super Eagles”—is playing a match. Here,
government business is no man’s business. In fact, a standing joke is that Nigeria
is a career rather than a national identity. In this light, stealing from the state ap-
paratus to nourish one’s community is widely justified, even a respectable crime.
10 they eat our sweat

Not to do this is to risk being criticized and ostracized as a person without esteem
(Tankebe 2010: 301; Tankebe et al. 2019). The huge pressures on African public
servants to break with conventional norms of civil service is evident in Nigeria,
where the higher one ascends the social ladder, the more one is expected to do

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for one’s people. High-placed government officials and street-level bureaucrats are
under immense pressure to provide gifts of money, jobs, and social amenities to
their ethnic communities (Agbiboa 2011: 498). In Cameroon, elites feel constant
pressure from their local village or ethnic communities to use every means, both
moral and immoral, to “redistribute” as a way of demonstrating their commitment
toward development (Orock 2015: 562). In Kenya, the state and society are inti-
mately linked by a gluttonous and immoral mentality: “It’s our time to eat” (Wrong
2009; Lindberg 2003).
Yet, Ekeh’s thesis is not without flaws, perhaps the most obvious one being
its over-simplification. Though influential, his argument has been criticized for
disregarding the real experience of cleavages, inequalities, and ethnic hierarchies
shaping the life chances of Africans, and making ethnic mobilization an attrac-
tive proposition for many elites and non-elites (Mustapha 2012). African civil
societies, for instance, have been accused of ethnic fragmentation and primor-
dial attachments (Osaghae 2006: 17). Moreover, Ekeh’s two publics overlooks the
reality of multiple overlapping publics and counter-publics in postcolonial Africa
(Mbembe 1992: 4; Mustapha 2012)—a far cry from Jurgen Habermas’ (1991, 2006)
unitary theorization. In short, Ekeh’s approach represents an inadequate heuristic
for locating popular politics in contemporary Africa.
Despite the above shortcomings, Ekeh’s theory has influenced major theoreti-
cal frameworks and debates that seek to understand how and why patron-client
networks⁴ persists in Africa today through the merger of formal bureaucratic pro-
cedures with traditional neo-patrimonial norms (Mamdani 1996). Such theories—
known as “politics of the belly” (Bayart 1993), neopatrimonialism (Bratton & van
de Walle 1994; Medard 1986), “embedded autonomy” (Evans 1995), “instrumen-
talized disorder” (Chabal & Daloz 1999), and “disorientations of civil society”
(Osaghae 2006)—have sought to explain state pathologies and politics in Africa by
alluding to the dynamics of internal social structures. Invariably, they have crys-
talized in the view of corruption as woven into the fabric of the African polity
(Chabal & Daloz 1999: 99), reinforced by political and moral economies in which
the spoils of the state are expected to be (re)distributed through social networks

⁴ Patron-client networks generally describe “a set of transactions which may overlap with and yet
are analytically distinct from corruption. Patron-client relationships are repeated relationships of ex-
change between specific patrons and their clients. A number of features distinguish patron-client
exchanges from other types of exchange. First, such exchanges are usually personalized. They involve
an identifiable patron and an identifiable set of clients. Entry and exit are considerably less free com-
pared to normal market transactions. Secondly, the exchange is between two distinct types of agents,
distinguished by status, power, or other characteristics” (Khan 1998: 23).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 11

embedded in the state (Joseph 1987; Bayart et al. 1999). In Nigeria, patron-client
networks constitutes much of the social fabric for informal and party politics
and controls the possibility for political participation and social mobility (Forrest
1993: 5; Gatt & Owen 2018: 1198). The result is a personalized form of rule where

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political elites are able to shore up patronage by selectively distributing govern-
ment resources to their local communities. In this perspective, corruption occurs
when social expectations are unmet or when the spoils of the state (“national cake,”
as Nigerians like to say) are not appropriately and timeously redistributed. In this
light, redistribution becomes the litmus test for political candidates and political
accountability.
It is against this backdrop that Olivier de Sardan (1999: 18) has argued that the
logic of solidarity networks in Africa includes an obligation of mutual assistance:
“I scratch your back, you scratch my back.” This logic of solidarity and reciprocity
is richly documented in ethnographies of the state and socio-economic life in
southwest and southeast Nigeria. On the former, anthropologist Karin Barber
(1981: 724) writes: “The dynamic impulse of political life is the rise of self-made
men. Individuals compete to make a position for themselves by recruiting sup-
porters willing to acknowledge their greatness […] but the self-made man, rather
like the Big Man of New Guinea, is only ‘big’ if other people think so. He has to
secure their attention by display and redistribution of wealth and by using his in-
fluence as a Big Man to protect them and intervene on their behalf. If he is not able
to do this, he will not attract a following.” On the latter, Smith (2007: 65) writes:
“A man who enriches himself through emptying government coffers is despised
in his community only if he fails to share enough of that wealth with his people
through direct gifts to individuals and community development projects, but also
through more ceremonial distribution such as lavish weddings for his children,
spectacular burials for his parents, and extravagant chieftaincy installations cere-
monies for himself. At such events, his people enjoy his wealth—they chop (eat)
his money.” In both ethnographies, the power of the big man intertwines with the
people, putting both actors in a precarious⁵ position.
Richard Joseph (1987: 191) challenged what Crawford Young and Thomas
Turner (1985: 451) before him referred to as the state’s moral entitlement to le-
gitimacy, arguing instead that insecurity is a common denominator for those in
positions of political power, the included, and those on the margins of the state, the
excluded. This “precariousness of prebendalism,” as David Pratten (2013) frames
it, explains in part why political patrons in Nigeria often rely on mobilizing and

⁵ The Latin word precarious means “given as favor,” or “depending on the favor of another person.”
The earliest meaning of the English word “precarious” relates to the idea of being given something—
the right to occupy land, or to hold a particular position—“at the pleasure of ” another person, who
might simply choose to take it back at any time. In its more modern usage, precarity means “subject to
or fraught with physical danger or insecurity; at risk of falling, collapse, or similar accident; unsound,
unsafe, rickety” (Oxford English Dictionary 2012; see also Standing 2011).
12 they eat our sweat

arming marginalized youth⁶ during election times as political thugs. In Nigeria,

big men are under constant pressure to remember and reward these rugged youth,
since the big man status is unfixed and multiple: “followers may discard Big Men
when they do not deliver. At the same time a follower is not loyal to just one Big

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Man, but typically enjoys different relationships with different Big Men” (Utas
2012: 8). This is precisely the sense in which bigmanity in Africa has been linked
to being for someone else or other people; in Mende, “stand for them” or “be for
them” (numui lo va). As one young man put it: “‘being for’ someone implies that
you have made yourself subject to the person. You work for him, fight for him, etc.
And he is in turn responsible for you in all ways [such as court fines, clothes, food,
school fees, or bridewealth]” (Bledsoe 1990: 75). Similarly, regarding Mende so-
cial practices: what is most important is that everyone is accounted for by someone
else, that is, that everyone is connected in a relationship of patronage or clientship
(Ferme 2001: 106). In return, the patron, the person who stands for someone else,
expects a level of respect, support, and privilege, as well as a share in any wealth that
the client might accumulate (Hoffman 2007: 652). This “wealth in people” (Utas
2005a) is captured in an ethnographic study of the politics of plunder in southern
Nigeria, which finds that one’s achievements for one’s people (se enye anam) con-
stitutes a key social marker of personal wealth (ackpokpor inyene), showing how
the personal and the social are interconnected. This explains why the obituaries of
big men (akamba owo) often recount their achievements for their local communi-
ties. The logic is simple: wealth begets social responsibilities (Gore & Pratten 2003:
219–20). Similarly, in his seminal study of political consciousness among the poor
in Ibadan, southwest Nigeria, Gavin Williams found that “the values and goals in
terms of which the success of the rich is defined are to a large extent shared by
the poor and define their aspirations, thereby legitimizing the rewards of the rich”
(1980: 112).
What emerges from the above is a notion of corruption as a breakdown of
traditional moral economy in which those who have (well-off elites) are obliged
to provide for the have-nots (deprived non-elites). Perhaps, nowhere is this more
evident than in the rise of advance fee fraud (“419”) in Nigeria and “the magical al-
lure of making money from nothing” (Andrews 1997: 3). The figure “419” signifies
“Section 419” of Nigeria’s Criminal Code Act 1990, Chapter 38, which states that:
“Any person who by any false pretense, and with intent to defraud, obtains from
any other person anything capable of being stolen, or induces any other person to
deliver any person anything capable of being stolen, is guilty of a felony, and is li-
able to imprisonment for three years.” Built upon duplicitous illusions, 419 e-mails
blur the putative lines between “the forged and the far-fetched, the spirit and the
letter of the counterfeit, the fetish and the fake” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006: 15).

⁶ In Nigeria, the concept of “youth” occupies a category of risk; it labels a dangerous, insurgent, and
unpredictable force that threatens the social and political fabric (Pratten 2013: 245).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 13

Although the name Nigeria has become a synonym for criminality and fraud in
the global imagination, 419 scams are not unique to that country. In fact, “post-
colonies are quite literally associated with a counterfeit modernity, a modernity of
counterfeit” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006: 13).

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While economists and political scientists have indubitably contributed to a glob-
ally circulating set of anti-corruption campaigns, policies, and perception-based
surveys, they have either explained away the social embeddedness of corruption
or lost sight of the local terrain and systems of action and meaning that animiate
corrupt practices and imbue them with social significance (Pierce 2016: 18). We
still know remarkably little about how corruption is routinely encountered and
negotiated in concrete instantiations in state margins. Yet survey evidence from
Africa shows that ordinary citizens are most burdened by corruption when try-
ing to gain access to indispensable basic social services in their own country; in
particular, poor people who use public services in Africa are twice as likely as
the rich to pay bribes, particularly in urban areas (Global Corruption Barome-
ter 2015: 2–3). In Nigeria, the average citizen expects to pay a bribe (egunje) to
gain access to public services, even those marked as free. The thread of corruption
runs through schools, courts, churches, hospitals, police stations and checkpoints
(Obadare 2019: 165). Survey evidence from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
shows that roughly a third of adult citizens who had come into contact with public
officials had been asked for a bribe. According to the NBS, a total of 82 million
naira (USD200,000) was paid in bribes to public officials in Nigeria in the previ-
ous twelve-month period. This equates to an average of one bribe per person per
year (BBC 2017). Another survey by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UN-
ODC), in association with the NBS, found that poor Nigerians paid an estimated
USD4.6 billion in bribes to public officials between June 2015 and May 2016, con-
cluding that “bribery is an established part of the administrative procedure in
Nigeria” (UNODC 2017: 5–6). Nigeria is not alone. In Kenya, it is estimated the
average urban resident pays sixteen bribes per month (Ellis 2006: 204). President
Daniel Arap Moi, during his twenty-four years in power, is widely credited with
reducing Kenya to the home of the bribe, nchi ya kitu kidogo (“land of the ‘little
something”’) (Wrong 2009: 2). An empirical study of Uganda’s health care system
found that nothing can be obtained without paying a bribe. In fact, almost half
of all people who contacted the health sector in Uganda paid a bribe (Marquette,
Peiffer, & Armytage 2019). Soliciting a bribe from a poor woman with acute chest
pain, a Ugandan nurse is quoted as saying: “These days there are no free things,
[not] even at the main hospital. Give me 20000 [schillings] and I will take you to the
doctor” (Baez-Camargo et al. 2017: 12). To receive medical treatment, poor Ugan-
dans often have to find a musawo nga mukwanogwo (health worker who is your
friend). Beyond Africa, in the Philippines, poor people often have to pay bribes
ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 pesos (USD58 to USD60), with some yielding up to
three months’ wages to their superiors in gratitude for their job (Quah 2006: 176).
14 they eat our sweat

By happenstance rather than by design (Haller & Shore 2005: 6),⁷ a growing
body of anthropological literature on corruption has emerged relatively recently.
These ground-level studies have questioned the neat divide between the public
and the private, the legal and the illegal (Gupta 1995; Ruud 2000; Bocarejo 2018),

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especially neo-Weberian assumptions about the nature of state institutions or
the significance of a clash between patrimonial and bureaucratic political logics
(Pierce 2016: 18; Piliavsky 2014). This “anthropological turn” pivots on how cor-
ruption, as a transgressive category, manifests in “gray practices” (Routley 2016;
Muir & Gupta 2018). Anthropologists have also called attention to how people
and NGOs navigate the ambivalence of corruption through tactics such as cul-
tural construction (Lamour 2008), mis-recognition (Hansen 1995), negotiations
(Routley 2016; Anjaria 2011), irony, rumor, and laughter (Gupta 2012), cate-
gorization (Werner 2000), straddling of political and economic spheres (Bayart
1993), and everyday deception (Smith 2007). These anthropological analyses ex-
tend to why corruption has taken on the forms it has and how cultural systems
and value codes permit the legitimation of corruption. By anchoring corruption
in everyday life, anthropologists call our attention to the social worlds that allows
corruption to flourish.
Unlike the central focus of economists and political scientists on grand or
high-level corruption, anthropologists are generally interested in petty corruption,
defined as “everyday abuse of entrusted power by low- and mid-level public offi-
cials in their interaction with ordinary citizens, who often are trying to access basic
goods or services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments, and other
agencies” (Transparency International n.d.). Known in Greece as fakelaki (“lit-
tle bribery envelopes”), in Nigeria as egunje (involuntary gifts), in Kenya as kintu
kidogo (something small), and in Angola as gasosas (“soft drinks,” often demanded
at police checkpoints), petty corruption involves forms of bribery and extortion in
daily life. In developing regions such as Africa and South Asia, petty corruption
(particularly by law enforcement officials) is the “most visible face of corruption”
and a primary source of “public irritation” (Khan 2006). At the same time, petty
corruption has been labelled “quiet corruption,” a term used by the World Bank
(2010: 2) to capture forms of everyday corruption and malpractices that are nei-
ther easily observed and quantified nor necessitate monetary exchange, but which
hold major, long-term ramifications for service delivery, regulation, and house-
holds. Visible or quiet, petty corruption has become a way of life and a mode of
business and politics in much of the developing world (Ellis 2006: 204). In Nige-
ria, petty corruption is commonly regarded as a necessary evil or simply “the way
things are done” (Hoffmann & Patel 2017). As early as 1950, future Nigerian prime

⁷ Many anthropologists say they stumbled upon or noticed corruption while researching other top-
ics. For example, in his Moral Economies of Corruption, Steven Pierce (2016: 5–6) notes that “The
starting point of this project came while I collected oral histories about local government across the
twentieth century.”
 introduction: rethinking corruption 15

minister Tafawa Balewa noted that the “twin curses” of bribery and corruption
“pervade every rank and department” (Watts 2019: 554). Two years later, in 1952,
the Commission of Inquiry into the Administration of the Lagos Town Council
(“Storey Report”) observed widespread practice of giving an unofficial cash gift or

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a fee (bribe) for services rendered:

Hospitals where the nurses require a fee from every in-patient before
the prescribed medicine, and even the ward servants must have their
dash [bribe] before bringing the bed-pan; it is known to be rife in
the Police Motor Traffic Unit, which has unrivalled opportunities on
account of the common practice of over-loading vehicles; pay clerks
make a deduction from the wages of daily paid staff; produce exam-
iners exact a fee from the produce buyer for every bag that is graded
and scaled; domestic servants pay a proportion of their wages to the
senior of them, besides often having paid lump sum to buy the jobs.”
(Storey Report 1953)

Despite attempts to trivialize petty corruption, empirical studies show that this
form of corruption saps the legitimacy of the state and damages confidence in pub-
lic institutions and the political system (DFID 2015: 83).⁸ Further, petty corruption
disproportionately affects the poor in developing countries, while increasing
transaction costs and general lawlessness (Khan 2006). Every stolen money robs
the poor of an equal opportunity in life and precludes investment in human capi-
tals by governments (World Bank 2020). While grand corruption did not prevent
the rapid development of the East Asian countries, each of these countries took
steps to address bureaucratic corruption (Kang 2002; Prasad & Nickow 2016),
illustrating the cumulative threat of petty corruption.

Grand and Petty Corruption: Two Poles of a Continuum

The disparities between high-level and petty forms of corruption notwithstanding,

this book interrogates both basic typologies as interconnected (Torsello & Venard
2015: 40), or, as Olivier de Sardan (1999) puts it, “two poles of a continuum.” In her
study of corruption in Accra, Jennifer Hasty (2005a: 342) argues that the ubiqui-
tous nature of petty corruption “performs mimetic and contagious relations with
the episodic spectacles of grand corruption—and vice versa. This enchanted rela-
tion is essential to the durability and proliferation of corruption.” The implication

⁸ Empirical research has shown that citizens who lack confidence in public institutions may be more
likely to accept bribery and less likely to participate in political processes (DFID 2015: 83).
16 they eat our sweat

is that neatly categorizing corruption into only two typologies reduces its com-
plexity and fluidity. As Davide Torsello and Bertrand Venard (2015: 37) tell us,
“focusing on one type of corruption puts any social reality into a static state without
taking into account its environment, when corruption is in fact a dynamic social

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reality linked to its social and political setting, which by nature changes over time.”
Moreover, the distinctions between grand and petty corruption downplays the in-
terplay between elite and popular politics, especially the cultural forces that shape
elite-subaltern interaction (Obadare 2019: 164). A case in point is Lagos, where
transport trade unions and local and state governments are deeply embroiled in
a complex relationship that evokes Bähre’s notion of violent and shifting mutuali-
ties in Cape Town. According to Bähre (2014: 576), mutualities produce particular
economies that cannot exist without some level of social networks of trust, reci-
procity, and protection to deal with the risks and radical uncertainties that average
citizens and public officials face on a day-to-day basis. Mutuality is most visible in
developing countries, where the state may be unable or unwilling to deliver polit-
ical goods. In such a seemingly weak environment, the state and (un)civil society
are often implicated in political and moral economies of corruption. As Adebanwi
and Obadare note regarding Nigeria:

Given the incapacity of the state, its divisive nature, and the pervasive poverty
which these (re)produce—much of which is also explained by corruption—many
Nigerians survive on the patron-client relationships and other identitarian con-
nections which link them to particular members of the elite. This means that
while Nigerians are generally socially supportive of anti-corruption efforts, many
are politically or economically connected to the corruption complex directly or
indirectly. (2011: 195)

As a fundamental aspect of social relations, the logic of mutuality has yet to pen-
etrate the existent literature on corruption in Africa, which all too narrowly pivot
on the idea of the state while overlooking the people who populate it. In fact, “the
very idea of elites suggests qualities of agency, exclusivity, power and an appar-
ent separation from mass society” (Shore 2002: 4). Yet, as scholars such as Philip
Abrams (1988) and Timothy Mitchell (1991) remind us, states in their abstract
form do not actually exist as distinct entities but rather as socially embedded and
relational sets of persons that animate state institutions. No wonder, then, that
George Marcus (1983: 12) calls for a rethinking of elites as socially situated groups
in relation to other non-elite groups. In a like vein, Sandipto Dasgupta (2019: 562)
argues that “public officials are not abstracted from private power relations in so-
ciety, and private actors are not bereft of public political capacities.” From Africa
to Latin America and South Asia, corruption is embedded within the logics of
negotiation and bargaining, and ordinary citizens simultaneously encounter the
state as an extension of disciplinary power and an epicenter of negotiation and le-
gitimation of spatial claims (Anjaria 2011: 58; Olivier de Sardan 1999: 253, 256).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 17

In Cameroon, for example, Orock points to how the social expectation that elites
provide development projects “evokes the assumptions of conviviality that under-
lie social relations between the well-off (elites) and the less privileged non-elites”
(2015: 541).

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About this Book

This grounded, bottom-up study examines corruption in the context of every-

day encounters and interactions between state (e.g. law enforcement agents) and
nonstate (e.g. transport unionists and tax collectors) actors in Nigeria’s road trans-
port sector. The study is about the commonplace struggles and instrumentalities
of survival of informal road transport workers (e.g. drivers, conductors, own-
ers, unionists) refracted through a “thick” discussion of corruption, coercion,
and complicity on the congested and dangerous roads of Lagos. Located within
the above anthropological critique of corruption, the book argues that average
Nigerians (in particular, road transport workers) are not passive in the face of cor-
ruption, but rather appropriate it in a variety of ways to minimize risk, maximize
profit, and impose order on their workaday world. The study takes an actor-
centered approach that explores how transport workers encounter and respond
to the situation defined by extortion and violence in which they ply their trade.
The book’s overarching focus is, thus, on the role and impact of corruption in
the context of the everyday life of informal road transport workers, particularly
how these mobile but immobilized actors bend the rules to manage their pre-
carious dwelling-in-motion. By so doing, the book takes up Olivier de Sardan’s
(1999: 25) call to explore the social mechanisms of corruption and its processes of
legitimation from the actors’ viewpoint.
As used in this study, the concept of “informal” means the self-organizing
capacity of social actors who operate “inside the system, but outside the law”
(Rasmussen 2012). Across African cities, informality is a way of life and a sur-
vival tactic for growing numbers of people on the margins of society, accounting
for an estimated 86 percent of total employment, or 72 percent, excluding agricul-
ture. In fact, nine out of ten jobs in Africa today are informal (Lindell & Adama
2020: 3–4). Despite the vital role of the informal sector as the main driver of job
growth in urban Africa, informal workers are commonly stigmatized as illegal and
undesirable occupants of urban spaces and thus targeted by state restrictions and
eviction campaigns based on neoliberal policies aimed at modernizing and order-
ing the city.⁹ To survive, informal workers often resort to giving bribes to secure
protection from daily harassment and arrest. I want to suggest up front that the
insights of this book are equally about corruption as they are about the struggle

⁹ These actions run contrary to the basic thrust of the “New Urban Agenda” of the UN Habitat III,
which seeks to promote inclusive cities that “leave no one behind” (UN Habitat III 2016: 7).
18 they eat our sweat

for daily survival—the two intertwine in the context of informal transport and
commuter journeys in Lagos, where giving egunje (bribes) is generally viewed as a
legitimate survival strategy. In other words, this book is less a systematic account
of corruption than an empirically grounded analysis of the politics and poetics of

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survival in everyday, urban Nigeria.
In addition to the “demand side” of corruption (e.g. bribe solicitation by police
officers), this book engages the oft-neglected “supply side” (e.g. facilitation pay-
ments). In Uganda, for example, so high is the supply side that the courts, in a
bid to combat it, have plastered signs all over the courthouse. “Most court services
are free,” the inscriptions read. “Do Not Corrupt Us. Offender will be Prosecuted”
(Tabachnik 2011: 23). In Freetown, Sierra Leone, it is common for motorbike-taxi
(okada) drivers to supply bribes to police officers ex ante. Known as bora and ajo,
this advance payment eases their passage through road checkpoints (Lipton 2017:
93). In Bukavu, the DRC, most taxi drivers lack the required driving particulars. So,
they supply USD1 as bribe to each police station before driving. In this way, they
are able to drive without police harassment. Police stations, for their part, must
remit a weekly bribe of USD60–120 to the traffic police headquarters in Bukavu,
depending on the lucrative location of the police station (Alexandre 2018: 564).
The concepts of demand and supply are used loosely in this study, since av-
erage citizens can, and regularly do, “demand” corruption on the part of people
in positions of power or control (e.g. drivers). To illustrate, during my field-
work in Lagos, I was struck by how often passengers of the yellow minibus-taxis
(danfos) persuaded their driver1⁰ to follow the illegal “one way” route in order to
beat traffic jam (go-slow, as they say in Lagos). The same passengers do not hesitate
to insult the driver when he is pulled over by the policeman for a traffic viola-
tion. They will demand that he “settles” (bribes) the officer to avoid delay. This, of
course, is a rational response on the part of passengers, since bribing a law enforce-
ment agent to avoid a penalty for a traffic violation is generally less costly, risky,
and time-consuming than would be going through “due process” for the violation
(Hoffmann & Patel 2017: 10). When a driver chooses to maintain his correct lane,
whether slow or fast, the same passengers are often incensed and start to repeat-
edly berate him. These passengers are aware that following “one way” is illegal and
dangerous. Yet, they demand it because they see others doing so or expect others
to do so. They rationalize “one way” as a practical response to the existential angst
of being stuck in traffic and “packed like sardines” for any number of hours. This
social expectation is conveyed by the popular Nigerian saying, Naija no dey carry
last (“Nigerians strive to finish first”).11 The central point here is that corruption

1⁰ In Lagos, the taxi-driver is a “big man” in relation to the passenger. For, as Olatunde Lawuyi
(1988: 5) observes with regard to Yorùbá taxi-drivers in southwest Nigeria: “The travelers themselves
know that, if angered, the driver may refuse to take them to their destinations, for a certain power
inheres in the owner’s control of the vehicle and in a sense makes him a privileged citizen.”
11 “Naija no dey carry last” is the title of a book satirizing Nigeria by the late Pius Adesanmi.
 introduction: rethinking corruption 19

is often a tactical weapon wielded by both the strong and the weak, by those in the
proverbial driving seat and those being chauffeured around the city. In short, as
Olivier de Sardan (1999: 250) argues, corruption is so widespread in Africa that
the average citizen has a routine experience of dealing with it.

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The above necessitates a dialectical approach that pays attention to the practi-
cal and social life of corruption, and the strategies of the various actors involved.
That dynamic approach will shed much-needed light onto “gray practices” that
challenge idées reçues of corruption. Thus, a dialectical approach to corruption
lays bare the complicated web of social norms, value acceptances, power relations,
negotiations, and social networks that animates local discourse and practices of
corruption. In this light, then, corruption is best approached as a window onto
how the postcolonial state is imagined and experienced in everyday life (Gupta
1995: 385; Masquelier 2001: 269). So conceived, any serious study of corruption
in Africa today must move us beyond the idea of the state as an autonomous and
unified entity and, instead, explore thoroughly its embodied and hybrid realities.

A Culture of/against Corruption

This book grounds corruption on the survival tactics of marginalized transport

operators in Lagos as they socially navigate12 a bumpy terrain embroiled in man-
ifold risks, ranging from travel to unfamiliar places and, most of all, other city
dwellers. In so doing, this book breaks with cultural primordialist analyses of cor-
ruption in Africa (in the form of Patrick Chabal & Jean-Pascal Daloz [2006] and
Jean-Francois Bayart [2005]) that tend to misconstrue culture as path dependent,
that is, as a set of primordial phenomena rather than of contested and protean
attributes, both shaping and being shaped by socio-economic aspects of daily hu-
man interactions. Citizens and public officials run the risk of essentializing rather
than explaining culture when they apply it as a “primordial trap, a mystical haze,
or a source of hegemonic power” (Rao & Walton 2004: 3; see also Meagher 2006)
in justification of otherwise despicable acts of corruption. While corruption sat-
urates the political economies of African countries, it is not somehow organic
to African culture. As Smith (2007: 224–25) notes, Nigeria is as much a culture
against corruption as it is about a culture of corruption. Corruption is neither
rooted in primordial traditional culture nor is it a desirable feature of everyday life.
If by culture we mean the general moral orientation of the population in question,
then the vast majority of Nigerians, nay Africans, are against rather than in sup-
port of corruption (Rothstein 2018: 39). Gift giving in Africa is not infrequently

12 Henrik Vigh defines navigation as the striving “to direct and control the movement of one’s life
rather than having it be directed and moved by the shifting of the unstable social environment it is
immersed in” (2006: 130).
20 they eat our sweat

rationalized by political elites and street-level bureaucrats as “part of our culture,”

and outsiders are warned not to conflate it with bribery. However, Chief Olusegun
Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president (1999–2007), debunked this viewpoint:

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I shudder at how an integral aspect of our culture could be taken as the basis for
rationalizing otherwise despicable behavior. In the African concept of apprecia-
tion and hospitality, the gift is usually a token. It is not demanded. The value is in
the open and never in secret. Where it is excessive, it becomes an embarrassment
and it is returned. If anything, corruption has perverted and destroyed this aspect
of our culture. (cited in Pope 2000: 8)

Obasanjo’s observation is not evidently insincere. A 2005 Afrobarometer survey13

in Kenya found that 84 percent of all respondents think that a public official who
demands a favor or an additional payment for some service that is part of his job
is violating his responsibility to the public (Figure 2). Kenyans are also less accept-
ing of a public official who gives a job to someone from his family who does not
have adequate qualifications, with 72 percent considering this a punishable action.
The study concluded that, “Clearly, traditional cultural practices, whether of gift
or other varieties, do not, in the eyes of the public, entitle government officials to
take advantage of them” (Afrobarometer Data 2006a: 1).

90 84
80 72
70
55
60
percent

50
40
26
30 21
20 16
6 11
10 3
0
Development for friends / Job for unqualified family Favor or payment for
supporters member service

Not wrong at all Wrong but understandable Wrong and punishable

Fig. 2. What is corrupt?

Source: Afrobarometer (2006a: 2).

Similarly, in his analysis of corruption and the use of monies in Mongolia, David
Sneath contrasts “acceptable enaction” (e.g. helping family and friends) with “un-
acceptable transaction” (e.g. bribing an official). He offers this example: “The gift

13 The Afrobarometer survey was conducted between September 2 and 28, 2005. It involved face-to-
face interviews with 1278 Kenyan men and women of voting age, selected through a scientific random
sampling procedure in accordance with international polling standards. Interviews were conducted
in all eight of the country’s provinces, and 51 of its 72 districts. Citizens of each province are repre-
sented in the weighted sample in proportion to their share in the national population (Afrobarometer
2006a: 1).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 21

of a bottle of vodka to a relative who uses a company truck to help a family move,
for example (a very common form of assistance among rural kin), is expressive
of the supportive relationship between the parties concerned and is not thought
of as an exchange. But giving cash to a railway baggage handler to load an over-

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weight package onto a train is clearly understood to be a transaction—in this sense
a potentially corrupt one” (Sneath 2006: 89). In a study of the social life of cor-
ruption in India, Arild Ruud (2000: 282–83) shows that, even from a culturally
sensitive perspective, ordinary people from many different backgrounds often de-
nounced corrupt practices such as bribe-taking, rule-bending, and favoritism. In
his study of the relationship between corruption and culture in the Pacific Islands,
Peter Lamour (2008: 229–30) quotes a Prime Minister in the State of Samoa who
said: “What determines an acceptable gift is 5 percent policy/law and 95 percent
common sense,” adding “a bottle of whisky or ten tala [USD3.60] is considered
to be acceptable gift, while a gift of say 3,000 tala [USD1,080] would certainly be
regarded as unacceptable and this would be seen as a bribe.” The foregoing chal-
lenges the common recourse to some generalized notion of culture to explain the
banalization of corruption and supports the call for an avoidance of the “dual trap
of condemnation and relativism” in the corruption literature (Das 2015: 323).
The Afrobarometer (2006b: 33) survey shows that most Africans think that cor-
ruption is “wrong and punishable”1⁴ (Figure 3). Hence, to blame corruption on the
culture of a nation is tantamount to saying that its people are inherently fraudulent
or prone to corruption, which is hardly a sound point of departure for inclusive
policy change (Rothstein 2018: 40). In the case of Nigeria, ordinary citizens are
largely supportive of anti-corruption campaigns, even if for ethnic, religious, or
political reasons, they may not want to see certain politicians held accountable (i.e.
punished) for their corrupt behavior (Adebanwi & Obadare 2011). This observa-
tion problematizes the moralizing, culturalist view that Nigerians are somehow
more prone to corruption than others. This view is best exemplified by remarks
made by former United States’ Secretary of State Colin Powell, who suggested that
corruption and crime are natural to Nigerians, because “it is in their natural cul-
ture” (cited in Gates 1995). But, as Stephen Ellis (2016: 3) asks, “Can culture be an
explanation for such behavior? In any case, how does a specific culture come into
being? Didn’t the experience of colonial rule play some part?”
The above-cited Afrobarometer survey is buttressed by further survey evidence
from Africa and South Asia which demonstrates that ordinary citizens in these
societies do not only take a clear stance against corruption but also conceive of
corruption in a similar way to global organizations such as the World Bank and

1⁴ The Afrobarometer surveyed individuals from Nigeria, Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana,
Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania,
Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
22 they eat our sweat

For each of the following, please indicate whether you Category Response (%)
think the act is not wrong at all, wrong but
understandable, or wrong and punishable.

A public official decides to locate a development Not wrong at all 3

project in area where his friends and supporters Wrong but understandable 12
live. 82

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Wrong and punishable
4
Don’t know
A government official gives a job to someone from Not wrong at all 1
his family who does not have adequate Wrong but understandable 6
qualifications. 91
Wrong and punishable
1
Don’t know
A government official demands a favor or an Not wrong at all 1
additonal payment for some service that is part of
Wrong but understandable 8
his job.
Wrong and punishable 88
Don’t know 3

Fig. 3. Thinking about corruption

Source: Afrobarometer (2006b: 33).

Transparency International (Rothstein & Torsello 2014: 276). In its Annual Meet-
ing’s address in 1996, former World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn adduced
the vox populi as the primary reason why the World Bank reinvented itself as an
anti-corruption organization:

And let’s not mince words: we need to deal with the cancer of corruption. In coun-
try after country, it is the people who are demanding action on this issue. They know
that corruption diverts resources from the poor to the rich, increases the cost
of running business, distorts public expenditures, and deters foreign investors.
They also know that it erodes the constituency for aid programs and humani-
tarian relief. And we all know that it is a major barrier to sound and equitable
development. (Wolfensohn 1996; my emphasis)

While the above evidence shows that most people in the developing world disap-
prove of corruption, it persists nevertheless because it is tied to the pursuit of daily
survival.
My own findings from “hanging out” in the congested bus stations-cum-markets
of Lagos suggest that the everyday and political life of corruption are intertwined,
giving rise to systemic corruption. For instance, during my fieldwork, minibus-taxi
drivers and passengers stressed that the dreaded motor park touts (agberos)—who
violently extract bribes from drivers in the name of the National Union of Road
Transport Workers (NURTW)—are powerfully linked to politicians and police
chiefs. The cash bribes they collect each day serves to grease the union-state-police
mutualities. As one resident of Lagos opined: “There is an apparent collusion be-
tween these touts, law enforcement agencies and some highly influential persons
and politicians in the state. That is the reason why at some bus stops, unionists
are deployed to collect illegal tolls and levies on behalf of influential persons,
 introduction: rethinking corruption 23

even law enforcement agents” (The Guardian 2017). This observation points to the
limitation of the anthropology of corruption, especially its tendency to overlook
political science literature, including political culture, thought, and language.1⁵ As
Susan Rose-Ackerman (2010) observes: “Ethnographic research tends to concen-

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trate on cultural and social expectations to explain the prevalence of personalistic
ties and quid pro quo transactions to the exclusion of looking at the dynamics
of ‘grand’ corruption, its systematic qualities, or the central role played by the
state.”

A Critical Ethnography of the State

This study takes a critical ethnography of the state perspective, which focuses on
how the postcolonial state is constructed from below through the practice of ev-
eryday corruption and discursive productions. The state becomes an agent that
simultaneously exists in and is continuously created by society. As Ruud (2000:
282) argues, “the state as it appears locally in the eyes of its citizens is colored by
the circumstance of corruption as one of the means of mediation between the state
and individuals.”
This study is positioned within an emergent corpus of works that have articu-
lated the theorized shift from government to governance in the developing world,
whereby the state is increasingly hollowed out as functions are dispersed to supra-
national entities and nonstate actors (Ferguson 2006; Bagayoko et al. 2016). By
governance, I mean the hybrid arena in which formal and informal, and state
and nonstate, actors interact to make decisions and regulate the public realm. In
this light, bifurcated notions of the state as either strong or weak pale into in-
significance when compared with a hybrid form of governance, and “language of
stateness,”1⁶ that is neither hegemonic nor subaltern (Hansen & Stepputat 2001;
Jaffe 2013: 736). This hybrid system is, perhaps, most discernable in the decentered
notion of power that underpins state-society dialectics.
Rejecting Nietzsche’s notion of power as relations of domination, that is, that
power descends in a linear direction from those who have it to those subjected to
it (Sluga 2005: 232), this book operates from the Foucauldian mobile understand-
ing of power as profoundly relational. Power is a product of complex struggles and
negotiations over authority, status, reputation, and resources, which requires the
participation of networks of actors and constituencies (Long 1999: 3). Far from

1⁵ A notable exception is Claudio Lomnitz’s brilliant article on “Ritual, Rumor and Corruption in
the Constitution of Polity in Modern Mexico,” which argues that there is a general relationship between
“political ritual” and localized appropriations of state institutions (corruption) (1995: 20–21).
1⁶ Hansen and Stepputat (2001) distinguishes practical languages of governance (such as the
monopoly over violence) from the symbolic languages of authority (such as the institutionalization
of the law).
24 they eat our sweat

being a universal or autonomous source of power, the state is nothing else but “a
multiple and mobile field of force relations” (Foucault 1978: 102). Until recently,
studies of corruption pivoted on how the state “sees” citizens (Scott 1998), how
“stateness” is performed (Hansen & Stepputat 2001), how power is “sustained and

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articulated” (Rademacher 2008: 106), and how the aura of sovereign ultimacy is
“internalized” (Chalfin 2008: 250). Less well known is how socio-economic prac-
tices at the margins shape the state itself (Das & Poole 2004) and, related to this,
how the state is localized or made visible in discursive practices (Gupta 1995). This
book contributes to bridging this lacuna in the existent literature.

Toward the Corruption Complex

Corruption is behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public role
because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary
or state gains; or violate rules against the exercise of certain types of private-
regarding influence. This includes such behavior as bribery (use of a reward to
pervert the judgement of a person in a position of trust); nepotism (bestowal
of patronage by reason of ascriptive relationship rather than merit); and misap-
propriation (illegal appropriation of public resources for private-regarding uses).
(Nye 1967: 419)

Corruption is a kind of behavior that deviates from the norm actually prevalent
or believed to prevail in a given context, such as the political. It is deviant behav-
ior associated with a particular motivation, namely that of private gain at public
expense. But whether this was the motivation or not, it is the fact that private gain
was secured at public expense that matters. Such private gain may be a monetary
one, and in the minds of the general public it usually is, but it may take other
forms. (Friedrich 1989: 5)

Contained in the above conventional definitions of corruption are two fundamen-

tal assumptions: first, that mutually exclusive public and private interests exist and,
second, that public servants must necessarily abstract themselves from the private
realm if they are to properly function (Bratsis 2003: 11). These assumptions rest
simply on a Weberian-style modern bureaucratic state which assumes—in con-
trast to the patrimonial state—the existence of a public office that is distinct from
the private domain. As Weber notes, “The patrimonial office lacks above all the
bureaucratic separation of the private and the official sphere. For the political ad-
ministration, too, is treated as purely personal affair of the ruler, and political
power is considered part of his personal property, which can be exploited by means
of contributions and fees” (cited in Hyden 2006: 95). The Weberian rational legal
 introduction: rethinking corruption 25

state reifies corruption and overlooks its situation in overlapping publics and their
distinct but interdependent logics.
Ethnographic studies of corruption have presented bottom-up evidence to
show that the public/private bifurcation is often context-dependent (Gupta 1995;

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Muir & Gupta 2018; Bocarejo 2018). Evidence from my own fieldwork in Lagos
suggests that the public/private dichotomy represents a normative demand rather
than an empirical reality. “Corruption entails of very many things we don’t be-
lieve to be corruption. If you influence a pastor of your church it is corrupt. You
want him to do a special prayer for you, so you buy tubers of yam or bags of
rice and take it to him. Some think it is a gift, but I call it corruption.” That was
how a minibus-taxi (danfo) driver in Lagos explained corruption to me. His words
strike at the profoundly ambiguous concept of corruption (Haller & Shore 2005).
The anthropology of corruption has shown that the concept of corruption cov-
ers a confusingly wide spectrum of practices (Gupta 1995; Bocarejo 2018; Sneath
2006; Smith 2007), including criminality and fraud. In this light, then, Olivier
de Sardan’s influential concept of the “corruption complex” (1999: 26) remains,
perhaps, the most nuanced and productive theoretical lens for interpreting cor-
ruption in Africa. By definition, the corruption complex designates a number of
illicit practices (such as nepotism, abuse of power, graft, and various forms of mis-
appropriation), all of which are technically distinct from corruption but yet have
in common with corruption their link to the state. Thus, the corruption complex
describes practices that are deemed corrupt but may or may not be illegal as such
(Routley 2016: 119; Pierce 2016: 8, 22).
One of the earliest observations of the corruption complex in Nigeria was
among the Hausa-speaking people of northern Nigeria. Anthropologist M.G.
Smith (1964: 164) argues that Hausa people lack a term for political corruption
sensu stricto, which makes it difficult to isolate corruption from other conditions
of its context for formal analyses. The Hausa people do, however, have several
terms denoting a range of political conditions and practices related to corruption:
“Zalunchi which refers to oppression, tilas to compulsion, zamba to oppression
and swindling, rikice to fraud and confusion alike, ha’inci to bribery, cin hanci
to taking bribes, yi gaisuwa to making greetings or gifts, tara to fines, cin tara to
taking (keeping?) fines, wasau to forcible confiscation of property, manafunci to
treachery and breaking of political agreements, hamiya to political rivalry, kun-
jiya to a faction or group of supporters, baranktaka to political agency, kinjibbi
and kutukutu to differing types of intrigue, character assassination, and so on”
(Smith 1964: 164). This semantic variability of corruption adds weight to Steven
Pierce’s diagnosis of corruption as “epistemologically shifty,” as it refers to various
meanings and phenomena (Pierce 2016: 5, 20).
Four decades after M.G. Smith’s work, D.J. Smith corroborated the corruption
complex among the Igbo people of southeast Nigeria. He observes that the talk of
corruption in Nigeria extends beyond the abuse of public office for private gain to
26 they eat our sweat

include “a whole range of social behaviors in which various forms of morally ques-
tionable deception enable the achievement of wealth, power, or prestige as well as
much more mundane ambitions. Nigerian conception of corruption encompasses
everything from government bribery and graft, rigged elections, and fraudulent

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business deals, to the diabolical abuse of occult powers, medical quackery, cheat-
ing in school, and even deceiving a lover” (2007: 55). In urban Nigeria, it is quite
common to hear the word “corrupt” being used to describe a man that “carries
woman”—a womanizer. This polyvalence of corruption talk is hardly specific to
Nigeria. In Lubumbashi in DR Congo, corruption is so rife that people have devel-
oped an elaborate terminology for it: “Beans for the children, a little something,
an encouragement, an envelope, something to tie the two ends with, to deal, to
come to an understanding, to take care of me, to pay the beer, to short-circuit, to
see clearly, to be lenient or comprehensive, to put things in place, to find a Zairian
solution” (Riley 1999: 190).
There is no one-size-fits-all interpretation of corruption, so to ask what exactly
is the meaning of corruption amounts to an exercise in futility. The real bound-
ary between what is corruption and what is not is fluid and context-dependent
(Olivier de Sardan 1999: 34). Thus, Torsello (2016: 15) is well within his rights
to ask: “[W]hy stick to a single definition [of corruption] if the phenomenon is
in constant mutation?” My ethnographic tendency is not to impose a universal
meaning of corruption on the local context and then arrange my data accordingly
(etic approach). Instead, my objective is to explore the range of behaviors that lo-
cals deem corrupt and to weave a grounded analysis based on what they do or say
(emic approach). This approach is consistent with Mushtaq Khan’s unanswered
call for an analytical frame, which allows corruption to have different meanings
and effects in different countries.1⁷ If, indeed, corruption has a uniform meaning
and effect everywhere, argues Khan (1998), then we should reach this conclusion
at the end of an evaluative process rather than make a presumption ab initio. The
emic inclination of this study addresses the argument that corruption can only
be fully grasped when it is situated within the setting where it appears and with
which it continually interacts. This nuanced contextualization of corruption is
fundamental, since more often than not, what strikes us as a clear case of uneth-
ical corrupt exchange turns out to be morally acceptable and socially legitimate
when seen from the vantge point of local culture and the everyday lives of ordi-
nary people. This reality, says Manuel Velasquez, calls for “greater caution when
we are tempted to issue universal and absolute moral condemnation of corrup-
tion” (Velasquez 2004: 148). The title of Velasquez’s essay is particularly telling: “Is
Corruption Always Corrupt?”

1⁷ This approach is particularly apt in East and Southeast Asian countries, which combine high levels
of corruption with good economic performance, challenging the popular assumption that corruption
is associated with poor performance (Khan 1998).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 27

Corruption, Language, and Social Action: Toward

a Dialogical Approach

Inspired by calls to localize corruption in everyday discourse and practices, this

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book sees corruption as a social malpractice whose meaning is co-constructed by
social actors and which emerges from specific social interactions. Corruption is
intertwined with the evolving process of negotiation between citizens, public of-
ficials, and semi-private actors in particular settings and sectors. In other words,
corruption generally unfolds in the “wider matrix of power relations in society”
(Nuijten & Anders 2007: 2) and positions itself in the liminal space of interaction
between the public and private realms. Given its embeddedness in everyday life
and networks of sociocultural relations and logics, corruption is deeply interwoven
with language and idiom.
Language emerges as “a powerful vehicle of thought and a crucial instrument
for accomplishing social interaction, as an indispensable means of knowing the
world and of performing deeds within it” (Basso 1992: xii). From the perspective
of linguistic anthropology, language, culture, and society are mutually consti-
tuted; language shapes and is shaped by sociocultural factors and power dynamics
(Ahearn 2001: 110–111). If the questions that social scientists seek to answer—for
example, issues of bribery and corruption—are invariably posed first in ordinary
language, it follows that “stipulating or legislating the meaning of a social science
concept without first explicating the range of its ordinary language meanings is a
dangerous practice” (Fearon and Laitin 2000: 5). Similar to speech and language,
the discourse of corruption does not merely reflect an already existing social real-
ity; it also helps to create that reality (Ahearn 2001: 111; Gupta 1995). Speech and
idioms have the capacity to grasp corruption in its complexity because they too
are embedded within the larger socio-economic fabric of society.
Understanding corruption as a complex, both practically and discursively,
constitutes a radical break with normative analytical models based on compara-
tive macro-level econometric-based data (Bardhan 2015; Mauro 1995). This study
challenges the continued reliance on perception-based data and the conflation of
data aggregation from various surveys into one figure used in international cor-
ruption barometers such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception
Index (CPI). Instead, this study responds to recent calls to “refine and gather
more experience-based measures of corruption” (Triesman 2007: 213; UNODC
2017: 11–12). Rising to the occasion, critical ethnographies of the state have es-
tablished a symbiotic relationship between everyday corruption and the state’s
generalized informal functioning (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan 2006). For example,
in his study of corruption in contemporary India, Gupta finds that the pub-
lic/private spatial separation is weak to non-existent among public officials: “One
has a better chance of finding them [the officials] at the roadside tea stalls and
in their homes than in their offices” (1995: 384). It is against this backdrop that
28 they eat our sweat

corruption is best situated within the wider pattern of interaction between centers
and margins.

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Beyond the Corruption Perception Index (CPI)

The CPI measures the perceptions of businesspeople and country experts regard-
ing the degree of corruption among public officials and local politicians. A high
score indicates greater levels of corruption. Self-styled the “survey of surveys,” the
CPI was originally compiled on the basis of sixteen different polls and surveys from
eight independent institutions comprising businesspeople, country analysts, and
the public (Lambsdorff 1999). The CPI has undoubtedly contributed to a world-
wide movement and widespread consensus against corruption, tapping a decisive
nail or two into the coffin of self-styled revisionists who, during the 1960s and
1970s, advocated the functionality of corruption for newly independent states in
Africa and Asia (Leff 1964; Huntington 1968).1⁸ The CPI brought corruption into
greater international prominence. As Fredrik Galtung writes:

The CPI was a formidable instrument in raising awareness about the interna-
tional scope and shared burden of corruption and driving corruption onto the
front pages of newspapers throughout the developing world. The CPI levelled
the playing field by comparing, for the first time, disparate and distinct coun-
tries on the same scale. The international shaming that ensued encouraged a race
to the top, that is, to lower levels of corruption… and for some selected coun-
tries at the bottom of the league table (e.g., Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Paraguay) it
has spurred a determination to shed the label of being “one of the world’s most
corrupt countries.” (2006: 106)

Quoting his taxi driver in a piece on corruption in Pakistan, one journalist shared
this joke:

“You know,” asked Ahmad, “swerving around a crater that could have swallowed
his little taxi, “how Pakistan was No. 2 in the world in corruption?” I said that
I’d heard something about it. Pakistan had been ranked second only to Nigeria in
a 1996 “global corruption index” by an outfit called Transparency International.
“Actually,” Ahmad went on, “we were No. 1. But we bribed the Nigerians to take
first place.” (Stein 1997: 15)

1⁸ Revisionists argued that it is “natural but wrong to assume that the results of corruption are always
both bad and important … Where bureaucracy is both elaborate and inefficient, the provision of strong
personal incentives to bureaucrats to cut red tape may be the only way of speeding the establishment
of a new firm” (Leys 1965: 222). Today, however, there is no denying the “self-defeating” nature of
corruption in the long run (Caiden 1988: 21, Agbiboa 2012).
 introduction: rethinking corruption 29

Despite the CPI’s impact on corruption, concerns abound about whether a polyva-
lent and hidden phenomenon such as corruption can be measured at all, let alone
reduced to a single number (Haller & Shore 2005; Nuijten & Anders 2007). The
problem with an evaluation such as the CPI is that corruption varies so much from

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country to country, no single number can accurately compare the wide range of
forms that corruption takes from one country to the next (Johnston 2001: 63).
A proper understanding of corruption must first locate it within the local con-
texts out of which it emerges and with which it routinely interacts. The focus of
this study is not so much grand corruption as petty corruption, which is easier
to observe but harder to quantify because it varies enormously and is embedded
in complex social networks, which are in turn embedded in the state. In this light,
then, there is no substitute for a critical ethnographic approach which interrogates
not only “the social mechanisms through which corruption takes place” but also
“the wider interactions of different spheres (economic, political, legal, social and
cultural) and the symbolic reconstruction of this interaction” (Torsello 2016: 16).
The very nature of ethnography develops through interactions with local popula-
tions, which evolve into the building of mutual trust and understanding with them
(Torsello & Venard 2015).

Research Setting and Methodology

Roads connect food, goods, markets, people, families, communities, and lives.
They connect politicians, civil servants, the police and the military, the judiciary,
and governments. But roads can lead from heaven to hell, as the ugly heads of
greed and envy often seize the material opportunities for graft and corruption in
the development, maintenance, and operations of roads. (Paterson & Chaudhuri
2007: 159)

This study grounds corruption in the “politics of transporting” (Peace 1988), that
is, the micropolitics of relationships between drivers, passengers, unionists, law
enforcement agents, and local politicians. The study is guided by the overrid-
ing premise that transportation has been as much about defining state-society
relations as it has been about controlling people. In this perspective, mobility
embodies the melding of the “high politics of the state” with the “deep poli-
tics of society (that is, the relations between rich and poor, powerful and weak)”
(Lonsdale 1986: 130). If mobility makes states (Vigneswaran & Quirk 2015: 7),
then the state itself is nothing but “a mobile entity capable of mirroring the mobil-
ity of subjects in the regulation of them” (Gill, Caletrio, & Mason 2014: 6). More
and more, especially in conditions of endemic crisis, being on the move is the very
condition of your survival and continuing relevance. If you are not on the move,
the chances of survival are diminished (Mbembe 2018). This echoes the idea that
30 they eat our sweat

bottlenecks—or embouteillages—can be seen as a literal and metaphorical entry

point into how young taxi men in Dakar, Senegal, increasingly configured mobil-
ity as “a social value and a resource in itself: it was through mobility that one was
able to stake claim to urban permanence and social presence” (Melly 2017: 5).

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In Lagos, the law-abiding driver who refuses to pay cash bribes at checkpoints
or roadblocks will find himself stuck, both physically and existentially. All drivers
must stop at checkpoints for inspection. But what is being inspected is neither
their vehicle contents (wetin you carry?) nor their compliance with the rules and
protocols (wetin you do?), but rather their readiness to break them. Experienced
drivers know how to deploy strategies—such as humor, strategic ingratiation, sit-
uational friendship, and appeal to ethnicity— to negotiate checkpoints. In other
words, they know that “the first law of survival in Nigeria is understanding that
a police officer at a checkpoint is, quite literally, above the law” (Obadare 2021:
184). Drivers that dare to resist this “first law” and challenge the shakedowns that
they endure at endless checkpoints are labeled “enemies of the state” and arrested
on the move or subjected to violence, which is often lethal. At the checkpoint, the
driver is both a victim and a participant in a state-society “dance.” The fact that
many drivers across Nigerian cities have been shot dead for resisting police de-
mand for bribes reinforces people’s collective fears of state caprice and coercion,
even blackmail. It is in this context that Mbembe and Roitman have argued:

Those who follow the rules scrupulously sometimes find themselves in a snarl,
facing figures of the real that have little correspondence to what is publicly alleged
or prescribed… Every step or effort to follow the written rule is susceptible to
lead not to the targeted goal, but to a situation of apparent contradiction and
closure from which it is difficult to exit either by invoking the very same rules
and authorities responsible for applying them, or by reclaiming theoretical rights
supposed to protect those who respect official law. (1995: 342)

This study is set in the megacity of Lagos in southwest Nigeria (Figure 1). Lagos
is home to an estimated 18 million people, projected to rise to 25 million by 2025
(World Bank 2011). This would place the city as the third largest agglomeration in
the world, behind only Tokyo and Mumbai. Over the years, Lagos has evolved into
a “cultural amalgam in which different ethnic groups and classes, and types of per-
sons attempt to make their own lives, ‘find their own ways,’ express themselves as
they can and experience the many-sided realities that are both theirs and others”
(Aina 2003: 176). The megacity displays the grit, determination, and inventive re-
sponses that is critical to urban survival in the global South. In the words of Robert
Campbell, “There is certainly no more industrious people any where, and I chal-
lenge all the world besides to produce a people more so, or capable of as much
endurance” (1860: 16). Following Nigeria’s transition to civil rule in 1999, Lagos
experienced a major urban reform that sought to order its chaos by upgrading
 introduction: rethinking corruption 31

mass transportation (among other things), mainstreaming revenue reform, and re-
newing the social contract between the state and the people. In short, the post-1999
urban renewal plan in Lagos aimed to “convince the majority of… people that the
government exists to serve rather than to prey upon them” (Maier 2000: xxviii).

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However, this approach to neoliberal urbanism neither had a place for the poor nor
recognized informality as, above all, a way of life and an organizing logic (Roy &
AlSayyad 2004).
Lagos relies heavily on road transportation, precisely because the state is
composed of a collection of islands separated by creeks and the Lagos lagoon, with
bridges connecting the islands to the mainland. Historically, Lagos has endured
the yoke of a poorly coordinated public transportation network and, until 2008,
was the largest city in the world without any form of government-organized mass
transit (Cheeseman & de Gramont 2017). Instead, millions of urbanites seeking
to traverse the megacity each day are served by privately run and alternatively
regulated paratransit vehicles, including danfos, motorbike-taxis (okadas), and
tricycle-taxis (keke NAPEPs, which derives from the National Poverty Eradica-
tion Program). These informal modes of transport are vital to everyday survival
and sociability. In Nigeria, public transportation is mainly a road-based affair,
accounting for three-fourths of mobility needs. In Lagos alone, no less than 16 mil-
lion passenger trips are made each day (Nigeria Transport Policy 2010). Paratransit
vehicles afford vibrant spaces of exchange, interaction, production, and predation,
entangling the life of the road with the life of the people. Just like the vehicles that
ply them daily, roads are spaces of mobility and stuckedness, of survival and death.
Lagos is home to a variety of violent extortionists, from NURTW tax collectors
(motor park touts, or agberos) to mobile policemen (also known as “Kill and Go”),
who “eat the sweat” (i.e. hard work) of informal transport workers on a regular
basis. Corruption and coercion are most rampant at motor parks (bus stations),
bus terminals, junctions, and checkpoints, where touts and law enforcement agents
exercise biopower—the ability “to make live and to let die” (Foucault 1976: 241).
Despite a hard day’s work averaging up to twenty hours per day (“24 Hours on the
Road,” as one danfo slogan puts it), many transit workers make meagre returns,
due to a mixture of bribe-eating and trigger-happy police officers; daily payments
made to vehicle owners based on a hire-purchase contract; and the extortionate
powers of politicized and violent transport unions. Not surprisingly, most drivers
in Lagos view their work as just daily income. As one driver puts it: “What you get
today you use today, and tomorrow you start again from scratch.”

Fieldwork Approach: Mobile Ethnography

The fieldwork for this book was conducted over a twelve-month period in Lagos.
Two local government areas (LGAs) were selected, based on their centrality to ur-
ban flows and fixities (Figure 4). One of them was Oshodi, the central terminus for
32 they eat our sweat

intra-city and inter-city circulation in Lagos. Prior to its radical transformation

in 2007, under the post-1999 Lagos state urban renewal campaign, Oshodi was
widely seen as “the most radical urban condition on the planet” (Probst 2012: 138),
a space that functions without a script (Aradeon 1997: 51). The other field site was

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Alimosho, the largest LGA in Lagos, with more than two million people. The area
is predominantly inhabited by the Egbados (yewa), a subset of the larger Yorùbá
ethnic group. Both Oshodi and Alimosho LGAs are known for their massive go-
slows, complicated by an interminable tug of war involving drivers, conductors,
commuters, touts, street vendors, and police. The overlapping circuitries of move-
ment and standstills in Oshodi and Alimosho are central to political-economic
and cultural processes in Lagos. Data for this book were collected from the co-
ercive and vibrant spaces of bus stations, bus stops, checkpoints, and junctions.
These are not only spaces of opportunities but also of terror. Here, the instrumen-
talities of daily survival conform to what Zygmunt Bauman calls the postmodern
strategy for warding off death: “Daily life becomes a perpetual dress rehearsal of
death” (1992:186).
Daily headlines about incidents at motor parks and bus stops in Lagos, and
the transport union gangs riding roughshod over informal transport operators,
are particularly revealing. A quick Google search produces the following results:
“At Lagos Bus Stops, It’s Extortion Galore by Police, Agberos,” “Alcohol, Smok-
ing Rule Night Life at Motor Parks [in Lagos],” “Three Killed in Lagos Brutal
NURTW, Gang Clashes, 75 Arrested,” “9 Dead as NURTW Fractions Clash in
Lagos;” “NURTW Members Fighting over Commercial [Motor] Park,” and so on.
The Yorùbá people have a popular saying: omoluabi kan ki hu iwa omo garage (a
person of good character does not behave like a child of the garage [garage is an-
other word for motor park]). This reinforces the argument that parks, markets, and
roadsides (all of which bleed into each other in Lagos) evokes “danger and plea-
sure, segregation and communitas, sincerity and irreverence” (Gandhi & Hoek
2012: 4). It is no coincidence, therefore, that Robert Kaplan’s influential though
problematic essay, “The Coming Anarchy,” was set in West Africa’s bus terminals:

Each time I went to the Abidjan bus terminal, groups of young men with rest-
less, scanning eyes surrounded my taxi, putting their hands all over the windows,
demanding “tips” for carrying my luggage even though I had only a rucksack. In
cities in six West African countries, I saw similar young men everywhere—hordes
of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid, a fluid that
was clearly on the verge of igniting. (Kaplan 1994)

Africa’s bus stations and terminals are fluid spaces where the everyday and the
political intertwine in extremely dense ways (Stasik & Cissokho 2018; Quayson
2014; Ismail 2009). They have a dual quality, being simultaneously at the center
and at the margins of the state. During the course of my fieldwork, I experienced
 introduction: rethinking corruption 33

Magbon
Agidingbi
Alagba
Adeleye Ologode lkorodu
Agege Saglsa
Mosan Allmoso Akowonjo Hausa
Aklnyele Erutan
Agun
Ajegunle
Kadara Onikosi Odogun Ebute-Egga
Fatade
Okunola Ikeja
Oduwole Oshosun
Ojota
Somolu

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Murta’a mohammeo Airport
Cardoso
Shogunle Oruba Agboyl
Ishen-Olofin
Idirt Maryland
Ogudu
Mushin

Arlda Ewu Oshod

Orlle Oshodle Ibeshe
Ejigbo Isasi Ososun
Obanikoro Owaranshoki
Kotan Egbe
Shomolu Ilemene Ofn

Isolo
Ishaga Mushin Halt
Abule Ijesha
Idioro Igbobl

Iseri-Osun Lafia Tinubu

Sufu-Lene
Onibri
Tatala
Ibire Onike
New Lagos Iwaya
Alcangba
Makoko
Ijesa-Tedo Okera
Ikeja Iponn
Osho Aqani Abude-Na
Iganmu Ebute-Metta

Coker Oto
Amuwo
Lawani Oguntayo

Aijetoro Ijora
Agboju Alegunle Okepa
Olute Logos Lagos
Alapako Aliayabiagba Jinadu Bamgboshe Araromi Mobba
Apapa Obalende
Klrlklrl
Isunba

Darkaka Mekunwen Apapa Eleko Ipewu Bado Ogoyo Igboefon

Ogogo Maroko
Oluwa
Imore Igbo Ejo Apese Alaguntan
Elachl Igbologun Origbolun Ikuata Agala Inupa

Inogbe
Oke Ogbe

Fig. 4. Map of major roads in Lagos

motor parks, bus terminals, and junctions as vibrant sites of party politics at both
the union and state level. Here, as in the bazaars of India and countless other public
spaces, “‘talking politics’ turns from abstract reflection and idle rumor-mongering
into focused discussions where political views and desires are forged and outcomes
intermittently secured” (Piliavsky 2013: 109).
My fieldwork followed a “mobile ethnography” (Novoa 2015) approach, en-
compassing walking and traveling with people as a form of sustained engagement
with their worldview and lifeworld. Through such “co-present immersion,” the re-
searcher moves with modes of movement and employs a range of observation and
recording techniques. This method of research can also involve “participation-
while-interviewing,” in which the ethnographer first participates in patterns of
movement, and then interviews people, individually or in focus groups, to show
how their diverse mobilities constitute their patterning of daily life (Urry 2007: 40).
Taking to the road allowed me to experience the world of the road transport
34 they eat our sweat

worker as he negotiate “the multiple relations of power that intersect in complex

ways to position individuals and collectivities in shifting and often contradictory
locations” (Stasiulis 1999: 194). At its core, the road is a contested space where hu-
mans and nonhumans, and visible and invisible forces, intermingle and confront

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one another (Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 329). I found Julien Brachet’s (2012) work
very helpful in conceptualizing mobility as a “field site,” that is, as a privileged mo-
ment of observation and discussion of spatial practices, such as corruption, that are
otherwise confined to the sphere of “the implicit, the unsaid, and the inadmissible”
(Blundo 2007: 36). Studies have shown that matters concerning corruption are of-
ten characterized by secrecy: “Real conversations take place elsewhere: off display,
behind closed doors” (Piliavsky 2013: 105). By participating in a moving field-site,
that is, following minibus- and motorbike-taxi drivers back and forth, asking ques-
tions on the way, and taking notes of mobile exchanges with NURTW officials
and law enforcement agents, I gained a deeper understanding of the precarious
lives and exploitative nature of informal transport work in Lagos. This “go-along”
approach (Kusenbach 2003) allowed me to experience firsthand the violent and
shifting mutualities between law enforcement agents, transport unionists, and mo-
bile individuals, particularly as it relates to situations and practices of corruption
and coercion, of control and taxation (Brachet 2012: x).

Data Collection

For data collection, I used a combination of participant observation, in-depth in-

terviews, critical discourse analysis, court records, archival records, and anecdotal
evidence. Participant observation—or what Clifford Geertz (1983: 127) refers to as
“the dialectic of experience and interpretation”—necessitated continuous move-
ment between the “inside” and the “outside” of the relationships under study
(Baviskar 1995: 8). In turn, this helped not only to situate respondents within
contexts that they are most familiar with, but also to experience their lived real-
ities through the partial eyes of the “outsider within.” Unlike Walter Benjamin’s
(1985) flaneur, the detached observer of modern city life, I entered into the
workaday world of informal transport operators by means of what Gerd Spit-
tler (2001) calls “thick participation.” To wit: I did a two-months stint as a danfo
conductor in a busy motor park along Oshodi-Ikotun route (Figure 5). This learn-
ing by doing is consistent with the “apprenticeship” approach that emphasizes
the participant dimension of fieldwork (Downey, Dalidowicz, & Mason 2015:
184), turning researchers into “observing participants” more than “participant
observers” (Woodward 2008). Working and learning by doing exemplifies the un-
resolved tension in participant observation. The fact that I was a bus conductor
 introduction: rethinking corruption 35

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Fig. 5. A conductor hangs out of
a minibus-taxi (danfo) in Lagos.
Photo credit: Author

raised the kind of self-reflective questions that Laura Routley (2016) encountered:
“Was I an observer or a participant? Was I working with them, or studying them?”
My conductor work came through a chance encounter with “TJ” (short for
Tunji), a childhood friend of mine whom I encountered on the streets of Alimosho.
TJ had graduated from being a conductor to being the proud owner of two danfos.
After informing him of my research, TJ invited me to work as his bus conductor
to experience the business from within. Though the prospect was daunting, I
accepted his “informal” offer, mindful of the point that by actively participating in
the lived experiences of drivers and conductors, I can come closer to experiencing
and understanding their point of view (cf. Hume & Mulcock 2004: xi). By hanging
out and hanging about with TJ, weaving in and out of the go-slows and potholed
roads of Lagos, I operationalized Kusenbach’s “go-along” method. As a conductor,
I directly experienced the coercive exchanges and unreceipted fees that drivers had
to make per trip to police officers and touts (agberos) at checkpoints and bus stops,
and the violence administered to those who refused to comply. A common sight
at most checkpoints in Lagos is that of a soldier poking the muzzle of his AK-47
into a driver’s eyes for refusing to supply the exact cash bribes, or motor park touts
attacking a conductor with a glass bottle for refusing to “settle” his dues. In two
months, I witnessed firsthand the violent death of four conductors in the hands of
agberos due to disputes over the illegal owo load (“loading fee”). “I just pay them
and go on my way,” said a crestfallen TJ. “What else can I do? They are kings of
36 they eat our sweat

our roads.” For many drivers like TJ, mobility is experienced as a contradictory
resource, that is, as both a source of agency and a form of constraint. My physical
appearances (black) and gender (male) combined with my fluency in Yorùbá (the
lingua franca in southwest Nigeria), English (the official language of Nigeria),

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and Nigerian Pidgin English (a more or less national lingua franca) ensured that
I retained a level of anonymity on Lagos roads, a vital element of “surreptitious
ethnography” (Neto 2017). Participant observation is most authentic and reliable
when the researcher is able to go unobserved (Kusenbach 2003: 461), because it
provides much-needed access to “naturally” unfolding events (Becker 1958).
As a danfo conductor, I was able not only to witness violent extortion on the
roads that my mobile interlocutors regularly traversed, but also to call on some of
the “tactics” (in the de Certeauian sense) that they use in the face of agents of cor-
ruption who seek to impose fear on transport operators and make them less mobile
or free to move. In this sense, movement and the blockades that impede it were
central to my fieldwork and constituted an entry point to corruption and the strug-
gle for survival. As a conductor, my duties involved (un)loading the bus, calling
bus stops, negotiating the various fees demanded by battle-ready touts, collecting
bus fares, attending NURTW monthly meetings, and the occasional extravagant
faji or jaiy’e jaiy’e (social enjoyments) where people chop awof (“eat for free”). On
the busy Ikotun-Oshodi routes, which I plied daily with TJ, I grappled with the
sheer demands on conductors, especially the ability to multitask on the go: hold-
ing money, counting change, opening and closing the poorly oiled sliding doors
(sometimes the doors would slide off in motion, resulting in a “stop-go” process),
attending to passengers, and watching the driver’s blind spot—many danfos are
without functioning gadgets. Amid all of this, I had to be alert to potential passen-
gers along the road; to discern when to hang from the door and scan for passengers
and when to shut the door and squeeze in to avoid police fines; and the tactic of
“no shaking” (courage) in the face of menacing shouts of owoo da? (“Where is
your money?”) by the tax-collecting agberos. I also developed a “thick skin” in the
face of insults from passengers with fixed notions of conductors as con-ductors. In
short, throughout my fieldwork in Lagos, I was constantly aware of my precarious
positionality as a researcher navigating an unpredictable and risky terrain, as well
as the social stigma attached to driving work.
When I was not walking around the motor parks and bus stops, I joined
Lagosians by the crowded roadsides, where nearly every inch has been appropri-
ated by a vibrant informal market amid a failure of urban planning. As one traffic
policeman complained to me: “In Lagos, people will just see space and occupy it.”
According to Filip De Boeck and Marie-Francoise Plissart, “The process of ran-
dom occupation of space also reveals the organic approach [of urbanites] to the
production of the city. Space, in a way, belongs to whomever uses it, despite the
half-hearted attempts at the city authorities to control the… denser use of that
space” (De Boeck & Plissart 2004: 230). The boundaries between motor parks and
 introduction: rethinking corruption 37

markets in Lagos are often so blurred that it is hard to tell where one ends and the
other begins. This blurring facilitates corruption by expanding the extortion rack-
ets of touts and police, who now tax not just informal transport workers but also
street vendors. “Their code is to tax anything taxable,” said a street vendor in Os-

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hodi. Without a start-up loan to rent expensive retail spaces, street vendors such as
the sellers of paraga (a local alcohol beverage) often set up collapsible kiosks by the
roadside, while itinerant vendors cash in on the Lagos go-slows to adroitly weave
in and out of traffic to sell their goods. There is a baffling mobility amid the endless
traffic jam: drivers pull in their side-view mirrors to squeeze through incredibly
tight spaces, and mobile street vendors move between stranded commercial ve-
hicles. The okadas (motorbike-taxis) weave through the gaps as their passengers
hang on for dear life. All this makes navigating Lagos roads an art of improvisation
and, above all, a relentless practice of “shinning your eyes well well” (“Open your
eyes,” never drop your guard). Fela sang about the confusion, contradiction, and
danger of navigating Lagos:

Bi mo ba wa moto ni London o, ma tun sese wa ko ti wa n’ile

(Even if I drove in London, I would have to learn driving anew
when I return home)
Bi o ba wa moto ni New York o, wat un sese wa ko ti w anile
(Even if you drove in New York, you would have to learn driving
anew on return)
Tori Turn Right l’Eko o, la’ju e, Turn left l’ori o
(Because “Turn Right” in Lagos, open your Eyes, is really “Turn
Left”)
Tori Turn Right l’Eko o, ore mi, Turn left lo ri o
Because if you see “Turn Right” in Lagos, my friend, it is really
“Turn Left” you see
Tiw a tun yato si tiyin o se e ngbo e o, eko ile
Ours is different from yours, you hear, Lagos home.
(Olaniyan 2004: 40)

Rhythmanalysis of Lagos

Henri Lefebvre tells us that wherever place, time, and energy interact, rhythm is
invariably present. And every rhythm indicates a “relation of a time to a space,
a localized time, or if one prefers, a temporalized space” (2004: 15, 89). This
triumvirate of time-space-energy has its ultimate reference point not only in
human bodies (2004: 67), but also in the non-human vessels that move those
bodies on a daily basis (such as the danfos). Drawing on Lefebvre’s concept of
“rhythmanalysis”—a method for analyzing the rhythms of urban spaces and the
38 they eat our sweat

effects of those rhythms on dwellers in motion—I sought during my fieldwork to

capture the manifold, overlapping rhythms that manifest themselves in the sense-
world surrounding Lagos, especially what they tell us about this “no man’s land.”
Senses of place are intrinsically interwoven with cultures and shared bodies of

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local knowledge and wisdom, with which places are rendered meaningful and so-
cially important by individuals and whole communities (Basso 1996). As such,
with my digital camera and sound recorder, I was able to capture the hypervi-
suality and soundscape of Lagos life, which result as one moves about (often in
a zig-zag style) within the megacity. These spatio-auditory sensations included
the colorful and wry vehicle slogans and mottos, the blaring Fuji music of danfos,
and loud sirens of police vans, revealing the confluences between music, mobil-
ity, and urban spatiality (Chapman 2013). It is a symphony of sound and sight:
the syncopated cries of pya wata pya wata (“pure water, pure water”) by itiner-
ant female vendors, some with small children on their backs, handing small bags
of water through the windows of (im)mobile danfos to the keenly outstretched
arms within; the foul-mouthed and flirtatious conductors calling out their respec-
tive termini, jostling for passengers, and warning passengers to wole pelu shenji e
o (enter with the exact fare); the rag-tag touts shouting owoo da? (where is your
money?); the okada drivers weaving in and out of fast and slow lanes without re-
gard for human life; the impatient bleats of vehicle horns (on the roads of Lagos,
there is a competition as to which vehicle has the loudest horn. Here, loud horning
gives you right of way); and the hordes of people dwelling in a kind of perpetuum
mobile.
Beyond enabling my stint as a conductor, TJ was also helpful in connecting
me to other security personnel and transport operators in his social network—
a strategy variously known as “snowball technique,” “referral sampling,” or “chain
of recommendations.” Studies of corruption elsewhere demonstrate that “despite
extensive knowledge of corruption, this topic is usually confined to close circles
of acquaintances, friends and relatives” (Sedlenieks 2004: 120). TJ prided himself
in his “long legs” (connections), both horizontally and vertically. He belabored
the point that Lagos operates according to an epistemic logic of “man-know-man.”
“When you run into wahala (trouble),” he insists, “your life comes down to ‘whom-
you-know.”’ In an urban context where everyday life is characterized by a state of
emergency (Simone 2004a: 4), “Woe betide the man who knows no one, either di-
rectly or indirectly” (Olivier de Sardan 1999: 41). Using the snowball technique
meant that I was able to draw on TJ’s interpersonal networks to vouch for my
own reliability and trustworthiness. This is vital in a Lagos environment where
epistemological uncertainties and widespread anxieties over the authenticity of
information and the veracity of claims abounds. This is largely due to the culture
of deception, political chicanery, and advance fee fraud (“419” scams), for which
Nigeria is deservedly notorious. Survey evidence shows that four of five Nigerians
(80 percent) are naturally very careful when dealing with other Nigerians and only
 introduction: rethinking corruption 39

nearly one in seven citizens (15 percent) believe that most Nigerians can be trusted
(CLEEN 2013).
I relied on face-to-face, in-depth interviews and informal conversations to
garner real evidence on the corrupt and coercive relationships between commer-

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cial drivers and conductors on the one hand, and transport union tax collectors
(agberos) and law enforcement agents on the other hand. My main dramatis
personae, commercial drivers and conductors, were interviewed at both fixed
and moving sites: at motor parks and bus stops, as they waited in line to load
passengers; on the road, as they wove in and out of traffic gridlocks and water-
logged potholes. By navigating (bodily and mentally) these flows and fixities, I
came to experience how mobile operators in Lagos physically made the place
(as actual and imagined) by routinely moving through it (Buescher & Urry
2009; Kusenbach 2003). This mobile ethnography supports the call for field-
work in a deterritorialized world that focuses not so much on bounded fields
as on shifting locations. The invitation here is to see familiar things in unfa-
miliar ways and in unlikely places (Gupta & Ferguson 1997: 35–40). As the
character Ezeulu, in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, quipped: “The world is
like a mask dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place”
(1964: 46).
Aside from commercial drivers and conductors, a broad range of social ac-
tors within Lagos’s transport sector were interviewed, including passengers, touts
(agberos), street vendors, mobile police and traffic inspectors, Vehicle Inspec-
tion Officers, and officials of the National Union of Road Transport Workers
(NURTW), the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), Kick
Against Indiscipline (KAI), and the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority
(LASTMA). All interviews were conducted in English, Yorùbá, and Pidgin (or a
combination of all three), depending on the preferences of my informants. The
services of a field translator were not required, as I am conversationally fluent in
all three languages. Beyond its capacity to reflect urban social realities, there is a
performative side to language that gives it an active function in social interactions
(Petit 2005: 473; Quayson 2014: 20).
With the consent of my informants, I initially recorded interview sessions in or-
der to assist the natural limitations of my own memory and note-taking. However,
most informal transport operators felt uneasy about being voice-recorded. Their
anxieties are understandable, considering that many commercial drivers in Lagos
operate without licenses. Any time I brought out my digital voice recorder, I could
sense their discomfort. As a consequence, I adjusted my approach and started to
take extremely detailed hand-written notes after all interviews. This proved eas-
ier and less obtrusive, as many of my interlocutors were more forthcoming in an
unrecorded interview setting. Hence, for the rest of my fieldwork, I used meth-
ods similar to those described in Robert Desjarlais’ award-winning Shelter Blues:
Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless:
40 they eat our sweat

I spent much of my time hanging about, listening to conversations, and then

finding a place to write down the gist of these exchanges… My notes on these
conversations, which typically contained quasi-verbatim accounts, lacked the
precision that tape or audio recordings could have provided. However, as many

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anthropologists have found, especially those who have worked among homeless
populations, the advantages of unassuming participation in daily activities, dur-
ing which one can develop lasting, informal ties with people, often outweigh the
benefits of information obtained through surveys and more intrusive methods.
(1997: 41)

I found interviews inherently flexible, allowing me to use probes to solicit depth

and to foster relationships of trust. Interviewing allowed for flexible responses,
where my interlocutors could guide the interview toward the topics they consid-
ered relevant. Given the sensitive, almost taboo, nature of corruption talk (Myrdal
1968: 938–39), I soon adjusted my interview strategy to what I call an “alien-
ation effect,” that is, requesting the reactions of operators to a practice observed
on the road. With this approach, respondents were more relaxed about talking
about their mobile encounters, relieved that they were not being directly accused
of corruption. Other ethnographers of corruption have shared a similar experi-
ence. In India, Veena Das found that while her interlocutors spoke easily of elite
corruption and massive graft, it was much more difficult to speak freely about ev-
eryday or immediate forms of corruption (2015: 340). In his study of corruption
in contemporary Bolivia, Sian Lazar found that, “Corruption is always somewhere
else, perpetrated by someone else” (2005: 212). Despite the serious dilemmas pre-
sented by corruption, Jennifer Hasty observed that people in Accra, Ghana, often
burst into laughter when instances of corruption are discussed in public: “There’s
something humanly embarrassing, self-ironizing, and mutually implicating in the
anxious bathos of corruption” (2005b: 359). Other times, my alienation effect was
simply to ask my interlocutors to tell me about their day-to-day challenges and how
they navigated around them to make the most of their time. More often than not,
corruption emerged organically, overshadowing every other articulated concern.
I also sourced data using an interpretative analysis of vehicle slogans, combined
with content analysis of court records involving the Lagos State Government ver-
sus okada unions. Press materials were key to understanding local attitudes toward
corruption, since they denoted a discursive and changing field that enables corrupt
practices to be labeled, discussed, decried, justified, and denounced. Data assem-
bled from these newspapers informed my interviews and helped to triangulate
my data to derive a nuanced perspective. Social scientists should not only strive
to collect many instances of an identified phenomenon but also seek to gather
“many kinds of evidence” to enhance the validity of a specific conclusion (Becker
1958: 657). I approached my data analysis using an iterative strategy, that is, a
systematic, repetitive, and recursive process in qualitative data analysis (Mills,
 introduction: rethinking corruption 41

Durepos, & Wiebe 2010). In practice, this meant that I transcribed and analyzed
my data as I collected them, using this analysis to inform further research. This
iterative process helped me to spot and address gaps in my interviews while I was
still in the field and while the discussions were still fresh in my mind. As suggested

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above, corruption is a sensitive topic, more so in a sector such as public transport,
where marginal men with a criminalized identity are stigmatized as “dirty work-
ers” (Hughes 1958). As such, I have used pseudonyms and altered the context of
specific interviews to protect my interviewees.

Subjugated Knowledges

This book reclaims the power of “subjugated knowledges”1⁹ (for example: stories,
rumor, and gossip) for uncovering inaudible and unspeakable truths about cor-
ruption. Writing about the Mende in Sierra Leone, Mariane Ferme calls this “the
underneath of things.” Interestingly, the Mende word for meaning, yembu (that
which lies underneath), emphasizes the vital role of the concealed, the subjugated,
in making sense of the visible (Ferme 2001: 4). Far from being mere deceptions of
reality (Taussig 1980: 229), subjugated knowledges are a powerful means through
which average citizens in many African countries encounter the state, a state
which, like the Mawri stories of man-eaters, “illicitly appropriate the vitality of
those subordinated to them” (Masquelier 2000: 89). Subjugated knowledges are
most visible in postcolonial contexts where the state lacks popular legitimacy and,
thus, relies on (the threat of) violence to compel compliance and induce loyalty.
Here, citizens prefer to source information from unofficial (e.g. rumor) rather than
official channels since the latter lacks any credibility (Lomnitz 1995: 36).
Through subjugated knowledges, ordinary people not only make explicit their
fears, aspirations, and anxieties about politics, which is widely seen as corrupt-
ing those involved, but also partake in moral evaluations of their political leaders
(Turner 2007: 93). Corruption involves a kind of “public secrets” (Taussig 1999), a
public knowledge that cannot be articulated: “everyone knows that this cannot be
known” (Newell 2012: 100). Secrecy is a politicized domain; “In a context where
speaking truth to power can lead to arbitrary danger and death, secret domains are
also where popular cultural creativity produces alternative discourses that limit the
exercise of political power, through the systematic intrusion of unpredictability”
(Ferme 2001:6).

1⁹ Michel Foucault coined the term “subjugated knowledges” to describe insufficient or disqualified
set of knowledges; in other words, “naïve knowledges, located down on the hierarchy, beneath the
required level of cognition or scientificity.” He believes that “it is through the re-emergence of these
low-ranking knowledges, these unqualified, even directly disqualified knowledges… that criticisms
perform its work” (1980: 81–82).
42 they eat our sweat

A long standing criticism levelled against the anthropology of corruption is

that “observer effects” can bias research findings (LeCompte & Goetz 1982; Rose-
Ackerman 2010). Thus, critics claim that the “thick” presence of a researcher could
influence the behavior of those being studied, making it difficult for ethnogra-

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phers to document social phenomena in any accurate, let alone objective, way
(Wilson 1977). Yet, such critics too often miss the fact that, however staged for
or influenced by the observer, informants’ performances reveal profound truths
about sociocultural phenomena such as bribery and corruption. In analyzing these
performances, we gain a better understanding not only of how local people per-
ceive themselves but also of how they would like to be perceived by others. As
an omo eko (“child of Lagos”), I tapped into my own longstanding embodied ex-
periences of the quotidian rhythms of Lagos life to enrich my data analysis. To
bridge other knowledge gaps, I regularly performed pragmatic validity checks by
comparing corruption discourse to daily practice and triangulating articulations
from multiple informants, looking for any (in)consistency. In so doing, I was able
to “forge links between different knowledges that are possible from different loca-
tions and trace lines of possible alliances and common purposes between them”
(Gupta & Ferguson 1997: 39).

Limitations of Study

My fieldwork in Lagos spanned an extremely difficult four-month period (July to

October 2014), when the sprawling metropolis suffered the outbreak of the deadly
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). The resultant fear of contagion in everyday life forbade
intimacies and the usual gathering of Lagosians, from public spaces (e.g. motor
parks) to sacred grounds (churches and mosques). The tentative mood during this
period was palpable in the unwillingness of many Lagosians to be interviewed by
a random stranger. I was a danfo conductor in Oshodi during these difficult Ebola
months and recall many occasions when a poor passenger would pay for two ex-
tra seats—one to his left, the other to his right—so as to reduce the chances of
bodily contact with fellow passengers. In an effort to prevent EVD in the motor
parks of Lagos, the NURTW called on all operators to practice social distancing
by stopping the overloading of passengers, a practice that increases the chances of
contagion. The call was surprisingly heeded, calling into question the hopelessly
lawless picture that is often painted of informal workers. Ta lo fe ku? (Who wants
to die?), one driver in Oshodi said. In sum, the Ebola months in Lagos affected
the quality of social interactions. As one journalist neatly sums it up: “Once rated
in a United Nations survey as the ‘happiest people’ in the world, Nigerians seem
to have lost their natural good humor and increasingly more people are scared of
shaking hands with or hugging other people, especially strangers, for fear of get-
ting infected with the virus” (Punch 2014b). At that time, of course, few people
 introduction: rethinking corruption 43

could have foreseen that another viral disease, COVID-19, would tear across the
entire world, threatening all that is normal and disrupting daily routines and social
practices in every corner of the globe.
The politicized and violent nature of the NURTW presented its own challenges

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as I navigated crowded bus stations and junctions—spaces where collective fear
has become a way of life for many. In Lagos, as in much of Africa, bus stations
are commonly seen as spaces of danger and intimidation and bastions of crim-
inals, drug dealers, prostitutes, and withcraft (Stasik & Cissokho 2018: xiii–xiv;
Ademowo 2010). Yet, at their core, motor parks, and the markets that surround
them, are microcosms of social life, which facilitate the unceasing flow of goods
and passengers (Beck 2013: 426). Conversations with some union touts were
frankly quite intimidating, and some rival union gangs did not particularly ap-
preciate my constant presence in the motor parks and terminals of Lagos. This
created considerable fear and anxiety within me, as I was uncertain about whose
toes I was stepping on at any point in time. As my fieldwork unfolded, it be-
came increasingly clear that I was becoming too familiar with a mafia-like world
where people could suddenly disappear without trace, and that keeping me out
enabled those implicated, the NURTW and law enforcement agents, to maintain
“a unified front that hid the internal politics that are inevitably part of mutualities”
(Bähre 2014: 578) in Lagos’s transport sector. As the old adage goes, “knowledge is
power,” and the NURTW maintains control of transit spaces, in part, through its
opacity. This explains why, despite its enormous political clout, the NURTW has
managed to escape scholarly gaze. But does one abandon urgent research simply
because a predatory trade union and a complicit state government do not want
their extortion racket to be documented and exposed?

The Road Ahead

The rest of this book is organized in six chapters. Chapter 1, Corruption and the
Crisis of Values, has two parts. In the first, corruption wide, I examine the defi-
nitional challenge of corruption, with particular attention to confusion over what
is private and what is public, what is legal and what is illegal. The chapter finds
its purchase in the critical examination of “culturalist” research and approaches
to corruption and the state in Africa, particularly the common but problematic
amalgamation of Africa’s political failings or deficits under the concept of neopat-
rimonialism (e.g. patronage, rent-seeking, and clientelism). In the second part,
corruption close, I explore the political economy of oil, elite corruption, and the
economic crisis in Nigeria since independence in October 1960, especially the
systematic plundering of state wealth and the resulting crisis of values in every-
day life, typified by the magical scramble for money among included politicians
and excluded Nigerian youth eager to make money by any means (e.g. “419ners”
44 they eat our sweat

and “Yahoo” boys). The analysis in this chapter extends to the checkered story of
post-1999 institutionalist efforts under civilian rule to fight corruption and repair
Nigeria’s tarnished international image. This chapter shows how economic crisis
and material acquisitiveness have coalesced to entrench the “survival of the fattest”

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in the Nigerian psyche.
That corruption is, first and foremost, a “language” that is inscribed in daily life
remains an obvious but often overlooked fact in the corruption literature. Drawing
upon critical discourse analysis, Chapter 2, The Language of Corruption, analyzes
the popular semiology of corruption in Africa. It examines how corruption is com-
monly scripted in corporeal metaphors of eating and bodily fluids (literally and
metaphorically), confirming the generality, banality, and commensality of cor-
ruption on the continent. By paying attention to the local language and idioms
used to imagine and articulate acts of bribery and corruption, we gain a more
grounded and sophisticated understanding of the corruption complex and, cru-
cially, popular reactions to it. Foregrounding corruption as “food for thought,”
this chapter reclaims the ambiguous and multivocal power of language in how we
think and talk about corruption. In so doing, it sheds new light onto what counts
as corruption in the value acceptances of everyday people, thereby advancing our
knowledge of the meanings that people everywhere ascribe to corruption or its
rough equivalents in other languages.
Chapter 3, The Politics of Informal Transport, examines the role of the infor-
mal urban transport (“paratransit”) sector in Africa, as a groundwork for the rest
of the book’s attention to the micropolitics of transportation and road exploita-
tion in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. This chapter argues that an analysis
of the organization and politics of informal transport provisions affords a unique
window onto the precarious unfolding of urban life in Africa, including issues of
“transport poverty,” the stigmatized identity of drivers and conductors, the extor-
tionate powers of politicized transport unions in cahoots with state governments,
and how plans to modernize public transit systems across the continent generally
ignore the motley array of unregulated carriers that have become the fulcrum of
Africa’s urban fabric. The paradox in this chapter is not lost: while Africa’s informal
transport workers are often regarded as criminals, they are actually daily victims
of corruption themselves.
If corruption is a constitutive element of everyday life, then it behooves us
to understand what exactly that everyday life is. Despite their centrality to the
imagination and popular experiences of informal road transport workers, there
are, surprisingly, few studies on the ubiquitous and aphoristic slogans painted
on passenger vehicles as a window onto the political economy of everyday life in
urban Africa. Chapter 4, The Art of Urban Survival, explores what an interpreta-
tive analysis of vehicle slogans can tell us about the everyday spaces of maneuver,
survival, and opportunities of road transport workers, including the particular cir-
cumstances which may have informed the driver’s choice of a particular slogan.
 introduction: rethinking corruption 45

This chapter explores how popular culture manifests itself through these slogans,
as a means to interpret the everyday experiences of marginalized transport work-
ers in Lagos as well as an expression of their “social theory.” Through a textual
analysis of minibus-taxi slogans in Lagos, we are able to relate to the precarious

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lifeworlds of operators, including their daily encounters with agents of corrup-
tion and fear on dangerous roads. Seeing danfos as mobile bodies of meaning, the
chapter finds that danfo slogans not only provide unique windows onto the ex-
ploitative labor of informal transport workers in Lagos, but are also effective means
through which these marginal men carve out meaningful temporalities, stand out
in a cutthroat business, and expand their capacity to aspire and become.
Chapter 5, Nigeria’s Transport Mafia, focuses on the origins and changing
dynamics of the dreaded NURTW’s tax collectors—the agberos or motor park
touts—and the intimidating and violent tactics they deploy to extort illegal fees
of all sorts from transport operators in Lagos. Situating the emergence and reach
of agberos within the widespread crisis of the structural adjustment program (SAP)
of the 1980s in Nigeria, this chapter directly relates the transformation of agberos,
from callers of passengers to violent extortionists, to their adverse incorporation
into the NURTW as tax collectors and political thugs, which altered their initial
role in the road transport sector. Efforts by the Lagos State Government to rid
the roads of agberos since 1999 are inspired by its controversial neoliberal urban
renewal project which responds to the logic of the market rather than the needs
of the Lagos subaltern. Yet, the role of “big politics” (in form of the unholy al-
liance between the NURTW and the state government) helps explain the botched
attempts to remove agberos from the roads. The chapter also pays attention to the
ways in which political agency is exercised at different levels, that is, both within
the NURTW and toward transport workers and state agents.
Chapter 6, The Paradox of Urban Reform, critically examines the impact of the
Lagos State Road Traffic Law of 2012, introduced by the Lagos State Govern-
ment to restore “sanity” to Lagos roads, on the spaces of livelihoods of informal
transport workers, with particular attention to motorbike-taxi (okada) drivers and
their associations. On the one hand, the chapter explores the corrupt and brutal
manner in which law enforcement agents in Lagos (for example, “Kick Against
Indiscipline”) have enforced the Traffic Law. On the other hand, it examines how
and why the largest association of motorbike-taxi drivers in Lagos—the All Nige-
rian Autobike Commercial Owners and Workers Association (ANACOWA)—is
appealing to state laws as a weapon of combat against the Lagos State Govern-
ment and its agents. This chapter sheds light onto the way in which informal
transport workers and their associations exercise agency and their “right to the
city” in a collective attempt to intervene in the corrupt and unequal processes of
neoliberal urban legislation. Further, the chapter shows how urban reform can
reproduce rather than address corruption and precarious existence in everyday
life.
46 they eat our sweat

The concluding chapter, Learning from Corruption, advances some final critical
reflections on the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the ideas pre-
sented in this book, particularly the need to go beyond the essentialist, culturalist,
and functionalist explanations that constrain dominant approaches to corruption

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in Africa and the global South generally. The conclusion offers an approach to
corruption “from below” that is not detached from but inextricably linked to cor-
ruption “from above.” In this dialectical perspective, corruption is a multi-faceted
phenomenon located in “gray zones” between the legal and the extralegal, and
shaped by mutualities between formal and informal actors and rules. Such mutu-
ality is at work in the collusion and collision of the NURTW and the Lagos State
Government, affirming corruption as an effective arena for exploring the fault lines
of statecraft, urban political engineering, and the pursuit of daily survival.
 1
Corruption and the Crisis of Values

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Defining corruption is an extremely difficult undertaking, since the very word
“corruption” evokes vastly different meanings and connotations. While corrup-
tion exists in all polities, the form it takes, its extent, and its political and socio-
economic functions vary enormously across time and place. In a thorough review
of the empirical literature on corruption, Monica Prasad and associates distill three
major observations about how and why corruption persists. First, corruption per-
sists because diminished state capacity forces average citizens to partake in it to
meet basic survival needs. This they call the “resource challenge.” Second, cor-
ruption persists because of the unsettled debates over what is corrupt and what
is not corrupt, what is private and what is public. This they call the “definitional
challenge.” And third, corruption persists because of counteracting moral pres-
sures, such as the interrelated pressures associated with looking after one’s own
ethnic group (tribalism) or with patrimonial client networks. This they call the
“alternative moralities challenge” (Prasad et al. 2019: 98).
This two-part chapter analyzes the relationship between political corruption,
economic crisis, and anti-corruption reform in postcolonial Nigeria. The first part,
“corruption wide,” critically scrutinizes the definitional and alternative moralities
challenge of corruption. The second part, “corruption close,” examines elite cor-
ruption in Nigeria since independence in October 1960, especially the systematic
plundering of state wealth and the consequent emergence of a crisis of values in ev-
eryday life. The analysis in this chapter extends to the checkered story of post-1999
institutionalist efforts to combat corruption.

Corruption Wide: Complicating Our Understanding of Corruption

Corruption is widely defined as “behavior which deviates from the formal du-
ties of a public role because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private
clique) pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of cer-
tain types of private-regarding influence” (Nye 1967: 419). This public-office view
rests simply and squarely on the illegality of corruption. “Illegality” here denotes
that there are rules governing the conduct of public-office holders and the pro-
cess of selection to public office (Theobald 1990: 16; Underkuffler 2005). There

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0002
48 they eat our sweat

are three essential elements of the public-office conception of corruption: (a) pay-
ments to public officials beyond their salaries; (b) an action associated with
these payments that violates either explicit laws or implicit social norms; and
(c) losses to the public either from that action or from a system that renders

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it necessary for actions to arise only from such payments (Glaeser & Goldin
2006: 7).
Despite its popularity, the public-office view is fraught with difficulties that
sit awkwardly with our purposes. To start with, the questions raised by Michael
Johnston fifty-odd years ago remain relevant today: “Which norms are the ones
that will be utilized to distinguish corrupt from noncorrupt acts? If the defi-
nitions are public-centered, then whose evaluation of the public’s interest is to
be operationalized?” (1970: 6). Another objection notes that the very concept
of public office is basically “Western.” In the developing world, it is argued,
public office as an institution and the ethos surrounding it remains weakly
established. In this light, nepotism, patronage, and minor forms of bribery dis-
guised as gift-giving, far from attracting opprobrium, are generally socially ap-
proved (Theobald 1990: 3). The division between public and private—the basis
for common definitions of corruption—does not carry the same moral weight
in all societies (Ruud 2000: 291). To the extent that public officials in sub-
Saharan Africa or South Asia often find themselves committed to upholding
two contradictory sets of values—on the one hand, those of the modern bu-
reaucracy, which they have sworn to uphold, and, on the other hand, those
foisted on them by their traditional, cultural setting (Anders 2009)—they be-
come “polynormative” (Olowu 1988: 219), and in many cases this translates
into “normlessness” (Riggs 1964). Further, in many African states, loyalty to the
family or ethnic kinsmen overrides individual rights or personal accountability.
The civil servant, in this context, may become engaged in corruption in a desper-
ate effort to generate the additional resources he or she needs to meet obligations
to members of their family members or ethnic group (Alam 1989: 445; Wrong
2009). Studying Malawi, Gerhard Anders (2009) points to the co-existence and
interaction of multiple sets of contradictory rules that a Malawian civil servant is
required to negotiate on a daily basis, including the official rules, kinship rules,
and the unofficial code of conduct.
The understanding of corruption as illegality is simultaneously too narrow and
too broad in scope, since that which is illegal is not necessarily corrupt, and that
which is corrupt is not necessarily illegal. As such, an overly legislative approach
to corruption ignores the sociocultural forms that corruption takes (Olivier de
Sardan 1999; Routley 2016; Baez-Camargo et al. 2017) as well as changes in cor-
ruption across both time and space (Pierce 2016). This may explain why, despite
boasting higly sophisticated accountability organs and anti-corruption legisla-
tion, a country such as Uganda is still consistently ranked in the bottom third
 corruption and the crisis of values 49

of countries perceived to be the most corrupt in the world.1 Uganda’s formal

anti-corruption bodies score 99 out of 100 points in the Global Integrity 2009
index; yet the country is consistently ranked among the most corrupt in the
world. If corruption is the “secret of law” (Nuijten & Anders 2007), that is to

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say, corruption and law are not opposite but constitutive of one another, it fol-
lows that an approach that purely reads traditional state-centered état de droit as
the only panacea for corruption is grossly inadequate (Torsello & Venard 2015: 3;
Bocarejo 2018: S49). Although legally culpable and widely reproved, practices that
fall within the gamut of the corruption complex are nonetheless seen by those who
participate in them as legitimate, and often as not being corrupt at all (Olivier de
Sardan 1999: 34).
Consider Janet Roitman’s study of the “ethics of illegality” in the Lake Chad
Basin, which comprises Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. While unregulated
economic activities and violent modes of extraction are commonly viewed as “il-
legal,” Bedskin drivers and road bandits (coupeurs de route) also imagine these
practices as “licit” and “rational behavior” (Roitman 2006: 251–61). Similarly, Eric
Bähre’s study of Cape Town’s taxi associations show that taxi owners generally em-
brace illegality and informality as being vital to doing business (Bähre 2014: 576).
In their study of the educational sector in the DRC, Kristof Titeca and Tom de
Herdt found that formal state-backed rules and agreements only played an in-
direct role in governing the system, even if all actors in the educational sector
systematically refer to these rules and agreements (2011: 214). These African case
studies find affirmation in ethnographies of corruption in South Asia and South
America, which show that people generally see corruption as a “legitimate way of
going about doing things” (Kondos 1987: 17). In India, Veena Das finds that, while
people openly admitted that their actions (such as tapping electricity from high-
tension wires) violate the law, they nonetheless “have a completely lucid answer to
allegations of corruption levelled at them by bureaucrats—what is the poor man
to do—he is only trying to earn rozi-roti (income for food), he is somehow feeding
his wife and children. Surely that cannot be illegitimate?” (2015: 340). Similarly,
in her ethnography of corruption among Columbia peasants (campesinos), Diana
Bocarejo (2018: S53) finds that campesinos accept the law neither as “fixed” nor as
an a priori legitimate set of discourses and practices.
How do we make sense of the above pervasiveness of an “ethics of illegality”
in the Global South? One rather incomplete explanation that has been adduced
time and again is that the full panoply of laws and administrative apparatus in
many developing countries is “copied entirely from the West” (Scott 1969: 319; cf.
Anders 2009). Only a few African countries have proposed alternative standards of

1 The Afrobarometer (2015) reported that 69 percent of Ugandans think that the government is
performing badly or not doing enough to crack down on corruption in the public sector.
50 they eat our sweat

public service morality. Instead, many of these postcolonies have each “striven to
ensure that their public bureaucracies conform to the ethical standards and codes
inherited from their erstwhile colonial masters” (Olowu 1988: 216).2 Social science
studies (of corruption) are not immune from this Western-centric critique. David

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Sills and Robert Merton have already called attention to the dearth of social science
materials from non-Western cultures:

The social sciences themselves are primarily products of Western civilization, and
Africans, Asians, and other non-Westerners who work in social sciences [myself
included] generally use the theory and methods of the Western social sciences as
their framework… Certainly a major challenge for the social sciences—if not for
all of the sciences—is to find ways of incorporating the basic ideas of African,
Asian, and other non-Western thought into the Western paradigm.3 (cited in
Schatzberg 2001: 25)

The Shadow State

In much of the Global South, the public/private bifurcation that underpins

Western-centric understandings and explanations of corruption have little daily
utility. Developing regions have remained “decidedly ‘non-Weberian”’ (Khan
2012b: 10), despite attempts at improving formal enforcement. Africa, for instance,
is commonly seen as a place where formal rules have little constraining effect on
political conducts which are generally viewed as governed by the expectation that
“constitutional rules or administrative regulations can, and probably ought, to be
evaded” (Jackson & Rosberg 1984: 425). The dominance of informal institutions
in the so-called developing world has been cast in light of the “weakness” of the
state to enforce formal institutions (Khan 2012a; Robbins 2000: 425).
William Reno (1995) famously used the concept of the “shadow state” to de-
scribe personalized rule in Sierra Leone, where the “real” state is constructed
behind the façade of formal statehood. Such a dualistic understanding articulates
with the distinction between pays légal (a legal structure) and pays réel (where real
power is wielded) (Bayart 2000), or the bifurcation of “official” and “practical”
norms (Olivier de Sardan 2008). Viewed in this perspective, the “indigenous” is
perceived to be implicated in “the corrupt.” The crisis of governance is situated
within the irreconcilable clash between, rather than the hybridity of, “African-
traditional” and “Western-modern” forms of governance, a clash that is then
interpreted as the root cause of corruption in Africa, tout court (Routley 2016). As

2 The problem of this viewpoint is its tendency to reify the dichotomy between Western state institu-
tions and African society rather than sharpen our focus on “the lives of people in the midst of processes
that restructured state institutions all around the globe” (Anders 2009: 150).
3 The very assumption of a purely western paradigm is dubious (Comaroff & Comaroff 2015).
 corruption and the crisis of values 51

Jean and John Comaroff puts it, “In Africa, the epitome of post/colonial misrule
in European eyes, metaphors of malfeasance—kleptocracy, neopatrimonialism,
clientelism, prebendalism—have long been the accepted terms, popular and
scholarly alike, for indigenous modes of governance” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006:

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6–7). The continued delinking of Western and African elements, colonial legacies
and traditional practices, and the local and the international, persists because “it
enables claims to be made based on the value attributed to association with one
side of the dichotomy or the other” (Routley 2016: 5).
The image of “shadow” has long been a favored discursive trope (particularly
among Western scholars) to imagine and articulate contemporary African reali-
ties. The study of Africa is awash with problematic images of darkness, black holes,
and phantoms (De Boeck, Cassiman, & Van Wolputte 2009: 36). In addition to
Reno’s influential “shadow state” concept, Western scholars of Africa have written
about shadow economies and shadow networks (Duffield 2002), twilight insti-
tutions (Lund 2007), shadow cities (Neuwirth 2006), global shadows (Ferguson
2006), and shadows of war (Nordstrom 2004). The danger with these popular
representations is that “the notion that ‘real’ meanings, events, and entities are
deferred to other domains may lead to the reification of those other, unavailable
sites. This facilitates all sorts of mystifications” (Ferme 2001: 6). Often, the word
“shadow” has been headlined by these authors with little sensitivity to its racist
undertones and the sensibilities of the millions of Africans of whom they write.
Looking at these titles, one cannot help but recall the words of the late Kenyan
writer Binyavanga Wainaina, in his now renowned satire of Western writing about
Africa titled: “How to Write about Africa.” Wainaina (2006) begins this piece with:
“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title.”
Criticizing the state deficiency argument for its weak explanatory power and
“pernicious Eurocentrism,” Paul Robbins calls for an alternative approach by ex-
amining corruption not as “the absence of rules” but as “the presence of alternative
norms.” Studies of corruption, he argues, must transcend the absence of strong
state institutions to critically examine “the presence of differing institutions which
vie for legitimacy and trust amongst diverse players within both the state and civil
society” (2000: 426). Other Africanist scholars have likewise challenged the idea
of state failure, rejecting a priori views about what the state should look like. The
“Weberization” of the African state, they argue, precludes an understanding of
“real governance” in Africa (Olivier de Sardan 2008: 2; MacGaffey 1991). The un-
derstanding of African politics as deviant evokes cultural primordialism (Meagher
2006), that is, a generalized notion of corruption as “the form of politics” in Africa
(Bayart 1993: 89) or the state in African as “naturally corrupt” (Szeftel 1998). It
is exactly this essentialism and cultural determinism that Olivier de Sardan con-
demned when he said: “Should one therefore impute corruption in Africa to some
kind of ‘African culture?’ Nothing should be more absurd. The notion of culture is
extremely polysemic.” Instead, he argues in favor of the avoidance of “both of these
52 they eat our sweat

opposed and symmetrical stumbling blocks: an explanation of ‘culture,’ or the de-

nial of any ‘cultural factor’ whatsoever” (1999: 44). While the notion of “shadow
state” has become ingrained in studies of African politics, it is problematic to as-
sume that official norms invariably fall outside the purview of real governance and

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are thus irrelevant. As Olivier de Sardan points out: “For the researchers and actors
alike, the official norms are part of the definition of the situation. They cannot be
dispensed with under the pretext that the level of adherence to them is scant, nor
is it possible to focus on the practices as if it were the case that the official norms
did not exist” (2008: 7).

Beyond the Cultural Turn

Analysts of corruption in Africa (e.g. Bayart, Ellis, & Hibou 1999; Bayart 2005;
Chabal & Daloz 2006) take various positions that essentialize rather than explain
culture. But let my position be clear: the idea of culture is fluid and relational, and
there is no overarching value system that induces the deportment of African peo-
ple. Two key debates have shaped culturalist analyses of corruption in postcolonial
Africa. On the one hand, scholars have argued that corruption is a consequence
of the endurance of “traditional” social practices and logics in a modern con-
text (McMullan 1961; Bodruzic 2016). Advocates of this school of thought often
point to the predominance of patronage politics and patrimonialism in the African
polity, including primordial traditions of gift giving (Ekpo 1979) and the culture
of supportive values (Le Vine 1975). On the other hand, scholars observe that cor-
ruption in postcolonial Africa is the result of a historic rupture that formed with
the importation of the colonial state (Ekeh 1975; Mamdani 1996). In the first few
pages of This Present Darkness, Stephen Ellis (2016: 4) wrote, “[…] we need to study
the colonial experience of Indirect Rule if we are to understand the origin of later
practices of organized crime and corruption.”
The resort to culture in interpreting corruption conjures up the specter of ex-
pediency, which has become an “easy explanatory trap” for many African leaders
(Ocheje 2001). For example, under Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, corruption was po-
litically constructed as “indigenous forms of ‘African’ resistance to the abstract
formalism of the state” (Hasty 2005b: 295). Syed Alatas criticizes approaches that
use cultural practices for the purposes of corruption rather than being the cause of
corruption (1968: 96–97). Following a review of the cultural aspects of corruption,
Johann Lambsdorff (1999: 13), the inventor of the Corruption Perception Index,
noted that culture can only explain “a certain fraction of the level of corruption…”
Michael Thompson and colleagues enumerate three crucial ways in which culture
is misused in corruption debates. First, culture can be invoked as an “uncaused
cause” when an individual is said to have acted corruptly “because his culture told
him to” (2006: 332). Such explanation fails to address the prior question of what
 corruption and the crisis of values 53

caused the culture to be like that (Lamour 2012: 159). Second, culture is invoked
as “an explanation of last resort” (Thompson, Verweii, & Ellis 2006: 322). In other
words, having exhausted other explanations of corruption, we conveniently turn
to culture as some sort of “residual category” (Lamour 2008: 228). Third, culture is

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often invoked as a “veto on comparison” (Thompson, Verweii, & Ellis 2006: 323).
For example, in his ethnography of corruption and culture in the Pacific Islands,
Peter Lamour (2008: 228) describes how he routinely experienced a “blocking”
character: “To say ‘corruption’ is part of a culture is not unlike saying ‘back off:
this is none of your business.”’

Revisiting Neopatrimonialism

No discussion of the relationship between corruption and culture in modern

Africa will be complete without a look, if cursory, at neopatrimonialism, a concept
often deployed as a one-size-fits-all explanation for political failings in Africa, es-
pecially in relation to issues of corruption (Mkandawire 2015: 563; Pitcher, Moran,
& Johnston 2009; deGrassi 2008). The concept of neopatrimonialism is often
evoked as a general explanation for a range of practices that are seen as typical of
African politics, such as despotism, clannish behavior, ‘tribalism,’ regionalism, pa-
tronage, ‘cronyism,’ ‘prebendalism,’ corruption, predation, and factionalism (Bach
2012: 221). While neopatrimonialism is not easy to define, a “conceptual muddle”
as Aaron deGrassi (2008: 112) calls it, Jean-François Medard (1986) used the now
viral concept as an explanatory model for the contradictory nature of the state in
Africa, in which bureaucratic process sits cheek by jowl with the patrimonial man-
agement of public resources. Perhaps the most authoritative formulation comes
from Christopher Clapham, who defines neopatrimonialism as “a form of organi-
zation in which relationships of a broadly patrimonial type pervade a political and
administrative system which is formally constructed on rational-legal lines. Offi-
cials hold position in bureaucratic organizations with powers which are formally
defined, but exercise those powers… as a form of private property” (1985: 48).
In postcolonial Africa, neopatrimonialism is usually interpreted from two inter-
related perspectives, the society-centric and the state-centric. The society-centric
perspective describes “practices and norms in African society that prevents the
embrace and sustained application of ‘rational’ policy choices capable of pro-
moting economic development and political liberalization” (Olukoshi 2005: 182).
Richard Marcus (2010: 117) refers to this approach as “cultural representation in
the political process.” The state-centric perspective locates the problem of neopat-
rimonialism in the state itself, pointing to the ways in which the state encumbers
society on account of the predatory and personalized politics which it nurtures
(Olukoshi 2005: 184). This perspective has given rise to essentialist narratives of
Africa as “a society with no sense of the public good, one that condones corruption
54 they eat our sweat

and is inhabited by individuals who focus on their own bellies” (Mkandawire

2015: 6). This functionalist state-centric school of thought has also contributed to
a pervasive international cynicism about a culture of political corruption in Africa
(Le Vine 1993: 274) and neopatrimonialism as the “core feature” of African poli-

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tics (Bratton & van de Walle 1997: 62). In turn, such de-historicized and uncritical
views have paved the way for jaundiced questions such as the one raised in The
Economist (2000): “Does Africa have some inherent character flaw that keeps it
backward and incapable of development?”
To be clear, the argument here is not that no African state is neopatrimonial—
in fact, many are—but that “analysts need to avoid a priori assumptions about
the existence of neopatrimonialism and hasty invocations of the phenomenon
[…] without thorough documentation of the precise forms, characters, origins,
transformations, contestations, extent, and other important features of neopat-
rimonialism” (de Grassi 2008: 122; see also Pitcher, Moran, & Johnston 2009).
The concept of neopatrimonialism in Africa has been criticized for its perfunc-
tory appeal to culture, with no explanation for the arbitrary restriction of the
domain of individuals’ rational behavior. As Thandika Mkandawire points out:
“Culture is comprised of such a broad repertoire of actual and potential practices
that any social practice can be accounted for by reference to it. Given the wide
range of African political practices, the neopatrimonial model involves a select
choice of cultural elements, though the selection process is itself never specified.
The subjective choice of cultural elements included often says more about the
preanalytical predispositions of the analysts than of the society being observed”
(Mkandawire 2015: 572). Moreover, casting all political failings and democratic
deficits in Africa in light of neopatrimonialism occludes the real problems facing
the continent: “corruption, vertical and horizontal inequality, ethnic and gen-
der discrimination, weak state capacity, wrong ideas, political chicanery, and the
machinations of the many external actors who seek to exploit Africa in some
form or other” (Mkandawire 2015: 602; see also Szeftel 1998: 236). In a similar
vein, A.R. Mustapha calls into question the logic of neopatrimonialism, partic-
ularly its tendency to reduce the political community in Africa to struggle for
spoils among predatory elites, thus robbing non-elite groups of political agency
(Mustapha 2002).
Despite its shortcomings, the concept of neopatrimonialism holds strengths
that are useful for our purposes. One of these is its emphasis on how the state,
society, and the economy are interrelated. It also foregrounds the problems of
state capacity in how we come to think of corruption (de Grassi 2008: 108),
especially in the way the state is appropriated by personal interests (Koechlin
2013: 69). Thus, the notion of neopatrimonialism calls our attention to how cor-
ruption is commonly a product of state capacities that have not been “strong
enough” to prevent the subversion of essential state functions and interventions
(Khan 1989, 1996a, 1996b). Neopatrimonialism presents scholars in the Global
South with an opportunity to account for the complex relationship between
 corruption and the crisis of values 55

patronage politics and democratic values, between patrimonial domination and

rational-legal bureaucratic domination (Piliavsky 2014; Adebanwi & Obadare
2011: 189). The question of why patronage continues to hold sway in local po-
litical life in the global South is a salient one (Piliavsky 2014: 14). In many

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postcolonial settings, writings on civil society continue to pivot on “a nor-
mative emphasis on the tension between patronage (arising from ‘tradition’)
and the more abstract, individual-oriented values, including openness, equity,
and efficiency, commonly associated with democratic (and capitalist) forms of
rule” (Gillmartin 2014: 128–29). In South Asia, for example, the distinguish-
ing feature of corruption is “the close intermeshing of economic and politi-
cal calculations in exchanges between patrons and clients at different levels”
(Khan 1998: 27).
Having explored the definitional and alternative moralities challenge of corrup-
tion, the next part shifts attention to how corruption in postcolonial Nigeria has
been politically generated through intense elite struggles for power and resources.
The analysis in this section is inspired in part by Mushtaq Khan’s argument that
forms of economic corruption and their effects in developing countries are in-
trinsically interwoven with forms of political corruption (Khan 1998). While
corruption is certainly older than Nigeria (see, for example, Tignor 1973; Njoku
2005), there is no denying that Nigeria’s international image as the epicenter of cor-
ruption and fraud is coterminous with its oil boom of the 1970s and the meteoric
rise of advance internet fee-fraud.

Corruption Close: State Robbery, the Crisis of Values,

and Reform in Nigeria

There was corruption! Corruption! And corruption! Everywhere and all the time!
Corruption was not only rife, it had eaten so deeply into the marrow of our ex-
istence that looters and fraudsters had become heroes, and it seemed we could
no longer place any faith in honesty and decency and hard work. (President
Olusegun Obasanjo, cited in Obasanjo 2000)

To most outsiders, the very name Nigeria conjures up images of chaos and confu-
sion, military coups, repression, drug trafficking, and business fraud, [turning the
country into] a giant, heaving multiethnic symbol of the archetypal Third World
basket case. (Maier 2000: xviii)

Prolonged military rule—about thirty out of forty years (between 1960 and
1999)—played a central role in putting Nigeria on the global corruption map.
Nigeria, the self-styled “Giant of Africa,” was crippled by decades of corrupt and
oppressive military rule, which left “a legacy of executive dominance and political
corruption in the hands of Nigeria’s so-called ‘godfathers’—powerful political
56 they eat our sweat

bosses sitting atop vast patronage networks who view the government primar-
ily through the lens of their own personal enrichment” (Kew 2006). Driven by
a desire for personal gain and hobbled by cronyism, military elites, aided by civil-
ian minions, brazenly looted state property, diverted state funds into their private

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accounts, and awarded questionable contracts to companies owned by them and
their cronies. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo was blunt in his assessment
of the military’s role in entrenching corruption in Nigeria: “One of the great-
est tragedies of military rule in recent times is that corruption was allowed to
grow unchallenged and unchecked even when it was glaring for everyone to see”
(Akinwale 2017). Unfettered by the rule of law, military elites circumvented virtu-
ally all mechanisms designed to promote accountability. Accumulating wealth was
all that mattered, and no effort or means was spared in pursuing that ignoble goal.
In the pointed words of Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, “Only a community
of fools will entrust its most sacred possession—nationhood—yet again to a class
that has proven so fickle, so treacherous and dishonorable” (Soyinka 1996: 9).
While the Nigerian military has often seized power through unlawful means,
they have justified their actions by claiming them to be corrective and pro tem-
pore. It is common practice in Africa for regimes that take power to justifiy their
claim on office by criticizing the corruption of the previous administration and
promising to wage a war on corruption. They then proceed to reproduce the same
corruption that they denounced (Szeftel 1998: 236). This contradiction is not spe-
cific to African leaders but permeates all levels of society, from the president to the
taxi driver. As Smith notes, “The same [Nigerian] who rails against [rulers such as]
General Abacha or President Obasanjo, can in a different moment, lament or laugh
about their own involvement in corruption” (2007: 55).
The twin woes of corruption and bad governance were the main reasons ad-
duced by the Nigerian military to rationalize their incursion into politics in
1966 (Adekanye 1993; Ikoku 1985; Ojiakor 1980; Luckham 1971; Agbese 1992).
Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, who masterminded the 1966 guardian coup
that ousted the First Republic (1960–66), assured ordinary Nigerians that the sole
objective of the military was to purge society of “irresponsible and opportunis-
tic politicians, and incompetent and corrupt civil servants; restore respectability,
professionalism, transparency, and accountability to Nigeria’s public service; and
then return to the barracks” (Mbaku 1998: 21). To be sure, Nigeria’s First Republic
was the “most perfect example” of kleptocracy (Andreski 1968: 108). The popular
expectation in Nigeria was that soldiers will use their monopoly of coercive power
to literally intimidate people into compliance with the laws and rid the country
of the corruption cankerworm. Some scholars argued that the good reception of
the Nigerian military should not be mistaken for a public preference for military
over civilian rule. Instead, “it reflected a total disenchantment with the uncertainty,
violence, corruption and waste that had marred civilian rule since 1960” (Dudley
1973: 109). Others have insisted that the Nigerian miltiary have always enjoyed
 corruption and the crisis of values 57

popular public support any time it outsted an elected government (Siollun 2013).
This claim is not without merit. Max Siollun cites former Nigerian head of state
General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who revealed the extent to which military
incursion in Nigerian politics was goaded on by civilian preference for military

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rule over democracy:

We in the military waited for an opportunity. There was the media frenzy about
how bad the election was, massively rigged, corruption, the economy gone com-
pletely bad, threat of secession by people who felt aggrieved. There was frustration
within society and it was not unusual to hear statements like, “the worst mili-
tary dictatorship is better than this democratic government.” Nigerians always
welcome military intervention because we have not yet developed mentally the
values and virtues of democracy. (Siollun 2013)

Ironically, the military, which seized power in 1966 promising to root out corrup-
tion, left Nigeria a “culture of corruption” that threatened the continued existence
of the country as an independent nation. Soyinka has argued that victory in the
Nigerian civil war (1967–1970) consolidated the values of the ruling elites so that
corruption became synonymous with “Nigerianism”—national identity and even
patriotism (Pratten 2017: 206). Indeed, after one civil war, seven military govern-
ments, and three botched attempts to establish democracy, there is one recurrent
factor in the failure to govern Nigeria: elite corruption, or what some have de-
scribed as “the quest for power for the sole purpose of enriching government
functionaries, their families, and their close associates, to the detriment of national
economic growth” (Iyoha & Oriakhi 2008: 656). In fact, since 1966, most mili-
tary heads of state have behaved basically as the civilian leaders that they ousted
from office: “They have either been engaged in many forms of opportunism to en-
rich themselves at the expense of the people or have allowed members of their
regime to turn governmental structures into instruments of plunder” (Mbaku
2000: 23). Nowhere is this more evident than during the oil boom years of the
1970s and the subsequent economic crisis from the 1980s onwards—a crucial pe-
riod that not only entrenched corruption but also undermined citizens’ trust in
their government.

The Vampire State: Oil and Blood Money

Since 2001, hundreds of academic studies have yielded robust evidence show-
ing that natural resource (such as oil) windfalls heighten corruption, hurt state
institutions, and make authoritarian regimes more durable (Ross 2015; Sala-i-
Martin & Subramanian 2008). Nigeria became the perfect example of this
thesis. The mid-1970s in Nigeria was a period of rapid, albeit uneven, economic
58 they eat our sweat

expansion based on “petrodollars” (Apter 2005). In 1973, at the height of the oil
boom, former Nigerian president General Yakubu Gowon famously announced
that “Nigeria’s problem is not money, but how to spend it” (The Guardian 2014a).
By 1981, however, the country’s relative prosperity came to a halt with the unex-

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pected drop in oil prices. By the end of the decade, the inflation rate had risen
steeply, and Nigeria was well on the way to becoming a net debtor for the first
time, with its external debt rising from USD1.3bn to USD34bn between 1981 and
1991. This was equivalent to 75 percent of its GDP and nearly 200 percent of
its export earnings. For the first time, Nigeria was listed by the World Bank as a
low-income country (Nelson 1992). Meanwhile, extreme poverty figures from the
country made for a grim reading, rising steadily from 28 percent in 1980 to 66 per-
cent in 1996 (Gandy 2005: 46, 48). This difficult period of “oil bust” coincided with
record unemployment in Nigeria, with political patronage becoming “the only
way to secure any important employment or contract” (Falola 1998: 60). In Lagos,
Nigeria’s commercial capital, the population snowballed as rural migrants flocked
to the already overloaded city, settling wherever they could get a foothold in the
spreading shanty towns on the margins of railway tracks or highways, in mori-
bund bus stations, under the bridges, or in shacks precariously extended over the
filthy canals, ditches, and waterways. The various social infrastructure programs
inspired by the petrodollars—such as ports, airports, roads, bridges, oil refiner-
ies, and steel mills—were generally abandoned and left to decay. A mix of falling
oil revenues, widespread corruption, and severe hardship left average Nigerians
distressed about the present and fearful for the future (Mustapha 1999).
Despite the drop in oil revenue, Nigerian government spending continued to
rise. Shortfalls were made up by borrowing, which plunged Nigeria into even
greater debt (Lloyd 2004: 217). Oil effectively transmogrified from “black gold”
into the “devil’s excrement” (Watts 2008), from the lifeblood of the nation into
“a mischievous substance turning politicians into corrupt potentates and making
the national political process crumble from the inside” (Apter 2005: 250). The oil
bust furthered massive graft by intensifying competition over increasingly scarce
petrodollars (Smith 2005: 733). This, in turn, stoked discontent over the conse-
quent poverty and inequality trap. Nowhere was this crisis more evident than in
the civilian rule of President Shehu Shagari (1979–1983). As Ali Mazrui notes:

[The] Shagari administration was one of the most economically corrupt and in-
competent in Nigeria’s history. The nation’s oil resources were rampantly abused,
its finances substantially depleted, its laws of contract desecrated, its laws against
corruption ignored, its teachers unpaid, its people impoverished. Never was a
country’s economic promise so quickly reduced to economic rampage. Shagari’s
balance sheet was stark: impressive political freedom against incredible economic
anarchy… Shagari’s economic sins of anarchy were doomed to be more relevant
than his political virtues of freedom. (cited in Siollun 2013)
 corruption and the crisis of values 59

It was under the Shagari government that “subjugated knowledges” (in form of
stories, rumors, and gossip) started to circulate in everyday life about the rise of
a “vampire state” (Frimpong-Ansah 1992), where elites were not only sucking the
state dry, but literally using human blood for money ritual (blood money or owo

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eje). This underscores what Masquelier (2001: 269) calls the “omnivorous poten-
tialities of the postcolony.” In his Eating and Being Eaten: Cannibalism as Food for
Thought, Francis Nyamnjoh (2018) tells us that “to feed on someone’s life chances
is tantamount to feeding on someone’s flesh.” This metaphorical link between can-
nibalism and corruption in Nigeria is best studied as part of an evolving process
of commodity fetishism, in which people see money as the ultimate value and be-
come obsessed with its accrual. As the ultimate fetish of privilege, money reifies the
process by which the products of human labor are alienated from their producers,
and thus can be amassed by the powerful—not as a result of their own labors, but
by virtue of the sweat of others (McCall 2003: 83). As Apter puts it:

The notion of effortless gain at the expense of even “consumption” of others is

echoed in various witchcraft beliefs as well, but the underlying template moti-
vating it is the conversion of blood into money—bad money to be sure… As the
cost of living rose, real incomes fell, and the professional middle class gradually
withered away, oil was transformed from the life-blood of the nation into the bad
blood of corrupt government. (Apter 2005: 251–52)

In particular, the 1990s saw widespread and visceral stories of “money medicine”
and “money doubling” that sometimes read like pages from Amos Tutola’s “mag-
ical realism” novels. The stories generally related actual practices in which human
blood and (private) body parts were trafficked in macabre rituals for the creation of
instant wealth (Bures 2008: 60). As we know from studies elsewhere, “these body
parts are used for the preparation of magic potions. Parts of the body may be used
to secure certain advantages from the ancestors. A skull may, for instance, be built
into the foundation of a new building to ensure a good business, or a brew contain-
ing human parts may be buried where it will ensure a good harvest” (Ralushai et al.
1996: 255). In January 1998, the front cover of Fame, a popular tabloid in Nigeria,
displayed grisly pictures of a woman whose eyes had been gouged out for money
medicine. The boom in Nigerian home videos (Nollywood) of the 1990s pivoted
on evil occult forces. One of the biggest blockbusters of that decade, Blood Money
I and II, tells the story of Mike and his immersion in the “vulture cult,” involving
human sacrifice, the mutation of men into vulture, and the transmogrification of
children into chickens who vomit money. Another blockbuster, Egba Orun (“The
Necklace”), tells the story of a woman who uses her daughter for money ritual pur-
poses. For the most part, videos such as Blood Money and Egba Orun are not cast as
allegories or fanciful representations, but as accounts of real occurrences. In these
movies, as in the many other stories circulating in the Nigerian press and public
60 they eat our sweat

discourse at the time, the main theme came down to “excessive riches obtained
from evil occult power—riches that are represented as anti-social, destructive, and
ultimately unprofitable” (Marshall 2009: 188). Money magic became the ultimate
signifier of Nigeria’s unproductive wealth (Apter 2005: 269). By characterizing

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sudden wealth as bewitched, average Nigerians engaged in an active critique of
a wicked world in which “ends far outstrip means, in which the will to consume
is not matched by the opportunity to earn, in which there is a high velocity of
exchange and a relatively low volume of production… in which the possibility of
rapid enrichment, of amassing a fortune by largely invisible methods, is always
palpably present” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2000: 293).
The 1990s also saw an “epidemic of penis theft” that swept across Nigeria and
West Africa generally (Diouf 2003: 10). In a typical incident, someone would
suddenly shout: “Thief! My genitals are gone!” Then a culprit would be iden-
tified, apprehended, and summarily killed. In the streets of Lagos, it was not
unusual to see men holding on to their genitalia while women held on to their
breasts, either openly or discreetly (Bures 2008). To this day, rumors of magical
penis theft and blood money hold sway in Nigeria, calling our attention to “a
world in which humans seem in constant danger of turning into commodities,
of losing their lifeblood to the market and to the destructive desires it evokes”
(Comaroff & Comaroff 1993: xx). During my fieldwork in the bus terminals of
Lagos, danfo drivers often related numerous stories of big men in their area who
used the blood of children (eje omode), relatives (eje ara ile), or strangers (eje alejo)
to “kill money” (pa owo) and acquire fame. These frequent accusations reflect a
Nigerian society where power and the occult are interconnected: “all ‘big men’
that have ‘eaten well’ are understood to have links to secret and occult forms of
power!” (Marshall 1998: 304). Jean and John Comaroff (1999), writing about post-
colonial South Africa, describe this as “occult economies,” that is, an economy in
which wealth is achieved by “eating” someone else’s productive and navigational
capacity.
The connection between witchcraft and corruption is well documented in post-
colonial African studies; it underscores “the secret world of obscure rituals” that
characterize corruption and power on the continent (Nuijten & Anders 2007:
19; Geschiere 1997; Bayart 1993; Schatzberg 2001: 50). In Malawi, accusations of
magic and corruption are often aimed at people whose wealth appears suddenly
or inexplicably (Nuijten & Anders 2007: 19). In Cameroon, the opulent are ac-
cused of having strong evu/djambe (sorcery). Accusing the wealthy of sorcery is
potentially dangerous, since they can use their sorcery to “eat,” that is, punish the
accuser (Rowlands & Warnier 1988: 123). “Those who can ‘eat’ materially are able
to do this because they can ‘eat’ their victims spiritually” (Schatzberg 2001: 5).
My aim in this section was not to reduce political life in Nigeria and Africa to
sensationalist impressions, but to show how the ambiguous sources of wealth and
its socially unproductive nature in Nigeria generated a public obsession with evil
ritual practice and occult forces.
 corruption and the crisis of values 61

Rugged Materialism

The economic crisis of the 1980s, especially the frantic looting that took hold
amongst the ruling cabal, created a cohort of disaffected Nigerian youth variously

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labeled as a “lost generation” (Cruise O’Brien 1996), a “coming anarchy” (Kaplan
1994), and a category without importance, at the mercy of global, political, and
economic fluctuations. The inordinate quest for fame and fortune among Nige-
rian leaders taught many youth that being an honest and law-abiding citizen does
not pay (Osoba 1996: 384), that “it is better to sell your soul to the devil than to
be scrupulous. The cunning required to meet immediate needs has replaced the
respect of any righteous moral code” (Nzeza 2004: 21).⁴ The mentality of owo kia
kia (“fast money”) or money by any means became the lifestyle and trademark of
a new precarious class in Lagos. In this no man’s land, money became an “uncon-
tained agent” that penetrated all relations (Oestermann & Geschiere 2017: 109). In
Lagos, owo (money) transmogrified from idi gbogbo buburu (root of all evil) into
ewa (beauty). This reclaims Cyprian Ekwensi’s timeless novel Jagua Nana (1961),
which paints a sinister picture of Lagos as a vanity fair where money is an “idol
worshipped in every waking and sleeping moment” (1961: 30). Ekwensi compares
Lagos to Tropicana, a nightclub where people’s first loyalty was to money. Accord-
ing to Ekwensi, village people come to Lagos to “make fast money by faster means,
and greedily to seek positions that yielded even more money” (1961: 15). Jagua
Nana’s sharp contrast of the immorality of the city to village traditional morality
foreshadows Ekeh’s (1975) distinction between primordial and civic public.
The displacement of traditional cultural values by “rugged materialism”
(Assimeng 1986: 249)—that is, a condition of aggressive preoccupation with ma-
terial accumulation without regard to values of probity and propriety—offers a
useful historical angle to the Nigerian “politics of plunder” endemic since the
beginning of the oil boom (Gore & Pratten 2003: 102). About four decades ago,
William Brownsberger criticized studies that explained third-world corruption by
reference to anachronistic traditions and to the special pressures on public of-
ficials. He argued, instead, that the roots of corruption in Nigeria go deeper, to
“a materialism and political fragmentation that are the products of a moment in
development” (1983: 215). The “dazzling status of the white man (and the suc-
cessor black elite),” argues Brownsberger, “burned into the [Nigerian] populace a
desire to appear and act as did their dominators, and this led the most success-
ful to corrupt excesses” (1983: 215–33). This observation is confirmed in several
roadside conversations during my fieldwork in Lagos. I was struck by the strong
connections that (elderly) commuters made between corruption and the loss of

⁴ In This Present Darkness, the late Stephen Ellis (2016) tells us that the 1970s and’ 80s precipitated
the expansion of a “criminal diaspora” of the educated but jobless youth—Nigerian criminality and
fraud went global at the same time when the issue of “organized crime” was becoming the cynosure of
media eyes.
62 they eat our sweat

value, with many lamenting the neglect of traditional moral values of ise (work)
before owo (money). These commuters parsed corruption as a direct result of the
inordinate desire for owo kia kia without patience for due process.
Nigeria’s owo kia kia mentality came out clearly in two interviews I had in late

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2014, the first with Balogun, a Senior Vehicle Inspector Officer, in Alimosho: “As
far as I am concerned,” said Balogun, “we Nigerians are a problem to ourselves.
We look for where we can find easy money. Nobody wants to apply themselves to
apprenticeship work anymore… That is why I said we need to seriously work on
the psyche of the average Nigerian. A lot of people today are just interested in what
brings in fast cash, without regard for what happens on the long run.” In the other
interview at a bus terminus in Oshodi, a veteran danfo driver bemoaned the fact
that “Nigerians no longer work for their food. They just want money here and now,
at all cost. Even when they have to use their loved one for money ritual, most will
not hesitate. They forget that they must first learn to crawl before walking. During
our time, we learnt that work cures poverty. Our youth have lost the virtues of
work and patience. They embrace jibiti (fraud).”

IBB, SAP, and the Politics of Deception

In an effort to re-impose political order and decency in Nigeria, the Buhari-

Idiagbon regime (1984–85) toppled Nigeria’s Second Republic (1979–83) and
mounted a public propaganda “war against indiscipline” (WAI), along with a
special paramilitary squad—“WAI brigade”—for its execution (Falola 1998: 62).
WAI’s goals were to boost national unity, promote economic self-sufficiency, and
instill cultural, personal, and moral discipline so as to control indolence, cor-
ruption, and criminal practices (Agbaje & Adisa 1988). Be that as it may, the
regime ultimately dug its own grave by “trying to arrest the country’s economic
and social decline by doctrinaire and anti-people policies like massive retrench-
ment of workers in the public service, the introduction of many new taxes, levies
and fees on citizens, drastic reduction in public expenditure, especially on so-
cial welfare and agricultural subsidies, and the widespread destruction of the
means of livelihood of small privately employed persons like motor mechanics,
food vendors, and petty traders by pulling down their makeshift sheds, kiosks,
and bukas in the name of urban environmental sanitation” (Osoba 1996: 381).
By August 1985, the regime faced an intense crisis of legitimation (Jega 2000;
Diamond, Kirk-Greene, & Oyediran 1997).
Enter General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (“IBB”), through a bloodless coup.
IBB’s regime (1985–1993) derived much of its popularity and legitimacy from a
self-proclaimed “corrective mission” (Graf 1988; Mustapha 1999). To put a halt
to Nigeria’s downward economic spiral, IBB implemented a structural adjustment
program (SAP) in 1986, alongside a Transition to Civil Rule project—what many
 corruption and the crisis of values 63

Nigerian observers have called a “transition without end” (Mustapha 1999)—to

meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
Premised on the alleged rationalistic logic of the supremacy of market signals in
economic management, the SAP was a reform package aimed at strengthening

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the economy by increasing domestic production and instituting financial and im-
port restrictions. Core elements of the SAP included currency devaluation and
exchange rate deregulation, significant reductions in public expenditure, espe-
cially in social services sector, and privatization and commercialization of public
enterprises and services. Yet, the SAP in Nigeria proved largely “inconsistent and
irregular and economic management was soon overshadowed by political discord”
and domestic discontent, reflected in strikes and student protests (Lewis & Bratton
2000: 2; see also Mustapha 1999; Apter 2005).
The role of the personality of leaders is often muted in many analyses of how and
why the SAP failed in Nigeria, and Africa generally. Nigerian iconoclastic musician
Fela Kuti described IBB and his regime as wayo (fraudulent). Apter (2005) indexes
the many ruses deployed by IBB—infamously nicknamed “the evil genius”—to
loot the treasury and lead a democratic transition that ultimately left the juntas in
charge. On the economic front, IBB deviously exploited both the local expectations
for development and the World Bank and IMF’s demand for SAP to establish pro-
grams that diverted resources back to his pocket and those of his cronies (Smith
2005). For about seven years, IBB involved average Nigerians in a political tran-
sition to civilian rule whose cost is estimated at N30 billion. “It became clear in
the end that [IBB’s] Machiavellian maneuvers were ultimately aimed at perpetuat-
ing his personal grip on power, even at the cost of fragmenting the country along
regional, ethnic and religious lines” (Mustapha 1999: 278). IBB’s wife, Maryam
Babangida, was not left out of the act. Maryam created the “Better Life for Rural
Women” program—sarcastically dubbed by average Nigerians as “Better Life for
Rich Women” or “Better Life for Ruling Women”—wherein “the first lady, together
with the wives of governors, launched their projects in state capitals while sporting
the finest lace and fanciest head ties, forever out of reach and out of touch” (Apter
2005: 248). The personalization of state institutions under IBB ensured that only
those with “long legs,” the right connections, could hope for economic security
and selective justice from the state. Petro-naira, political patronage, and repression
became the regular trademarks of IBB’s kleptocracy. His regime sanctioned cor-
ruption by issuing a pardon to officials convicted of corruption by his predecessors
and reinstating their seized properties (Ocheje 2001: 171–3). General Buhari had
it right when he said:

The regime that came to power in 1985 that ushered in General Ibrahim Ba-
bangida destroyed all national institutions, which in its own opinion, stood in
its way. It tolerated, encouraged, entrenched and institutionalized corruption
and glorified its perpetrators… At the end of its tenure in 1993, the military
64 they eat our sweat

government had established an image of corrupt, unreliable and unaccountable

lords of the manor. (cited in Mustapha 1999: 278)

The abuses of the IBB regime created a society where mastring the art of de-

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ception became the conditio sine qua non for survival and success (Smith 2005:
735–36). Obsession with deception and fraud gathered momentum from the
1980s onward; advance fee fraud and confidence tricks involving forgery and
impersonation, covered under the article “419” of the Nigerian criminal code, ex-
ploded with the deregulation of the banking and foreign exchange system under
IBB’s SAP (Marshall 2009: 186). “419” became the ultimate symbol of “world-as-
misrepresentation” and the second source of foreign export in Nigeria in the 1990s,
after oil (Apter 2005: 248).
Today, popular discourse in Nigeria is dominated by fantastic stories of someone
who was conned by a “Yahoo,” that is, a person that uses Yahoo email for fraudulent
activities online. Variations include “Yahoo-Yahoo” and “Yahoo Boys”. In general:
“They tend to be young men conducting get rich quick schemes out of cybercafés.
These scams go by the nickname ‘419’ after Nigeria’s penal code for fraud. Many
are imposters on online dating sites, sell items that don’t exist, buy items that are
‘paid for’ with fake Western Union receipts, or carry out phishing schemes. So,
if you ever receive an email from a dying African prince who seeks to bequeath
his $5 million fortune to someone deserving but initially needs a wire transfer of
$500 as proof of life, it was probably sent by a Nigerian Yahoo boy” (Bell 2019).
One Lagosian traced the rise of “419” practices to the crisis of values under IBB’s
venal rule:

All the 419, fraud, corruption practices you see today have their roots in the IBB
era. Those things were not only acceptable, they were the norm. You could de-
fraud anyone as long as you were smart enough. All kinds of wrong things began
to happen—smuggling, bunkering, drugs—and Babangida encouraged it. Fraud
and corruption became the prevalent ways to really make money. The society
descended into utter depravity.

One of the primary and lasting consequences of 419 scams in Lagos is “episte-
mological insecurity” (Pratten 2013), that is, anxieties over the authenticity of
information and the veracity of claims. During fieldwork in Lagos, almost every
wall had the warning sign: “This Land is Not for Sale. Beware of 419.” To quote
Mbembe (2001a: 148), a visible characteristic of everyday life in Nigeria became its
“simultaneous multiplicities”—in other words, the incongruence between “what
one sees and exposes, and the real value of things… the unexpected is the rule.” The
economic crisis of the 1980s exposed not only the contradictions of Nigeria’s oil-
dependent economy and petro-naira, but also spotlighted a simulated government
that unproductively accrued wealth.
 corruption and the crisis of values 65

As the oil economy imploded and collapsed, the signs of wealth and development
became increasingly estranged from their referents, infusing the value forms of
everyday exchange with ghostly simulacra—food that did not satisfy, clothes and
uniforms that disguised, financial instruments that had no legitimacy, banks lack-

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ing capital, hospitals without medicine, and finally democracy that had no demos.
(Apter 2005: 274)

IBB was forced out of office in June 1993, following his botched attempt to sub-
vert his own deceitful Political Transition Program. An official report issued after
IBB’s exit declared that an estimated USD12bn from public funds went missing
under his rule (Nairaland Forum 2006; Apter 2005: 247). IBB was replaced by
the unelected Interim National Government (ING), which was later toppled in
November 1993 by General Sani Abacha (1993–1998), IBB’s minister of defense
and Nigeria’s last despot.

A Coup from Heaven

By the time Abacha seized power, the Nigerian economy was in free fall. This,
however, did not prevent Abacha from deepening the trigger-happy democracy,
through which incumbent juntas in Nigeria manipulate political processes to re-
constitute themselves as elected democratic governments (Alao 2000). In light of
the popular opposition which his regime endured from the beginning, Abacha
quickly adopted populist, nationalist, and draconian measures to contain the series
of crises threatening his grip on power. For example, the regime enacted “Decree
No. 12 of 1994, which officially removed the authority of the courts to investigate,
let alone challenge, the actions of members of the regime” (Badru 1998: 151). Un-
der Abacha, corruption was no longer an aberration but rather the way the system
works (Diamond 1987: 581), the object of governance. Robert Guest (2004: 121),
for example, describes how “[Abacha] used to send trucks around to the central
bank with orders that they be filled with banknotes.” When this happens, says the
distinguished Nigerian scholar Claude Ake (1995: 2), “the state effectively ceases
to exist as a state and compromises its ability to pursue development.” Not sur-
prisingly, in both 1997 and 1998, Transparency International listed Nigeria as the
most corrupt nation in the world. Jane Guyer (2002: xi) points to the deleterious
impacts of Abacha’s negligent, repressive, and rapacious regime on Nigeria’s urban
life, including:

Petro shortage, personal insecurity, long interruptions in electricity and water

service, multiple road blocks… and sheer worry about the futures… the shock-
ing waste of hope and energy as children failed to get medical care, very brilliant
students failed to shape careers, farmers and traders failed to get goods to market
66 they eat our sweat

before they rotted… Life was fearful and profoundly discouraging. (cited in
Animasawun 2017: 240)

Dubbed a “coup from heaven,” Abacha’s sudden death (apparently poisoned while
in the company of three prostitutes, see Weiner 1998) in June 1998 was followed,

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four weeks later, by that of Chief M.K.O. Abiola in July, the other leading protag-
onist in the intractable political crisis that had plagued Nigeria since June 1993.
Following his death, the Swiss government repatriated the sum of USD700 mil-
lion out of a reported USD3 billion stolen by Abacha and deposited in several Swiss
banks—over a million dollars for each day in office, including weekends (Africa
Confidential, 2000). Abacha alone stole the equivalent of 2 to 3 percent of Nigeria’s
GDP for every year that he was president. The Nigerian government has also recov-
ered more than USD100 million of the funds stolen by the late dictator and his fam-
ily from the autonomous British island of Jersey and an estimated USD150 million
from Luxembourg. Other funds belonging to the despot remain frozen in accounts
in Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom. In November 2009,
Abacha’s son was convicted by a Swiss court for his involvement in a criminal or-
ganization and USD350 million in assets stolen from Nigeria were seized (Ocheje
2001: 171). Abacha’s turning of state power into “a weapon for stealing the nation
blind” (Tell 1998, cited in Adebanwi & Obadare, 2011: 191) was characterized as
“army robbery—the highest stage of armed robbery” (Osoba 1996: 383): 383).
In the decades between 1960 and 1999, Nigeria’s post-independence rulers had
either stolen or mismanaged an astronomical USD400 billion in what Paul Collier
(2005) cleverly calls a “survival of the fattest.” If you were to put four hundred bil-
lion dollar bills end-to-end, you could make seventy-five round trips to the moon!
(United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime n.d.). Also, this amount is equivalent to
six times the Marshal Plan, the sum total needed to rebuild devastated Europe in
the aftermath of the Second World War (Adebanwi & Obadare 2011: 190). This
serial pillaging of the national treasury created a paradox in which “the scan-
dalous, almost legendary, wealth of key ruling class members exist[ed] to mock
the unspeakable mass poverty, misery and degradation of the Nigerian people”
(Osoba 1996: 383). Military kleptocracy accelerated Nigeria’s dramatic decline
from a middle-income country with an annual per capita income of USD1000
in the early 1980s to an impoverished nation with a per capita income of only
USD310 in 1999 (Suberu 2001: 207–8). In 2000, the standard of living in Nigeria
equaled what it was in the early 1970s, a period following three years of bloody
Civil War (1967–1970) (Ocheje 2001: 176).
Abacha’s death opened the door for democratic reforms. Enter General Abdul-
salami Abubakar, who succeeded Abacha as the de facto Head of State (1998–
1999). Abubakar moved quickly to release hundreds of unjustly detained political
prisoners (including Olusegun Obasanjo, who had been imprisoned in 1995 for
opposing Abacha) and repealed notorious military decrees weaponized against
the opposition, such as Decree 2 of 1984, which allowed detention without trial. In
 corruption and the crisis of values 67

his greatest achievement, Abubakar oversaw a transition to civilian rule program

that returned the country to democratic rule on 29 May 1999. The presidential
election of 1999 was comfortably won by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP
(People’s Democratic Party) candidate. Obasanjo was a former military Head

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of State (1976–1979) who handed over power to Shehu Shagari (1979–1983), a
democratically-elected civilian president, hence becoming the first military head
of state to transfer power peacefully to a civilian administration in Nigeria.

A Mixed Bag: Anti-Corruption Initiatives, 1999–2007

Studies have shown that new leaders are often more inclined to reform and less tied
to existing patron-client networks (Lawson 2009: 78; Bienen & Herbst 1996; Kjaer
2004; Taylor 2006; van de Walle 1999). Obasanjo’s case is no exception. By May
1999, when he acceded to power, Nigerians were poorer than when the oil boom
began, and the country was saddled with debts of over USD30 billion (Guest 2004:
124). The percentage of Nigerians living below the poverty line, less than USD1 a
day, was estimated to be 70 percent (Sala-i-Martin & Subramanian 2008). Against
this backdrop, Obasanjo was widely expected to cauterize the country’s elite cor-
ruption epidemic and usher in a new era of transparent governance and national
unity. Obasanjo was seen as the main bridge between the military and civilians,
and between the north and south; in short, “a new broom who would sweep out
the corruption and abuses of military brass hats who had lost any sense of purpose
beyond plundering the national treasury and brutally pummeling innocent citi-
zens into submission” (Adebajo 2008: 5). At his inauguration, Obasanjo vowed to
leave no stones unturned in his effort to defeat corruption and change the “busi-
ness as usual” mentality in Nigeria. There will be “no sacred cows,” he declared,
adding that “corruption, the greatest bane of society today, will be tackled head-
on at all levels… No society can achieve anything near its full potential if it allows
corruption to become full blown cancer as it has become in Nigeria” (Omotola
2006: 221). Very early in his term, Obasanjo identified Nigeria’s debt issue as a
major impediment to economic development. With his committed finance min-
ister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (2003–2006), Obasanjo led negotiations with the Paris
Club of Creditors that wiped out Nigeria’s entire USD30 billion external debt by
paying USD12.4 billion and having $USD17.6 billion canceled (Center for Global
Development 2017). This was the largest such financial deal in Africa.

War against Corruption: The ICPC and EFCC

Obasanjo began his war against corruption by establishing the Independent

Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Eco-
nomic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) in 2000 and 2003, respectively.
68 they eat our sweat

The ICPC and EFCC were meant to complement each other. While the ICPC
had a judicial approach to anti-corruption, the EFCC adopted a law enforce-
ment approach. As stated on its website, the ICPC’s mission is “to rid Nigeria
of corruption through lawful enforcement and preventive measures.” However,

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the Commission struggled to leave a dent on the solid walls of corruption in-
vestigation and prosecution, with a low conviction rate—only eight convictions
(Aina 2014). In sharp contrast to the ICPC, the EFCC went about its work with
“unusual zeal” (Adebanwi & Obadare 2011: 192), like a “corruption-exposing X-
ray machine that was striking fear into the hearts of national leaders” (Mazzarella
2006: 475). Headed by senior police officer Nuhu Ribadu, the EFCC was empow-
ered to “rid Nigeria of economic and financial crimes and to effectively coordinate
the domestic effort of the global fight against money laundering and terrorist fi-
nancing.” This mission was timely, given the upsurge of advance fee fraud (“419”)
in post-1999 Nigeria, coupled with the country’s inclusion in the list of non-
cooperating nations by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).⁵ Empowered by
the EFCC (Establishment) Act (2004), the EFCC’s mission is multilayered, includ-
ing: to “curb the menace of the corruption that constitutes the cog in the wheel of
progress; protect national and foreign investments in the country; imbue the spirit
of hard work in the citizenry and discourage ill-gotten wealth; identify illegally
acquired wealth and confiscate it; build an upright workforce in both public and
private sectors of the economy; and contribute to the global war against financial
crimes.”⁶
True to its mission, the EFCC secured over 250 convictions in four years, mostly
in respect to the advance fee fraud and Internet crimes (Adebanwi & Obadare
2011: 195). During Obasanjo’s tenure, more than two thousand people responsible
for “419” email scams were arrested, and over 130 were convicted of fraud (Ploch
2010: 12). The EFCC recovered USD5 billion in stolen assets and prosecuted
many high-profile persons, from businessmen to politicians and police officers.
In unprecedented moves in 2005, Tofa Balogun, Nigeria’s Inspector General of
Police, was convicted of corruption, having stolen N10 billion from the Nigeria
Police Force; Senate Speaker Adolphus Wabara was forced to resign after tak-
ing over USD400,000 in bribes from the Minister of Education, Fabian Osuji
(who was also dismissed in relation to corruption allegations); Alice Mobolaji Os-
omo, the Minister of Housing, was fired for allocating 200 properties to senior
government officials instead of public sale, and for bribing legislators to pass a
budget. In partnership with the London Metropolitan Police, the EFCC exposed

⁵ Set up in 1989 at the G-7 Summit in Paris, the FATF is an intergovernmental organization that
develops and promotes national and international politics to combat money laundering and terrorist
financing.
⁶ EFCC, Official Website.
 corruption and the crisis of values 69

a number of high-profile cases of corruption among Nigerian governors, two of

which are examined here.
The first case involves Joshua Dariye, former governor of Plateau state (1999–
2004), who was found to operate twenty-five bank accounts in London alone to

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juggle money and evade the law. Like many governors of his ilk, Dariye used
front agents to penetrate Western real estate markets, where he purchased choice
properties. The London Metropolitan Police determined Dariye had acquired 10
million euros in benefits through criminal conduct in London, while domestically
EFCC were able to restrain proceeds of his crimes worth around USD34 million.
In June 2018, the Nigerian High Court sentenced Dariye to fourteen years im-
prisonment on charges of criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of funds
(N1.6 billion). The Court of Appeal later reduced Dariye’s sentence to ten years
(Punch 2018).
In the other case, former governor of Delta state James Ibori (1999–2007), pled
guilty in London to charges of money laundering and other financial crimes to-
taling N12.4 billion (USD79 million) he had committed during his eight years in
office. Ibori was sentenced to thirteen years in prison, with the Crown Prosecu-
tion Service noting that Ibori had acquired his wealth “at the expense of some of
the poorest people in the world” (BBC 2012). Richard Dowden (2008: 445) was
right after all: “Politics in Nigeria is a business career: Any politician who does not
end up a multi-millionaire is regarded a fool.” At the same time, politics in Nigeria
drives home a frequently overlooked fact that corruption in the developing world is
not infrequently aided and abetted by Western donor governments and the World
Bank (Bonner 2009). “For every minister trousering a bribe [in Africa] there had
to be a Western company ready to pay it” (Wrong 2009).
The EFCC’s relative success in the fight against corruption was boosted by sev-
eral factors, including the collective disdain for corruption by ordinary Nigerians,
the strong backing of the Nigerian federal government under President Obasanjo,
and the renewed interest in Europe and America to monitor money laundering in
the wake of 9/11 attacks and terrorism financing. Under Ribadu, the EFCC relent-
lessly called on the international community to “continue to support our work.
That then sends a strong message to our elite that the world is watching what is
happening in Nigeria, and that protects us” (Lawson 2009: 90–91). In 2007, Ribadu
told the World Bank:

What we need is training, equipment, and exposure for our staff. We also need
your support at the international level. So much of grand corruption is out of our
control, as the money goes out of our jurisdiction. If the World Bank can help
us retrieve stolen money and ensure there is no safe haven outside, it will help us
immensely in our fight internally. There should be no hiding place for the corrupt;
treat them like terrorists. (Lawson 2009: 90)
70 they eat our sweat

The EFCC benefited from the financial support of key international actors such
as the European Union, the United States, the United Nations Development Pro-
gram, and the World Bank. The European Union, for example, donated a total of
USD32 million to the EFCC between 2004 and 2008, representing 85 percent of

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its foreign support. In 2005, a USD5 million grant from the World Bank “allowed
the EFCC to target political corruption among high-stakes elites, including mem-
bers of the executive branch of government and members of parliament… at a
time when these very same officials halted the appropriation [sic] of the EFCC to
stop us from pursuing leads” (allafrica 2007). Also, the personality of Ribadu was
key to success. An unusually courageous and devoted man, Ribadu pledged his
life to fighting corruption in Nigeria. “I am ready to give my life…” he declared in
2003 when he was appointed to lead the EFCC. “When you go into the Army, you
known you are going to be killed or you are going to kill. And I look at it not too
different from that. This work is worth doing. I am ready to give my life for Nigeria”
(Adebanwi & Obadare 2011: 198). For his efforts, Ribadu was named “Man of the
Year” for 2006 by the respected Nigerian Vanguard newspaper. In 2007, a poll
found the EFCC to be the second most trusted institution in Nigeria (cited in
Lawson 2009: 91).

Corruption Fights Back

Obasanjo’s efforts to overcome corruption began to reap dividends on the inter-

national stage. In one year—2005—Nigeria jumped from third to sixth position in
Transparency International’s CPI rankings of the world’s most corrupt nations—
an improvement on its poor showing in 2004 and 2003 when it occupied second
and first position, respectively, on the list. Praise for the Obasanjo administration
came thick and fast. Antonio Maria Costa, former Executive Director of the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), noted that “Nigeria’s anti-graft
war is proving that there are no sacred cows left when it comes to tackling cor-
ruption. That sends a strong message of hope across the continent and beyond”
(UNODC n.d.). Daniel Kaufmann, former head of global programs at the World
Bank, expressed hope and admiration for the transformative power of Obasanjo’s
anti-corruption war: “Nigeria is changing for the better… if the current momen-
tum is maintained and deepened, the progress made in the fight against corruption
could become irreversible” (News24 2005).
Alas, the anti-corruption momentum was neither maintained nor deepened;
if anything, it was reversed. Obasanjo’s government soon became littered with
postures of reform, with grandiose promises and conspicuous lack of delivery.
Finance minister Okonjo-Iweala, now Director-General of the World Trade Or-
ganization, was inexplicably dismissed from office by Obasanjo in 2006, and the
 corruption and the crisis of values 71

EFCC was manipulated by Obasanjo to selectively target his political opponents

(Lawson 2009: 86)—hence its label as “Obasanjo’s errand dogs” (Akinnola 2008).⁷
The International Crisis Group (ICG) reports that Obasanjo wielded the EFCC
as “a political weapon to whip political foes, especially state governor likely to

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stand for the presidency and their supporters, into line” (ICG 2007: 3). By way
of illustration, five state governors, some of whom were top contenders for the
PDP’s presidential nomination, were impeached in 2005–2006 on barely substan-
tiated allegations of corruption. Kaushik Basu (2019: 417), writing about a similar
situation in India, calls this political witch-hunting process “a manifestation of a
political-economic trap in which nations tend to get caught.”
Obasanjo’s botched attempt to change the Nigerian Constitution in April 2006
to afford him the opportunity of running for a third presidential term substan-
tially hurt his much-touted democratic credentials. He offered bribes of more than
USD400,000 to Nigerian senators and representatives, had armed police officers
break up a meeting of legislators and governors in Abuja who opposed his third
term bid, and threatened governors who failed to support his bid with impeach-
ment. Obasanjo’s legacy was further soiled by an ugly spat with his vice-president,
Atiku Abubakar, which saw both politically exposed men publicly accusing each
other of corruption involving the government’s Petroleum Technology Devel-
opment Fund (BBC 2006).⁸ Under Obasanjo, who acted as his own oil minster
throughout his eight years in office, Nigeria staged the most fraudulent elections
in its democratic history in 2007. Ballot boxes were stuffed and stolen, voters in-
timidated, and results magically appeared in areas where voting had not taken
place. The Transition Monitoring Group, Nigeria’s own independent election ob-
server, called the 2007 election a “sham” and a “charade,” while Nigeria’s This Day
newspaper dubbed it a “rigging and killing extravaganza” (Laurence 2007: 8).
As was the case under IBB and Abacha, Obasanjo’s government openly sup-
ported corrupt politicians. One high-profile case was that of Chief Olabode
(“Bode”) George, a powerful figure within the ruling PDP and a former chairman

⁷ Ribadu has dismissed allegations of “selective enforcement,” noting that some of Obasanjo’s friends
were investigated and, in some cases, prosecuted. These include: “the Inspector General of Police, Tafa
Balogun (accused by opposition elements as having used the police to help the president’s party to
rig the elections in 2003), Chief Bode George, the deputy chairman (south-west) of the ruling Peo-
ple’s Democratic Party and the president’s ‘Man Friday’ (who was eventually jailed after Obasanjo left
power, based on the investigations and report submitted by Ribadu to the president), Governor Pe-
ter Odili of Rivers State (whom Obasanjo had anointed as his successor, until dissuaded by a report
submitted by Ribadu to the president on allegations of corruption against him), and even Obasanjo’s
daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, and his successor, Umaru Yar’Adua (who, as state gover-
nor, was investigated by the EFCC and some of his commissioners arrested)” (Adebanwi & Obadare
2011: 196).
⁸ Obasanjo attempted to use the EFCC to prevent Atiku from contesting the 2007 presidential elec-
tions on grounds of corruption, declaring a public holiday to hold up the seating of the country’s
Supreme Court, which eventually—barely a week before the polls—ruled that Atiku could run for the
presidency.
72 they eat our sweat

of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). In 2008, Bode was charged with contract-
related offenses of close to N100 billion dating back to his time at the NPA. In
2009, Bode was convicted and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after
a surprisingly efficient trial. However, when Bode emerged from prison in 2011,

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he was welcomed rapturously by Nigeria’s political elite, led by none other than
President Obasanjo and his former defense minister, Ademola Adetokunbo. This
brazen display sent an unmistakable message to all Nigerians: “proven criminal-
ity is no bar to the highest echelons of politics in Nigeria” (HRW 2011). Reacting
to the lavish reception, former anti-corruption czar Nuhu Ribadu said: “It is re-
ally a shameful thing that has happened. Instead of hiding their heads in shame
they have the effrontery to celebrate corruption, in fact it is a national shame”
(Vanguard 2011a). The Action Congress of Nigeria was even more emphatic in its
criticism: “The PDP’s action sends a wrong signal to Nigerian youths that it is al-
right to steal or mismanage public funds, since it can even turn them into a ‘hero’
like Olabode George” (Vanguard 2011b).
Nuhu Ribadu may have been untouchable under Obasanjo, but not after him.
Under President Umar Yar’Adua (2007–2010), Obasanjo’s northern successor,
Ribadu was demoted within the Force and formally dismissed in the middle of his
guaranteed term. He was replaced by Farida Waziri, a retired police chief who was
ostensibly backed by the very corrupt politicians that Ribadu had either indicted
or was planning to indict. Waziri was openly critical of the EFCC’s aggressive style
under Ribadu, noting in one case that: “We will not embrace the Gestapo approach
where if you want to arrest one person, you go with 40 mobile policemen. You
go to newspapers and radio calling people thieves. But the rule of law is the dif-
ference” (Sa’idu 2009: 1). In the end, corruption fought back against Ribadu. As
Said Adejumobi puts it: “Ribadu underestimated the strength and resilience of the
forces he was fighting. Corruption… is like an octopus. It changes its shape and
size; it contracts, expands, lowers itself and blows out differently. More than an
octopus, corruption is a wild animal—a beast, which if you do not fight and tame
it well, would fight you back. Today, corruption is fighting Nuhu Ribadu back”
(cited in Adebanwi & Obadare, 2011: 202). Ribadu’s experience is hardly unique.
John Gitongo, the respected anti-corruption chief under Kenyan President Kibaki,
suffered a backlash after exposing large-scale graft among the highest echelons of
elected officials in Kenya. Following death threats to his life from the “big men” he
had exposed, Githongo was forced to resign and flee into self-imposed exile (BBC
2005; Wrong 2009).
In the end, Obasanjo embodied the dilemmas and chronic contradictions that
threaten Nigeria’s democratic experiment. His anti-corruption reform agenda
ended up promoting what it sought to eradicate—more political corruption and
greater instability. His eight-year rule proved a mixed bag. Seen as an indis-
pensable force for pulling Nigeria away from the difficult years of “blunt eth-
nomilitary rule” (Suberu 2001) into the halcyon era of national unity, Obasanjo
instead presided over a country that arguably became more divided under his
 corruption and the crisis of values 73

watch than at any time in its history. Seen as a force for national salvation, he in-
stead watched from the sidelines as the country was nearly torn apart by sectarian
violence (Adebajo 2008: 7). While much of the decay in Nigeria had set in un-
der the previous era of military misrule, the situation deepened under Obasanjo’s

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administration, after some early promise. Under Obasanjo, the powers of the pres-
idency were (ab)used “to micromanage the country” (Economist 2000). In his 2006
memoirs, Wole Soyinka noted the deep flaws in Obasanjo’s character:

[He] is a man of restless energies… A bullish personality, calculating and devious,

yet capable of disarming spontaneity, affecting an exaggerated country yokel act
to cover up the interior actuality of the same, occasionally self-deprecatory yet
intolerant of criticism, this general remains a study in the outer limits of com-
pulsive rivalry, even where the fields of competence or striving are miles apart.
(Soyinka 2006: 219)

President Goodluck Jonathan, 2010–2015

President Goodluck Jonathan is what some may call an “accidental president,”

due to the manner in which he inherited power after the untimely death of
President Yar’Adua (2007–2010) in May 2010, apparently from a chronic kid-
ney illness. At his inauguration, The Economist (2010) noted that, “Mr. Jonathan
is taking over the leadership of one of the world’s least governable countries in
the least promising circumstances.” Far from heeding the clarion call to “Be Fo-
cused, Be Bold” (ibid.), Jonathan embraced Nigeria’s “soft, forgiving culture”⁹
toward elite corruption. In a controversial case, he pardoned1⁰ the former Bayelsa
State Governor and close ally, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha (1999–2005), who was
convicted of stealing millions of dollars during his time in office and reportedly
made his escape from the UK clad as a woman. Notably, Alamieyeseigha’s release
came just two days after he was handed a two-year prison sentence. Remarkably,
Alamieyeseigha was also declared free to run for elections again because he had
been “remorseful” (BBC 2013). Following this pardon, Wole Soyinka, warned:
“What is going on right now gives the picture of a government that is floundering
and justifying the unjustifiable. It amounts to encouragement of corruption” (The
Herald 2013).

⁹ To borrow the words of the former Singapore Leader Lee Kuan Yew, directed at the kleptocratic
regime of Ferdinand Marcos, the tenth president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986: “It is a soft, for-
giving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcus, who pillaged his country
for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been
recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics” (Farolan 2011).
1⁰ Before a presidential pardon can be granted in Nigeria, a proposal from the president’s office must
be reviewed and recommendations made by the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Prerogative
of Mercy. However, Jonathan sidestepped this due process and went directly to the National Council
of State, which simply approved his request.
74 they eat our sweat

In 2012, the US yearly Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (which are
submitted to Congress by the State Department) noted that, “Massive, widespread,
and pervasive corruption affected all levels of [the Jonathan] government and
the security forces in Nigeria.” The report scored the judiciary system low as it

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noted, “there was a widespread perception judges were easily bribed and litigants
could not rely on the courts to render impartial judgements. Citizens encoun-
tered long delays and alleged requests from judicial officials for bribes to expedite
cases or obtain favorable rulings” (United States Department of State 2012). The
report concluded that while the law provides criminal penalties for official cor-
ruption, the government did not enforce the law effectively, and officials often
engaged in corruption with impunity. An ICPC study of 55 high-profile cases of
corruption in Nigeria from 2006 through 2013 shows that N1.35 trillion was stolen
under Yar’Adua and Jonathan. Diezani Alison-Madueke, who served as minister of
petroleum resources under President Jonathan from 2010 to 2015, allegedly stole
a staggering USD90 billion (Watts 2019: 551). Based on World Bank calculations,
one-third of this stolen sum (N451.377 billion) could have provided 635.18 km
of roads, built 36 ultra-modern hospitals (one per state), built and furnished 183
schools, educated 3,974 children from primary level to their tertiary education
(Owasanoye 2019). In December 2008, Jonathan proposed that the National As-
sembly amend the constitution to remove the immunity clause which prevents
presidents, vice presidents, governors, and deputy governors from being prose-
cuted for corruption while in office (Ploch 2010: 10). This explains why Moses
Ochonu (2008) argues that corruption and infrastructural voids are intertwined:

The embezzlement, mismanagement, or misapplication of public funds often

leads to a cessation of certain social services, or the non-completion of a road,
school, or hospital project. The deterioration and scarcity of infrastructure and
social services have worsened in direct proportion to the corruption problem.
The loss of public funds to corruption translates inevitably to a lack of medicine
in a rural hospital; a lack of access to education for millions of African children; a
lack of potable drinking water and electricity for millions of Africans; and a lack
of good transportation infrastructure.

Jonathan’s War against Boko Haram: Misappropriation

and Outright Corruption

A missing point here is the impact of corruption on the Nigerian “war on terror”
and civilian protection. Under Jonathan, funds earmarked to buy arms to com-
bat Islamist Boko Haram insurgents in northeast Nigeria were siphoned off by
political leaders. Since 2009, Nigeria has been in throes of a violent insurgency
by Boko Haram, which has killed thousands of citizens and displaced millions of
others. The problem of deficient arms has hindered military ability to defeat Boko
 corruption and the crisis of values 75

Haram. This, in turn, contributed to Jonathan’s loss at the polls. The problem of
poor military arsenals is closely related to the culture of corruption that flourished
under President Jonathan. Dambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser
appointed by Jonathan from 2012 through 2015, allegedly masterminded the arms

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procurement deal (“Dasukigate”) that resulted in the embezzlement of over USD2
billion through the office of the National Security Adviser. Reports have suggested
that part of the stolen fund was diverted for the sponsoring of the re-election cam-
paign of Jonathan. Dasuki is accused of awarding phantom contracts to buy 12
helicopters, 4 fighter jets, and ammunition (BBC 2015a). A quick look at the Nige-
rian defense budget since 2011, when the federal Joint Task Force under Jonathan
was first deployed to fight Boko Haram, tells its own story. From USD1.4 bil-
lion and USD2.4 billion respectively in 2010 and 2011, the defense budget was
increased to USD5.7 billion in 2012. In 2014, the defense sector received USD6
billion, constituting 20 percent of the entire budget that year (Cocodia 2016). The
increases in defense spending under President Jonathan were premised on the
need to equip the Nigerian military to defeat Boko Haram. Yet from 2013 until
early 2015, Boko Haram had the upper hand in many clashes because soldiers were
often ill-equipped. Indeed, many soldiers have complained of been outgunned by
the insurgents during battle. Describing his experience of fighting Boko Haram, a
former Nigerian soldier said: “They overpowered us and many died. Our mortars
and rocket-propelled grenades wouldn’t even explode. They were so old” (BBC
2015b).
President Muhammadu Buhari, who took over power from Jonathan in 2015,
noted that corruption and misappropriation hindered the Nigerian army’s abil-
ity to defeat Boko Haram under President Jonathan. “The system collapsed under
[Jonathan’s] leadership,” said Buhari, adding that “It was the incompetence of the
police initially and the soldiers later that led to the situation as it now is. Boko
Haram was taken for granted and allowed to grow. It’s a slide into anarchy. The
soldiers don’t have ammunition, so they abandon their posts and run away” (York
2015). Buhari, of course, made the “war against corruption” the cornerstone of
his 2015 election campaign and administration,11 announcing his commitment to
“killing corruption before it kills Nigeria” (Buhari 2016: 40). Following his inaugu-
ration in May 2015, Buhari confirmed that in the preceding decade, illicit financial
flows (IFFs) from Nigeria totaled USD182 billion, which translates into 15 percent
of the total value of Nigeria’s trade over the period of 2005 to 2014 (USD1.21 tril-
lion). In the last year of Jonathan’s rule alone, IFFs from Nigeria were estimated
at USD12.5 billion, representing 9 percent of the total trade (Watts 2019: 551).
This generalized “kleptomania” may have prompted British Prime Minister David
Cameron’s description of Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” (BBC 2016).

11 The assessment of Buhari’s record against corruption is beyond the scope of this chapter or book.
For a perceptive analysis on this, see Rotimi Suberu (2018).
 2
The Language of Corruption

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Corruption probably ranks with culture as one of the two or three most compli-
cated words in the English language to define (Williams 1983: 87). Studying the
relationship between corruption and culture in the Pacific Islands, anthropolo-
gist Peter Lamour (2012: 165) found that what is deemed corrupt often depends
on language and involves social discussions or an internal kind of dialogue with
family and friends. If, as Fela once observed, “You cannot sing African music in
proper English” (The New York Times 1997), it follows that it must be even more
difficult to try to articulate corruption in Africa in proper English. In his English
in Africa, Josef Schmied (1991: 53) called attention to the complexity and consid-
erable variation of the English language in Africa. While English is considered an
official language in many African countries, only an esoteric few—the educated
class—speak and use it. The vast majority of Africans speak African languages.
When they speak English, it is frequently as a form of pidgin (“broken”) English
(Kirkpatrick 2007: 101).
Against this backdrop, eminent Africanist writers, among them Chinua Achebe,
Amos Tutuola, and Gabriel Okara, have called for English to be adapted to more
closely reflect the vernacular style of local languages in Africa. In his World
Englishes, Andy Kirkpatrick tells us that the use of the vernacular in an African
English “captures the essence of a culture even at a more mundane level”
(2007: 113).
Africa is a continent of linguistic complexity and diversity, with speakers of
over 1,300 languages. In Nigeria alone, Africa’s most populous country, at least
520 languages are spoken. In Ghana, over 50 languages are spoken. In Cameroon,
the co-official European languages of English and French heighten the linguistic
complexity of the country. In South Africa, there are up to 11 official languages
(Kirkpatrick 2007: 101). This linguistic complexity and unique sociolinguistic en-
vironment are central to any understanding of corruption in Africa. As far as I
know, among the 520 languages spoken in Nigeria, there is no direct translation for
the word corruption. Among the Hausa people of northern Nigeria, for instance,
no single word fits corruption sensu stricto. In fact, as M.G. Smith found in the
early 1960s, Hausa people use various phrases to explain a range of political condi-
tions related to corruption, ranging from zalunchi/zamba (oppression/swindling)
and yi gaisuwa (making greetings or gifts) to manafunci (treachery and breaking
of political agreements), and wayo (tricks) (Smith 1964: 164). In the same vein,

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0003
 the language of corruption 77

in East Africa, three meanings of corruption can be identified: corruption (n. uozi,
ubovu, uchafu); bribery (rushwa, upenyezi); alteration (mageuzi, makosa).
Beyond Africa, in India, terms such as ghush (Bengali for “bribe”) and bhras-
tachar (Hindi for “corruption”) are generally applied to describe illicit transgres-

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sions by public officials (Ruud 2000: 283). On Thailand, anthropologist Niels
Mulder (1996: 174) argues that the conventional meaning of corruption as the
misuse of entrusted power for private benefits is baffling to many Thais, who
do not necessarily view corruption as an erosion of public interest. In fact, the
closest equivalent for corruption in Thai is choo rat bang luang, “to defraud the
state,” or to steal from the king. Similar to the Hausa people of northern Nige-
ria who view corruption as oppression (zalunchi), that is, acts that were wrong
but that were nevertheless not unexpected of people in government (Pierce 2016:
5–6), Thais “expect their leaders to be corrupt too, and accept the fact as part of
life” (Kulick & Wilson 1992: 36). In fact, in Thailand, gifts to government offi-
cials in return for services rendered are either seen as sin nam jai (gifts of good
will/tolerable/positive) or corruption (criticized), based on the particular cultural
lens through which you interpret them. In a modern bureaucracy, such gifts un-
doubtedly constitute corruption. However, in a more traditional Thai context of
relations between citizens and public officials, they may be seen as sin nam jai
(Pasuk & Sungsidh 1996: 166). Similarly, in South Korea chonji (“bribe money”)
is a way of life that binds citizens and public servants together. So widespread and
systemic is chonji that “mothers hand them out to ensure their kids get good marks
at school; young lecturers to get jobs at colleges; and drivers to avoid speeding
tickets. Small businesses constantly give chonji to public servants seeking money
in exchange for every stage of administrative action related to their trade” (Kim
1998: 53, cited in Quah 2011: 322). In Mexico, bribery is generally seen as a way
of life (DW 2013). However, unlike the situation in Thailand and South Korea, in
Mexico there is a subtle difference in meaning between two common expressions
for bribery: soborno and mordida. While the former is presumed to be a serious
crime (involving large sums of money), the latter describes the more widespread
forms of petty corruption, evoking what Covarrubias Gonzalez (2003) describes
as the “folklore of corruption” pervading popular culture in Mexico. In this latter
understanding, mordida constitutes part of the tactics of everyday survival, that is,
an “informal strategy” used by average Mexicans to negotiate an undemocratic and
repressive state (Baez-Camargo 2019). This applies well to Uganda, where every-
day bribing is not necessarily perceived by local people as negative but instead as an
instrumental strategy deployed to meet basic needs. In fact, many ordinary Ugan-
dans expect government officials to enrich themselves through (il)legal channels
since “man eats where he works” (Baez-Camargo et al. 2017: 11). This adds weight
to empirical studies that have emphasized the pragmatics of the use of corruption
(Muir 2016: 132; Mazzarella 2006), showing that corrupt practices may have their
own morality, at least when seen through the actor’s eyes (Bocarejo 2018: S49).
78 they eat our sweat

In the second part of Chapter 1, I focused mainly on the evolution of elite

corruption in Nigeria since 1960 and the emergence of a crisis of value in the
country. Although necessary, this top-down analysis is not quite sufficient to
do justice to the corruption complex. To comprehend the full range of political

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ideas about corruption, we must go beyond “sterile, static and narrowly exegeti-
cal Afro-Saxon tradition” of analysis to account for “the diverse means by which
people voice political ideas indirectly… [including in this account] the works of
novelists, dramatists, poets, musicians, journalists, theologians, philosophers, and
social scientists, as well as proverbs, fables and oral literature” (Schatzberg 2001:
3). This view aligns with growing calls for empirically grounded studies of the
manner in which the state is made real and tangible through “symbols, texts, and
iconography… but also to move beyond the state’s own prose” and interrogate
“how it appears in everyday and localized forms” (Hansen & Stepputat 2001: 5).
So, what can the study of language and idioms tell us about the shapes and
contours of corruption? Following the call to root concepts in an analysis of
their meaning in a particular language (Fearon & Laitin 2000: 4), this chapter
grounds corruption in its local discourses and “moral imaginations,” understood
here as the “art by which individuals struggle to transform their social baggage
into gear that suits urgent situational needs in terms of meanings and moral
judgements” (Biedelman 1986: 203). By examining how ordinary people imag-
ine and talk about corruption, we gain a better understanding of the polyvalence
of corruption, the popular reactions to it, and the “political work” (Pierce 2016)
that the discourse of corruption does. Moreover, paying careful attention to
the sociolinguistics of corruption can expand our knowledge of its susceptibil-
ity to “slippage” (Keller 1992: 10), which happens when a term’s meaning shifts
back and forth between its technical (reconstructed) and ordinary meanings
(Schaffer 2012: 2).
By exploring the local discourses of corruption in a way that strips it of its
ordinariness, this chapter moves us beyond the rather narrow focus on “impartial-
ity, impersonality and, above all, the strict separation of the incumbent and office”
(Theobald 1990: 2). Situating corruption in the social and linguistic contexts in
which it occurs entails looking closely at how corrupt practices are routinely dis-
cussed, how they are morally evaluated by the social actors involved, and how
they are culturally constructed and rationalized (Smith 2007; Bocarejo 2018; Ruud
2000). The objective here is for the social mechanisms of corruption to be under-
stood not only through the point of view of people who “come into contact with it,
exploit it, or become its victims, on a daily basis” (Olivier de Sardan 1999: 25, 28;
Smith 2007: 56), but also from their point of talk. By seriously considering the pop-
ular semiology of corruption (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan 2006: 98), this chapter
reclaims the neglected but vital role of language and idioms in shaping the mean-
ing of corruption. In so doing, it sheds fresh light on what counts as corruption in
the value acceptances of locals and contributes to our limited understanding of the
 the language of corruption 79

meanings that people everywhere ascribe to corruption or its rough equivalents in

other languages.

Critical Discourse Analysis

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This chapter is inspired by a critical discourse analysis, which describes a so-
ciolinguistic approach that conceptualizes language as a form of social practice
(Fairclough 1989) whose analysis can uncover hidden or implied meanings. Crit-
ical discourse analysis involves “studying and analyzing written texts and spoken
words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias
and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced and transformed
within specific social, economic, political and historical contexts (…) it tries to
illuminate ways in which the dominant forces in a society construct versions of
reality that favors their interests” (McGregor 2003: 1). This approach is employed
here, given that we still know remarkably little about how or the extent to which
the idioms of corruption can become a weapon wielded by both the weak and the
strong to critique, mislead, and manipulate. As Paul Eschholz and colleagues note
in Language Awareness, “Few of us are really conscious of the way, subtle or not
subtle, in which our use of language may affect others… Language is used to clas-
sify, dehumanize, deceive, and control human beings” (Escholtz, Rosa, & Clark
1978: v–vii).
This chapter examines the language and idioms of corruption, because they
are the very categories through which local populations construct meaning out
of lived realities. The rest of this chapter proceeds on the basis of a linguistic
anthropology, which operates from the major premise that language is a sym-
bolic form and, therefore, that discerning the meanings of local symbolic forms
is a worthwhile endeavor (Basso 1992: xii), especially in light of the polyva-
lence and contested nature of corruption. Like any other word, corruption has
no special claim to neutrality. As Mikhail Bakhtin points out, “All words have
the ‘taste’ of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a par-
ticular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes
of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life…”
(Bakhtin 1981: 293). It is to this socially charged life of corruption that I
now turn.

“Goats Eat Where They Are Tethered”: The Politics of the Belly

The meaning and force of language derive from the sociocultural contexts in which
they are embedded. It is for this reason that the linguistic anthropologist Keith
Basso has argued that language “exhibit[s] a fundamental character—a genius,
80 they eat our sweat

a spirit, an underlying personality—which is very much its own” (1992: 172). The
genius of African speech communities lies in their resourcefulness and astute ca-
pacity to tersely capture the corruption complex by fusing elements of language
and culture. Similar to the Western Apache language described in Basso’s Western

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Apache Language and Culture (1992: 172), a few uttered words in African lan-
guages can do great amounts of “communicative work.” Perhaps nowhere is this
more evident than in the very vivid and visceral images of corruption as food in
Africa, a continent where eating itself is an act of sociality and self-identification.
As the adage goes: “You are what you eat” (Shapin 2014: 377).
Accounts of the state in Africa often revolve around a cannibalistic metaphor,
the vampiric potential of the postcolony. Jean-François Bayart used the concept
of “politics of the belly” to articulate a political rationality in postcolonial Africa
where material wealth and physical corpulence are generally seen as political
virtues, and where the state is said to coerce and consume its own citizens (1993:
242–43). At its core, politics of the belly embodies a complex array of cultural rep-
resentations, most notably those of the invisible world of sorcery. In Africa, eating
is often tied to the dark arts of witchcraft and sorcery as firmly rooted in local cos-
mogonies (Schatzberg 2001: 50). In Cameroon, sorcerers are said to “eat” (kfuru)
their victims, tear them, and draw blood (Rowlands & Warnier 1988: 122). In the
African political realm, “to eat” refers not only to the nourishment of self but also to
accumulation, exploitation, defeat, attack, and killing by witchcraft (Bayart 1993:
270). In this perspective, the cupidity of African politicians in Africa evokes the
witch’s craving for human flesh. As Bayart puts it:

This theme of the belly is based on two original cultural registers which are,
moreover, closely linked: that of munificence which, for example, makes phys-
ical corpulence into a political quality and, above all, that of the invisible, i.e. the
nocturnal world of the ancestors, of the dream, of divination and magic, of which
the gut is the actual center. When the Africans assert that their leaders are “eating”
them economically through excessive extortion they lend this assertion a disturb-
ing connotation which haunts them from infancy and obsesses them until their
death: that of the specter of an attack of witchcraft which generates prosperity for
the aggressor and failure, illness and misfortune for the victim. (1993: 69)

Africanist scholars have long explored the interface between political ac-
tions, witchcraft, and occult economies in postcolonial Africa (Geschiere 1997;
Comaroff & Comaroff 1999). In Malawi, corruption and witchcraft share a num-
ber of characteristics on account of the former’s “paradoxical relationship be-
tween the legal and illegal, secrecy and publicity, condemnation and fascination”
(Nuijten & Anders 2007: 19). In postcolonial Nigeria and post-apartheid South
 the language of corruption 81

Africa, “witchcraft persists as a practical discourse of hidden agency because eco-

nomic development in the larger sense has failed” (Apter 1993: 124; Comaroff &
Comaroff 1999). In Cameroon, sorcery is not only a mode of popular political
action but is at the very heart of the state-building process from the past to the

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postcolony (Rowland & Warnier 1988: 121). It is in this sense that Bayart identi-
fies belly politics as a fundamental feature of the African state as manifested in the
“kleptomania” of its rulers. Thus, the politics of the belly is, first and foremost, a
form of governmentality that constitutes the African state as a “rush for spoils,”
operationalized through “competitive patrimonial networks” (Hasty 2005a: 275).
This perspective adds weight to the observation that, for a civil servant, positions
of power offer the only realistic route for acquiring any kind of wealth. For this
reason, refusing to avail oneself of bribes and “gifts” is tantamount to making “a
simultaneous show of ingratitude, egoism, pride, naivete and even stupidity…”
(Olivier de Sardan 1999: 43). Belly politics in Africa is exemplified by the popular
African saying, “Goats eat where they are tethered,” which tersely and ingeniously
captures the “rush for spoils” that binds the rich and the poor, the ruler and the
ruled, together (Bayart 1993: 235).1

The Spatial Vernaculars of Corruption in Africa

“The life of any language resides in the welter of its myriad particulars” (Basso
1992: xi). African languages are no exception. The continent boasts a kaleidoscope
of evocative idioms for thinking and talking about corruption (Nuijten & Anders
2007; Isichei 2004; Schatzberg 2001), and they pervade political and social dis-
course. None is more evocative than the corporeal metaphor of food and eating
through which Africans have historically imagined and articulated the corruption
complex. Before exploring the relationship between corruption and images of eat-
ing in Africa, it is important to dissect, if briefly, the multiple meanings of eating.
Like the concept of corruption, the verb “to eat” in Africa is inherently polyvalent.
In northern Ghana, food (dia) and eating (di) intertwine with systems of exchange,
building relationships, and sexuality. The meaning of the verb di (to eat) goes
well beyond its English understanding. Di can mean “to obtain or use something,”
“to destroy,” “to experience something fully,” and “to marry” (Denham 2017: 95).
Bantu Africa uses the word for “eating” to express a variety of meanings linked
to power and property. In Busoga, a traditional Bantu Kingdom, when a ruler or

1 In Cameroon, the supposed opposition between Beti and Bamileke ethnic groups often revolves
around belly politics: “The latter, seen as dominant in the national economy, are supposed to be experts
in accumulation, even at the cost of their own kin. In contrast, the Beti are supposed to be unable to keep
their money: this is why they have to ‘eat’ the state in order to be able to satisfy the unrelenting demands
of their own family. Such stereotypes will be invariably accompanied by the general comment: Ah oui,
la chevre broute ou elle est attachée (Well, the goat eats where it is tethered)” (Oestermann & Geschiere
2017: 109).
82 they eat our sweat

leader conquers a neighboring territory, he is said to “eat it.” Nowadays, “a man

who secures for himself an appointment to chieftainship ‘eats’ the office and an
embezzler ‘eats’ the money he misappropriates” (Fallers 1969: 83). In the early
eighteenth century, a visitor to northern Nigeria warned the local elites of vora-

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cious European invaders. “By God,” he said, “they eat the whole country—they are
no friends: these are the words of truth” (Denham 1826: 279).
Clearly, then, Africa is fecund with discursive linkages between corruption and
eating. In East Africa, a political faction is called kula (“eating”), and corruption
is known as chai (“tea”). In northern Nigeria, solicitations of bribes by the police
are coded in images of heat and water: Shan rana (“The sun is scorching us”), gari
yayi zafi (“The town is hot”), akwai ruwa? (“Is there water?”), and a zuba mana
ruwa (“Pour us some water”). In northeast Nigeria, truck drivers think of security
checkpoints as a famished apparatus that shàakudi (“drink money”) and shàa-jini
(“drink blood”). Among the Hausa of northern Nigeria, bribery or involuntary
giving is generally disparaged as hanci (“eating of nose”) or toshiyar baki (“plug-
ging of mouths”) (Auwal 1987: 293).2 In southwestern Nigeria, public office is seen
by many as an “eatery” or “fast food” of sorts (Adebanwi & Obadare 2011: 186).
In francophone African countries such as Niger, Senegal, and Benin, corruption is
commonly registered as manger (“to eat”) or bouffer (“to devour”). In these soci-
eties, the embezzler is said to have mange la caisse oul’argent (“eaten the till or the
money”) or that he is un mangeur d’argent d’autrui (“the devourer of other people’s
money”). In Niger, predatory rulers are often labelled le clan des bouffeurs (“the
clan of the gluttons”) (Masquelier 2001: 268). Among the Luba of eastern Zaire,
chieftaincy is symbolized by the elephant “because it eats more than other animals”
(Isichei 2004: 236). After the decline of the Ugandan formal economy under the
despot President Idi Amin Dada Oumee (1971–79),3 the magendo (black-market
economy) flourished as a source of everyday survival (Titeca 2012: 50), involving
the smuggling of goods such as cigarettes, fuel, batteries, coffee, paraffin, sugar, and
gold. The Ugandan state was unable or unwilling to regulate the magendo, since
it served the material and political purposes of the ruling class (Green 1981). No-
tably, operators in the magendo were called mafutamingi, “the fat ones.” In Benin,
the common Dendi⁴ expression dii ka dan me literally means “take that and put in
your mouth,” implying, “that’s your share.”
In DR Congo, phrases such as kukata milomo (“to cut the lips”) or ya sucre,
ya cayi (“for lemonade, for tea”) are common idioms of corruption. In Lubum-
bashi, the image of eating labels the embezzling of funds: ll a tout bouffe (“he has
eaten it all”). So rife is corruption in this city that people call it madesu ya bana

2 The Hausa people distinguishes between voluntary gifts (dash) and involuntary giving (hanci). The
latter is often frowned upon while the former is generally tolerated.
3 Nicknamed the “Butcher of Uganda,” Idi Amin is considered one of the cruelest dictators in African
history.
⁴ A Songhay language used as a trade language across northern Benin.
 the language of corruption 83

(“beans for the children”) and un petit quelque chose a manger (“a little some-
thing to eat”). Here, a person who fails to cash in on his (government) position is
regarded as a fool (akili). Yet, anyone who eats too much is considered to be stupid
because ekonahribisha kazi (“he spoils his job”), meaning he or she will soon be

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sacked. Addressing his party delegates in 1984, President Mobutu Sese Seko of
Zaire, warned: “If you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested.
Yi ba mayele [steal cleverly], little by little.” This underscores the point that “preda-
tion finds the right tune in moderation” in DR Congo (Petit 2005: 477). Or, as the
Congolese proverb goes, kula ndambo, kwaca ndambo (“eat some, leave some”).
In Tanzania, Rwandan (Hutu) refugees lament of public officials: “They eat our
sweat.” In Dar es Salam, daladala drivers use the expression Kula Tutakula Lakini
Tutachelewa (“we’ll eat, but we’ll eat late”) to condemn their exploitative labor,
especially the extortionate power of policemen en route. In West Africa, police
extortion at checkpoints is generally coded as “cold water” to quench a thirsty of-
ficer. Consider the following excerpts from mobile interactions between drivers
and officers in Liberia and Nigeria:
Excerpt One (Liberia):

When the traffic finally moved forward, Opah drove right to the police officer at
the junction. “I’m very thirsty,” the police officer said standing between the cars. “I
want some cold water today in this heat.” Opah rolled down the window slowly and
held out his hand. Sundayimah and Sundaygar both noticed the clean 100 Liberian
dollar bill, which the police officer put in his pocket quickly. He waved Opah’s car
through the traffic in a lane that was not there before.
—Robtel Pailey, Gbabga (cited in Agbiboa 2016: 7)⁵

Excerpt Two (Nigeria):

officer: kai yaya kana gudu kamar zaka tashi sama? (Hey, why are you speeding
as if you were going to fly?)
driver: Ranka ya dade, yaya aiki? (May you live long [literally, actually “Sir”]—
how’s work?)
officer: Gamu nan muna shan rana. (Here we are, scorching in the sun).
driver: To ga na ruwan sanyi. (Right, here’s something for water [iced/cold
water]).

Excerpt Three (Nigeria)

⁵ Gbagba is a local Bassa word used by parents to warn their children against “lying, cheating,
and stealing.” Liberian academic Robtel Pailey tells me that the term describes “a facet of everyday
interactions… it happens in every single sector of Liberia.”
84 they eat our sweat

officer: Alhaji, gari yayi zafi (Sir, the town is hot)

driver: To yaya za a yi (So, what can be done?)
officer: A zuba mana ruwa (Pour us some water)
(Mele & Bello 2007: 442).

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In the above exchanges, there is intentional use of symbolic references to demand
a bribe. And, as is true everywhere, symbols can be ambiguous and multivocal
(Schatzberg 2001: 50). Water, for instance, signifies a bribe, and to say gari yayi
zafi (the town is hot) is to suggest that one is in dire financial strait. Aside from
protecting the police officer against accusations of corruption, symbolic references
such as water and heat are also culturally embedded. “It is considered bad man-
ners not to offer water to any visitor even if he/she does not ask for it. The fact that
security personnel have to ask for water places the driver on the defensive morally,
even though they know literal water is not what is demanded from them. Thus, in
place of water they give what can buy water, which is what the security person-
nel were actually after in the first place” (Mele & Bello 2007: 445). As in Liberia
and Nigeria, Uganda has a wide range of symbolic language for everyday bribe
solicitation, including lac kalam (to be paid for the “writing pen”), kintu kidogo
(“something small”), “give me my cut,” “do you have brick?”, “We’re out of fuel,”
“give me airtime/transport,” “I don’t have a stamp,” “put a stone on your paper,” or
“I need a pen to sign” (Baez-Camargo et al. 2017: 16). These verbal expressions are
only matched by a range of bodily languages, including rubbing one’s stomach to
demonstrate that one is hungry and need something to eat; scratching one’s throat
suggesting that one is thirsty hence in need of something to drink; or a woman
may deliberately expose her thighs to suggest she is offering sex in return for a fa-
vor (ibid.). In Ghana, people tend to express corruption in bodily fluids of “blood
flow and circulation.” When corruption is too much, it is seen as a “hemorrhage”
(Hasty 2005a: 276).
In the next section, I draw on the example of Kenya to briefly illustrate how
the logic of corruption as eating (“our time to eat”) binds the ruler and the ruled
together.

It’s Our Time to Eat

In Kenya, a country with a reputation as the homeland of the bribe, nchi ya kitu
kidogo (“land of the little something”), national politics has long been colored
by rabid ethnicity. At election time, a common phrase is used: “Our time to eat”
(wakati wetu wa kula), which refers to the politicization of ethnic identities and
the pressures on politicians to feed their ethnic kinsmen after electoral victory. In
Kenya, a politician who is considered to be “one of ours” is warned by his peo-
ple that “we can’t eat bones when others are eating meat.” He is reminded of the
 the language of corruption 85

steadfast loyalty of his people in times of difficulty: meno ya mbwa hayaumani

(“The teeth of the dog do not bite [harm] each other”) or mchuma janga hula na
wakwao (“He [who] earns calamity, eats [it] with his people”). While the astute
politician is not oblivious to the fact that, chawa akuumao mbwa Nguni mwako

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(“[The] louse that bites you is inside your clothing”), he also knows the meaning
of Zimwi likujualo halikuli likakwisha (“A ghost that knows you will not devour
you completely”). In short, political survival in Kenya rests on nourishing one’s
ethnic kinsmen.⁶ As Wrong writes, “The various forms of graft cannot be sepa-
rated from the people’s vision of existence as a merciless contest, in which only
ethnic preference offers hope of survival” (2009: 41–42). This zero-sum contest is
neatly captured by the saying in francophone Africa: Ote-toi de la, que je m’y mette,
which literally means: “Shift yourself, so I can take your place.”
Wrong (2009: 27) argues that President Daniel Arap Moi’s accession to power
upon the death of President Jomo Kenyatta in 1978 meant that the Kalenjins’ turn
had finally come to “eat” the state. While the Kikuyus still flourished, “they now
did so in spite of government patronage rather than because of it” (ibid.). Like
most African leaders, President Mwai Kibaki (2002–2013), who took over power
from Moi, came to office on an anti-corruption ticket. While Kibaki managed to
curb the grabbing of public land for which the Kenyatta and Moi eras were no-
torious, he was less successful in taming Kenya’s corruption problem. In a speech
delivered to the British Business Association of Kenya, Edward Clay, Britain’s for-
mer high commissioner in Kenya, said about the transition from Moi to Kibaki:
“We hoped it would not be rammed in our faces. But it has… They may expect
we shall not see, or notice, or will forgive them a bit of gluttony, but they can
hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over
our shoes.” So popular was this speech that shoeshine boys on the streets of Kenya
cheered Clay: “Five shillings for shoeshine, 10 for vomit” (Bonner 2009). In many
ways, the Kibaki government bears a semblance to Obasanjo’s administration,
specifically in regard to its checkered corruption cleanup campaign. On 4 March
2013, Kenya’s Daily Nation published a piece entitled “End of a decade of highs
and lows for Mwai Kibaki” that neatly summarizes the contradictions of Kibaki’s
government:

For a leader who was popularly swept into power in 2002 on an anti-
corruption platform, Kibaki’s tenure saw graft scandals where hundreds of mil-
lions of shillings were siphoned from public coffers. Kibaki’s National Rainbow
Coalition—which took power from the authoritarian rule of Daniel Arap Moi—
was welcomed for its promises of change and economic growth, but soon showed

⁶ This is hardly specific to Kenyan. In Nigeria, many believe that if you don’t have one of your own
in a position of authority, you get nothing. This explains why there is so much discrimination against
non-indigenes since many Nigerians view politics as a “zero-sum game” (HRW 2006: 13).
86 they eat our sweat

that it was better suited to treading established paths. “The initial response to
corruption was very solid… but it became clear after a while that these scams
reached all the way to the president himself,” said Kenya’s former anti-corruption
chief John Githongo. Most notorious of a raft of graft scandals was the multi-

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billion-shilling Anglo Leasing case, which emerged in 2004 and involved public
cash being paid to a complicated web of foreign companies for a range of
services—including naval ships and passports—that never materialized (Daily
Nation 2013).

Beyond Africa: Corruption as Eating

Lest one begins to think that the “politics of the belly” is unique to Africa, an-
thropologist A.F. Robertson (2006: 10) reminds us that, “Feeding is the universal
metaphor for bribery and peculation.” In nineteenth-century Siberian Russia, the
term kormlenie (“feeding”) referred to a corrupt practice in which government-
appointed tax collectors “fed” off customary gratuities and fees from the poor
people they administered (Humphrey & Sneath 2004: 86; Halperin 2019). In Mex-
ico, bribe or mordida (“bite”) portrays predatory policemen as “dogs” always on
the lookout for innocent people to “bite.” In India, a common refrain in elec-
tion speeches is, Na khaunga, na khaane doonga (“Neither will I eat, nor will I
let others eat”). The refrain is an anti-corruption declaration used by politicians to
promise the common people a zero-tolerance for corruption (Mathur 2017: 1796).
In the Hindu-speaking belt of India, the phrase paisa khaoya (“eating of money”)
is used in everyday talk to describe practices that are glossed together as “corrupt”
as well as in discursive critique of a “leaky” Indian state, especially in the con-
text of development programs. Paisa khaoya represents a powerful means through
which popular discontents about the malfunctioning Indian state are voiced. In-
dia’s poor showing in various development indicators—health, education, and
employment—are commonly blamed on the state’s predilection to “eat” money
(Mathur 2017: 1796).
The use of metaphors of “eating” in everyday corruption discourses in India has
a long history. From a fourth century bce treatise on corruption and public ad-
ministration in India, entitled Arthashastra: “Just as it is impossible not to taste
the honey that finds itself at the tip of the tongue, so it is impossible for a govern-
ment servant not to eat up, at least, a bit of the King’s revenue” (Kangle 1972: 91).
This imagery nurtures in India a sense of powerlessness in the face of corruption
(Basu 2019: 415; Das 2015: 325). In a classic book on the corruption of local-level
bureaucrats in South India under colonial rule in the nineteenth century, Robert
Frykenberg (1965: 231) repeatedly employs the metaphor of white ants eating out
the umbrella of the state:
 the language of corruption 87

The white ant is a tiny creature of tremendous energy and silence which, by com-
bining its efforts with countless other tiny brothers, can make a hollow shell or
empty crust out of the stoutest wooden structure—as many a person has dis-
covered to his sorrow upon sitting in a chair long left in some neglected dak

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(traveler’s) bungalow. The ant typifies what happens when energetic and silent
local leadership, in combination, makes a hollow mockery out of the stoutest
administrative structure. (cited in Price 1999: 326)

The corporeal metaphor of corruption as eating extends beyond the global South.
For a long time, debates around police corruption in the United States pivoted
on the few “rotten” apples theory, which generally viewed corruption as an in-
dividual pathological issue rather than an institutional problem (Sherman 1978:
xxvii; Tankebe 2010). In 1970, however, the Knapp Commission hearings dis-
missed this theory, arguing that “a high command unwilling to acknowledge
that the problem of corruption is extensive cannot very well argue that drastic
changes are necessary to deal with the problem” (Knapp 1972: 6–7). Following
an in-depth investigation into corruption in the New York Police Department
(NYPD), the Commission developed the food-related terms “meat eaters” and
“grass eaters” to distinguish between two sets of corrupt police officers. On
the one hand, meat eating officers aggressively use their position of power to
gain personal profit or acquire favors. On the other, grass eating officers do not
seek out personal benefits—but also do not wave them off with a “no thanks”
(Knapp 1972).

Eating the State: The Imagery and Discourse

of Corruption in Nigeria

There is a popular joke that where two or more Nigerians are gathered, lamen-
tations of corruption have a way of overshadowing the conversation. While this
is probably a gross exaggeration, it nonetheless highlights corruption as semper
et ubique in Nigeria, so much so that people tend to burst into laughter when-
ever the subject surfaces. As Michael Peel observes, “Nigeria’s situation has turned
many of its people into connoisseurs of the ridiculous, who have made self-
deprecation a national pastime” (2010: 98). During my fieldwork in Lagos, I was
struck by how often corruption constituted the essential lubricant of rumors, sto-
ries, myths, and discursive production, entangling every sphere of everyday life
like an octopus does it prey. The ubiquitous nature of corruption, arguably, makes
it a staple food of some sort, and as such it is easily taken for granted in its
88 they eat our sweat

routineness. In what follows, I explore the politics of corruption and survival in

urban Nigeria through the idiom of eating.

Vote-Buying: National Cake, Stomach Infrastructure,

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and Godfathers

In the words of President Muhammadu Buhari if we do not kill corruption,

corruption will kill us (Nigeria). While thinking out what I would title this Con-
vocation Lecture my mind kept going to the termite. We all know that the termite
is such a small harmless looking insect. Yet they are the nightmare of any house
owner as they can bring down the roof of your house if you don’t respect them
and provide radical and sustainable prevention processes where they coexist with
you. Termites are so well adapted and have been in existence for over 120 mil-
lion years. They have generally survived all attempts to eradicate them using
pesticides, insecticides and other means. Builders routinely use steel struts or
hardwood treated with solignum as roof members. To survive, the wood termite
feeds tenaciously on its hosts so long as they are wooden: doors, floors, furniture,
until it destroys or defaces the host medium. When the host is destroyed the ter-
mite self-destructs or moves on to a new host. Is Nigeria’s corruption problem like
a termite infestation? Having taken root, it has defied all known process to elim-
inate it doggedly eating off our roof and compromising the foundations of our
institutions. To kill the termite, you must study and research it thoroughly. […] I
have learnt the ways of the termite and have applied it as a sure way of eradicating
and curbing entrenched corruption in Nigeria in order to build a new national
identity like Singapore did. (Nta 2017: 17–18)

The above is an extract from a convocation speech—entitled Ethical Deficit,

Corruption and Crisis of National Identity: Integrity of Termites—delivered by
Ekpo Nta, the chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission
(ICPC) in Nigeria. Nta’s reflections speak to the resilient and entrenched nature
of corruption in Nigeria, and the need for all hands on deck to overcome it. In
the extract, Mr. Nta draws upon vivid images of termites, food, and eating in a
manner that throws into bold relief the gluttonous avarice of corrupt potentates
and public officials who treat their offices as an “eatery” or “fast food” of sorts. In
Nigeria today, politics revolves around battling for and sharing the shrinking “na-
tional cake,” a form of belly politics in which the national resources are expected
to be divided among political officeholders, party leaders, or partisans—an “ar-
rangement and settlement system,” as one astute Lagosian puts it. Nigerians have a
common saying for this: “You chop, me self I chop, palaver finish.” This saying re-
claims political life in Nigeria as prebendal, that is, a system in which state power is
treated as “congeries of offices which can be competed for, appropriated and then
 the language of corruption 89

administered for the benefit of individual occupants and their support groups”
(Joseph 1987: 63). What is particularly toxic about prebendal politics,

is the virtual absence of any constraints at all on the use of office; the spectacularly

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voracious and predatory scale of the corruption that results; the narrowness of the
circles that share in this fabulous accumulation; and the depth of the economic
disarray, political chaos and popular anger and alienation that result. (Diamond,
1989: 285)

In an article on “Democracy, Credibility and Clientelism,” economists Philip

Keefer and Razvan Vlaicu (2008) argued that newly democratic countries have
low to non-existent standing and thus no means of making credible promises to
the people. As a result, local politicians tend to rely on local patronage networks,
providing targeted goods to their supporters in direct exchange for votes (cf. Roth-
stein 2018: 37). In Nigeria, the poor reputation of politicians is traceable to the
colonial legacy, according to Claud Ake:

The distinguishing characteristics of the state in Africa, however, is that it has lit-
tle autonomy. This is a legacy of colonialism […]. Colonial politics was not about
good governance but about the resolution of two exclusive claims to rulership; it
was a struggle to capture the state and press it into the service of the captor. […]
The [postcolonial] state is in effect privatized: it remains an enormous force but
no longer a public force: no longer a reassuring presence guaranteeing the rule of
law but a formidable threat to all except the few who control it, actually encour-
aging lawlessness and with little capacity to mediate conflicts in society. Politics
in Africa has been shaped by this character of the African state. It is mainly about
access to state power and the goals of political struggle are the capture of an all-
powerful state, which the winner can use as he or she pleases. The spoils, and the
losses, are total. African politics therefore puts a very high premium on power.
[…] In this type of politics, violence and instability are endemic, with anarchy
lurking just below the surface. Despite the enormous power of the state, a political
order does not emerge. (Ake 1995: 73)

In the past, Nigerian politicians enticed voters by promising them a piece of the
“national cake” when they assume office. Today, however, the national cake is
more and more a here-and-now reality rather than a lip service. Nigerian politi-
cians increasingly distribute money and food items to citizens as an affective
political strategy to buy their votes. This increasingly common practice articulates
with “clientelistic accountability,” which represents “a transaction, the direct ex-
change of a citizen’s vote in return for direct payments or continuing access to
employment, goods and services” (Kitschelt & Wilkinson 2007: 2). In Nigeria,
90 they eat our sweat

clientelistic accountability is refracted through what is locally known as “stomach

infrastructure,” a term which reclaims the logic of “wealth in people” that un-
derpins the politics of bigmanity in Africa (Bledsoe 1990; Utas 2012). Stomach
infrastructure is illustrative of Mushtaq Khan’s analysis of the ways in which exist-

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ing politicians and the state in the developing world often buy off the opposition
of organized groups, particularly the most vociferous opponents, in an effort to
“purchase” support or legitimacy. Khan (1998: 28) describes this strategy as “an
ongoing process of accommodation and incorporation.” Under military rule in
Nigeria, for instance, a form of political patronage—the politics of settlement—
was established, where rulers lavishly deployed state funds to buy off (or silence)
political sycophants and potential opponents (Yagboyaju 2020).
In the buildup to the 2015 General Elections in Nigeria, a period which co-
incided with my fieldwork in Lagos, I observed as political candidates invested
substantial time and resources in distributing essential stomach infrastructural
items (e.g. bags of rice, kerosene, milk, and chicken wings) to their potential
supporters. In Ekiti state, former Governor Ayo Fayose (who coined the phrase)
distributed an estimated 80,000 chickens, 100,000 bags of rice, and numerous cash
gifts to lowly people in Ekiti under his “Stomach Infrastructure” program. Other
Nigerian states, some of which were initially averse to Fayose’s stomach infrastruc-
ture program (e.g. Lagos state), soon followed suit (Vanguard 2014b). The former
PDP secretary in Ekiti state even lambasted the Lagos state governor for copying,
rather hypocritically, Fayose’s stomach infrastructure agenda:

Tinubu distributed 2,000 bags of rice, vegetable oil, sugar and little cash to people
from various parts of Lagos State. They abused us for providing immediate succor
for our people. They described stomach infrastructure as an insult to Ekiti people.
They said it does not add value to the people; that it diminishes their self-esteem,
self-worth and that it denigrates what politics ought to be about. However, their
party leader in Lagos has adopted the same concept of stomach infrastructure by
personally sharing food items to people. After condemning the concept, isn’t it
rather too late that the APC [political party] people are just realizing that poverty
should be addressed by providing immediate succor? (Vanguard 2015).

The politics of stomach infrastructure predates the 2015 elections. In Ibadan, Oyo
state, the political influence of the late Chief Lamidi Adedibu—a powerful polit-
ical patron variously described as the “godfather of Ibadan,” “father of the PDP,”
and “strong man of Ibadan politics”—has long flowed from his specific belly pol-
itics that blended populism and raw thuggery (Lawal et al. 2008). Adedidu often
distributed cash and food to various supplicants on a daily basis from his home in
Ibadan, a brand of patronage called amala politics, after a traditional dish partic-
ular to Nigeria’s southwest. In the face of severe hardship, it is not difficult to see
 the language of corruption 91

why Nigerians seek instant gratifications, selling their votes like the biblical figure
of Esau who sold his birthright for a bowl of soup.
The electoral politics of stomach infrastructure is neither new nor specific to
Nigeria(ns). In Uganda, the electoral strategy of the ruling political party, the Na-

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tional Resistance Movement (NRM), is powered by stomach infrastructure. As one
analyst notes:

It’s a game of money. The way it usually works is a candidate gathers people in a
village for a speech and afterwards provides what everyone in Uganda calls “re-
freshment”: a table filled plentifully with alcohol, food and a candidate’s message
to vote for him or her. Other times candidates will have their agents distribute
money for “transportation” so people can get back to their homes. Another
popular move is to have agents direct people behind a mango tree around the
corner—somewhere out of sight—where they hand them a crisp 5000 shilling
bill or maybe a little salt, sugar and soap. All they ask for in return is a simple tick
on the ballot on election day. (Tabachnik, 2011: 15)

I want to briefly return to the image of “(god)father,” through which political legit-
imacy is often established in Nigeria and much of Africa. The idea of “godfather”
describes the process by which a person makes connections with a senior within
a given institutional hierarchy in the expectation of favored treatment (Joseph
1987: 207). In much of Africa, fathers (not necessarily biological) are expected to
nourish, protect, and provide for their children. The concept of godfather reclaims
this “father-children” relation that is culturally embedded and evokes images of
the political father as the one who protects and provides for his political children.
As such, the father is entitled to “eat” part of his children’s labor. Godfathers can
enhance their political legitimacy by seeing to it that their children are well fed
(chop belleful), both literally and figuratively (Schatzburg 2001: 24–25). By way of
illustration, Tanzanians widely see Julius Nyerere as the “Father of the Nation.”
His political legitimacy was enhanced after the 1967 Arusha Declaration, which
committed Tanzania to “socialism and self-reliance” in response to widespread
poverty. In 1970, a Swahili praise poem appeared in the Uhuru newspaper prais-
ing Nyerere and the Arusha Declaration. The poet used images of eating/hunger
to contrast the pre- and post-Arusha era, noting that average people in the pre-
Arusha era could only afford to eat porridge and greens (ugali na sukuma wiki)
because their greedy leaders had “eaten” too much and spoiled their legitimacy
in the process. But now, in the post-Arusha era, ordinary Tanzanians are said to
be fatter than before, eating rice and fish (wali na samaki) (Schatzburg 2001: 24).
Occasionally, the political godfather disciplines his “children” who stray from his
path, but he is generally pardoning and forgiving, as evidenced by the culture of
presidential pardoning of convicted political allies in Nigeria.
92 they eat our sweat

Against this backdrop, the politics of stomach infrastructure establishes the

familial or intimate ties that link politicians to the people. To turn down the op-
portunity to eat from the same bowl is tantamount to rejecting family membership
(Denham 2017: 96). This explains why, in accusing his colleague Bola Ige, the

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Minister of Power and Steel, of not “eating” (stealing) in peace, a former Nigerian
Minister for Internal Affairs said: “Look at somebody we have called to come and
eat…” (Adebanwi & Obadare 2011: 186).

Cashivorous Elites: You Chop, Me Self I Chop (Eat-and-Let-Eat)

Ordinary language in Nigeria is replete with talk of “chopping [eating] money.”

But what exactly does it mean to chop? Similar to Bantu Africa (Fallers 1969: 83),
chopping is a profoundly ambiguous notion that is deeply entrenched in Nige-
rian phraseology. At the most basic level, to chop is to eat, to express hunger.
However, in Nigeria, “chop” is a common prefix for a multitude of slang phrases:
“chop beans” is failing at something, “chop burger” means one has put on weight,
“chop cockroach” is getting pregnant, “chop mouth” means kissing, “chop liver”
is to be courageous, and “chopping money” means amassing wealth illegally
(Bell 2019). In his piece titled “Bingeing on our National Cake,” Jon Okafor crit-
icizes the “national cake” mindset of Nigerian politicians who treats state funds
as food to be “furiously eaten.” The political mentality in Nigeria today is simple:
“Let us grab as much as possible and go home to belch” (Okafor 2011). In its draft
constitution of 1976, Nigeria notably defined political power as “the opportunity
to acquire wealth and prestige, to be able to distribute benefits in the form of jobs,
contracts, scholarship, and gifts of money and so on to one’s relatives and political
allies” (cited in Isichei 2004: 238). One of the political parties that contested the
1979 elections campaigned under the rallying slogan, “You chop, me self I chop.”
Chopping is a powerful idiom through which average Nigerians criticize and
hold their “cashivorous” elites⁷ accountable for their precarious existence and lack
of upward mobility. According to World Bank estimates, about 80 percent of Nige-
ria’s oil and natural gas revenues accrue to 1 percent of the country’s population
(Afiekhena 2005: 15). At the height of the Nigerian oil boom in the 1970s, the
ruling elites gobbled the resources of the state, while the rest of the nation wal-
lowed in poverty. Indeed, “Of all the lessons Nigerians have had to learn since
the oil started flowing, perhaps the hardest and most important is that govern-
ment will give them almost nothing in terms of services… No road, no water, no
light—no difference” (Peel 2010: 96). A poem composed in the 1980s best cap-
tures the plight of average Nigerians in the face of oil glut: Our Father who art in
heaven/Give us this day/Rice/Yams/Bananas/For/We are dying/All of Hunger/And

⁷ To borrow a term from the late Nigerian satirist, Pius Adesanmi.

 the language of corruption 93

my God/we haven’t even/The right/To say/That we are dying/Of hunger (Schatzberg

2001: 49). In 2012, a leaked investigative report on Nigeria’s oil and gas industry by
the chairman of the Petroleum Revenue Task Force, Nuhu Ribadu, showed that an
estimated USD30 billion was lost in the last decade in an apparent gas price-fixing

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scam implicating government officials and foreign energy firms (Idemudia et al.
2019). On the first day of January 2012, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan
suddenly announced the removal of the fuel subsidy provided to citizens by the
government. The fuel subsidy was one of the few benefits that average Nigerians
received from a government widely perceived as corrupt and inept. Its sudden re-
moval prompted widespread protest (“Occupy Nigeria”) from January 1 through
16, 2012, which resulted in a partial reinstatement of the subsidy (Global Nonvi-
olent Action Database 2015; Houeland 2018). The comments of the CNN in the
aftermath of “Occupy Nigeria” reflect the paradox of prosperity of Africa’s largest
oil-producer:
Nigerians are worn down by inherent corruption. The harsh reality is that de-
spite being in the big league of oil producers with reserves of 36 billion barrels,
the country’s rank, according to the IMF, is 133rd in the world when it comes to
per capita income—the lowest performance of a country with this level of natural
resources. That per capita income ranking is just above its poor status in Trans-
parency International’s corruption index where Nigeria took the 143rd position
in 2011 alongside Belarus, Togo, Russia, and Mauritania… This is a tale of two
Nigerias—one that has garnered $67 billion of foreign direct investment, grow-
ing at 7–8 percent a year, and being singled out by Goldman Sachs as being one
of the “Next-11” economies… According to the World Bank, 80 percent of the oil
wealth has really only benefitted 1 percent of the population.” (Defterios 2012)

Nowhere are the above oil-related corruption and attendant injustices more pal-
pable that in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. Home to most of Nigeria’s southern
minority groups, the Niger Delta harbors crude oil reserves to the tune of 33 bil-
lion barrels and natural gas reserves of 160 trillion cubic feet (Omotola 2006: 4).
From oil alone, Nigeria generated USD300 billion between 1970 and 2002, yet the
Niger Delta people remain among the most deprived oil communities in the world,
with 70 percent living on less than USD1 a day, the standard economic measure
of absolute poverty (Amnesty International 2005). This paradox of prosperity is
traceable to the First Republic, when corruption first became a “Nigerian factor.”
In his novel A Man of the People, Achebe turned to the image of eating to criticize
officials of the First Republic who grew fat off bribes and graft, but also the apathy
of “the People” who legitimized it:

The people themselves, as we have seen, had become even more cynical than their
leaders and were apathetic into the bargain. “Let them eat,” was the people’s opin-
ion, “after all, when white men used to do all the eating did we commit suicide?
94 they eat our sweat

Of course not. And where is the all-powerful white man today? He came, he ate,
and he went. But we are still around.”
[T]he fat-dripping, gummy, eat-and-let-eat regime just ended—a regime
which inspired the common saying that a man could only be sure of what he

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has put away safely in his gut or in language ever more suited to the times: “You
chop, me self I chop, palaver finish.” (Achebe, cited in Isichei 2004: 237)

Achebe’s novel was written in 1966, the same year that the First Republic suc-
cumbed to a military putsch. At the time, newspapers in Nigeria celebrated the
coup using idioms of eating: Bribe? E Don Die. Chop-Chop—E no Dey (literally,
“Bribe? It is Dead. Eat-Eat—It does not exist anymore”) (The Morning Post, Isichei
2004: 237). In retrospect, this elation proved premature, as the Nigerian mili-
tary proceeded to cripple the economy by looting the state blind, violating the
Congolese saying kula ndambo, kwaca ndambo (“eat some, leave some”). Like
the colonial state, military juntas and their civilian minions entrenched corrup-
tion and left behind what I have described elsewhere as a “political economy of
state robbery” (Agbiboa 2012). The frenetic looting of the state under the First
Republic is captured in Cyprian Ekwensi’s Survive the Peace, set in post-Civil
War (1967–1970) Igboland. A village elder, Pa Ukoha, laments the gluttony of
rulers:

When some black men begin to rule they become too greedy. They eat and fill
their stomachs and the stomachs of their brothers. That is not enough for them.
They continue till their throats are filled. And that too is not enough. They have
food in their stomachs and in their throats and they go on till their mouths are full
and then proceed to fill their bags. But no one else outside their families or their
tribe must partake of this food… this is what brings trouble in Africa. (Ekwensi
1976: 77)

Ekwensi’s Survive the Peace speaks to the frustration and anger felt by many
ordinary Africans who continue to feel excluded from the rewards of political in-
dependence and freedom. For these marginalized Africans, Kwame Nkrumah’s
call to “Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added onto you”
rings hollow.

“Monkey De Work, Baboon De Chop”

Road transport workers in Lagos routinely use idioms of consumption to de-

nounce their exploitative labor, especially the predatory activities of mobile police
officers. Two interrelated sayings are particularly instructive here. The first is in
pidgin: Monkey de work, baboon de chop [literally, “monkey is working, baboon
 the language of corruption 95

is doing the eating”] is a common saying which means that police officers (and
transport union touts) are putting in less work but eating off the hard day’s labor of
drivers and conductors. The second saying is in Yorùbá: Osisewa l’orun, eni maaje
wa ni iboji, [literally, “the worker toils in the full heat of the sun but the one who

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eats sits in a restful place”]. Police officers in Nigeria routinely stops transport op-
erators to ostensibly check for vehicle particulars. A few squeezed naira note into
the officer’s hands and the check is complete before it started. In the often unlikely
event that a driver has all his particulars intact, the officer will ask him, “Na partic-
ulars I go chop?”, which means “Will I eat particulars?” This implies that the police
officer is not really interested in the vehicle particulars but in “chop money” (“food
money”). At this point, a driver would “drop something” (bribe) for the officer.
However, if the driver is still reluctant, the officer will employ a delay-tactics by
insisting on inspecting the entire car as part of “doing my job.” This often requires
passengers disembarking for inspection, a tactics geared at frustrating the driver
into giving bribes. For this reason, passengers tend to urge their driver to fun olopa
lonje kia (“feed the policeman quickly”) because asiko laiye (“time is life”). Con-
sider the following checkpoint exchanges between commercial drivers and police
officers:
Exchange I:

officer: What are you carrying?

driver: Nothing, sir.
officer: Come down and open your boot
driver: (Opens boot) Here oga.
officer: [Sees bags inside] I thought you said “nothing?”
driver: Namy passenger’s own (They belong to my passengers)
officer: (points out a bag) who owns this bag?
passenger 1: Oga, it is my bag
officer: (points out another) what of this?
passenger 2: Na my own (It is mine)
officer: Let’s see what is inside
passenger 2: (opens bag) Na my clothes (They are my clothes)
passengers: Driver you no no what is happening? Make you clear am and save
our time now (Driver, you don’t know what’s happening? [i.e. how things are
done] Clear him [give him some money] and save our time]
driver: (Supplies the bribe as he grumbles inaudibly and withdraws into the safety
of his vehicle).
(Mele & Bello 2007: 450)

Occasionally, informal transport workers in Nigeria are able to negotiate their way
out of police extortion by either claiming to have only just began work for the day
(and, thus, have no money to pay the bribe-demanding officer) or complaining
96 they eat our sweat

about carrying a small number of passengers. In the former sense, the driver is not
saying that he won’t “settle” (bribe) the police officer but, instead, that he needs
more time to jeun soke (“eat upwards,” to make money). The latter sense is evident
in the following exchange:

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Exchange II:

officer: Slow down, my friend

driver: Abeg oga, no vex. Sorry [I implore you sir, don’t be annoyed]
officer: Wey your kola⁸ [Where is your kola?]
driver: Oga my passengers no plenty. No full load [The passengers are not many,
sir. There are still more empty seats]
officer: So these ones no be passengers? [So, the ones here are not passengers?]
driver: But oga, dem no plenty [But, sir, they aren’t many]
officer: Oya, de go! [Ok, go on your way]
(Mele & Bello 2007: 447)

Exchange II illustrates how corruption opens up, if briefly, a “space of negotiation”

for people on the margins of society, such as drivers and street hawkers (Anjaria
2011). Scholars have long cast police corruption in the developing world in light
of “just remuneration” or “compensatory allowance” for poor police wages in de-
veloping countries (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan 2006: 112; Bayley 1974: 93). One
policeman in Lagos sums it up: “The Police is suffering, look at our barracks, or
children. We receive meagre salaries and are often not paid on time. That is why
you see some of our people on the road collecting illegal money from road users.
They just want to survive…” (UNODC 2017: 35). However, this rationale has been
challenged in a study of corruption in Ghana. In 2010, the Ghanaian government
doubled the salaries of police officers in an effort to reduce road-related bribery.
Far from decreasing petty corruption on the road, the study found that the Ghana-
ian salary policy “significantly increased the police efforts to collect bribes, the
value of bribes and the amounts given by truck drivers to policemen in total.” The
authors adduced two reasons for this surprising result. First, that salary increases
enhance the status and esteem of the officers, which in turn indirectly drive de-
mand for higher bribes. Second, that demands from extended family to share the
monetary bribes put pressure on those whose status had increased in line with
higher salaries (Foltz & Opoku-Agyemang 2015: 27). This key finding tells us three
important things. First, it exposes the limitations of theories of corruption based
on the political economy of goods and monetary exchanges (Tankebe, Karstedt, &
Adu-Poku 2019: 5). Second, it reflects an “economy of esteem” (Brennan &

⁸ Kola nut in full, kola is the fruit of the kola tree, indigenous to West Africa. It is often offered to
visitors as a sign of the host’s gratification. It is also, however, often a synonym for bribe.
 the language of corruption 97

Pettit 2004) that facilitates corruption. Third, it underscores the need to emphasize
the adjective over the noun in moral economy (Fassin 2009).
The mobile exchanges between drivers and police officers in Nigeria add weight
to the point that an encounter with the police in the developing world is often an

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encounter with corruption: “In developing countries, bribery [is] a transaction
fee for doing business with the police. It afflicts everyone, not just criminals,
and it implicates all police officers” (Bayley & Perito 2011: 5–6). In Nigeria, the
police uniform is a license for legitimate income generation. The widespread prac-
tice of police corruption is institutionalized through an organized scheme under
which senior officers approve and profit from extortion committed by junior
officers (Agbiboa 2015: 113; OSJI 2010: 82–83). The fact that police officers make
little attempt to conceal the extortion of money from motorists not only erodes the
rule of law but points to a lack of political will in Nigeria to hold officers account-
able for their gross misconduct (UNODC 2017). Everyday road users in Nigeria,
especially transport workers, have come to accept police corruption as a sacrifice
they have to make to avoid higher penalties or substantial delays, since operators
who refuse to pay are delayed for any number of hours or taken to the police sta-
tion, where they may face trumped-up charges (OSJI 2010: 86). As one driver in
Lagos explains, “We don’t waste time in giving them the money. When you don’t
bring out the money in time, they will tell you at gunpoint to park, and then you
might be required to pay more than the regular bribe. They won’t collect anything
less than N500” (Omotola 2007: 627). In some parts of Lagos, roadside extortion
by the police has become so widespread and systemic that it is now standardized. In
Oshodi, for example, danfo drivers who pass through state-controlled checkpoints
on more than one occasion each day complained about having to bribe the same
policeman repeatedly. In response, the police set up a creative system in which
drivers are given a “password”—for example, a number on their license plate—to
identify those that had already made the daily egunje (bribes). While survey evi-
dence shows that eight of ten Nigerians (78 percent) perceive the Nigeria Police
Force to be extremely corrupt (Afrobarometer 2015), some police officers have
fired back that corruption is not specific to the Nigeria Police Force but perme-
ates every institution in Nigeria. As a senior police officer in Lagos responded,
“How can people say that the police are the most corrupt agency in Nigeria?
What about Immigrations? As far as I am concerned, every sector [in Nigeria to-
day] is corrupt, including the most important decision-making institutions in the
country” (Oluwaniyi 2011: 74). This statement reinforces the generalization and
banalization of corruption in Nigeria, which is best exemplified by the informal
road transport sector.
 3
The Politics of Informal Transport

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By 2030, about half of all Africans will be urban dwellers. Yet, African cities
have some of the world’s worst cases of transport poverty. For instance, the
continent has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the world. Sur-
vey evidence from Lagos, Kampala, and Douala (the largest cities in Nigeria,
Uganda, and Cameroon, respectively) suggests that there are only between thirty
and seventy vehicles per one thousand people—far below the global average of
180 vehicles per thousand. An estimated three-fourths of daily commuters in
African cities walk to and from wherever they need to go, by necessity (Agbiboa
2020a: 175; Olvera et al. 2016: 166). This reality has amplified calls for more effi-
cient, environmentally friendly, and affordable rapid-transit bus lines and light rail
systems (Medium 2018). For now, though, African cities generally run on infor-
mal modes of transport—typically minibuses, but also motorbikes, tricycles, and
shared taxis. These are ground-level responses to the growing demand for mobil-
ity in the face of absent or inadequate formal public transportation services. For
many African urbanites, it is impossible to imagine city life without its ubiqui-
tous minibuses. They are the subject of news, gossip, rumors, and urban myths
(Quayson 2018).
Minibus taxis account for an estimated 80 percent of Africa’s total motorized
trips (Medium 2018), constituting half of all motorized traffic in some corridors
(Kumar & Barrett 2008: 5). They go by various appellations: danfo in Lagos,
trotro in Accra, daladala in Dar es Salaam, poda-poda in Freetown, matatu
in Nairobi, otobis in Cairo, car rapides in Dakar, condongueiros in Luanda,
gbaka in Abidjan, kamuny in Kampala, magbana in Conakry, esprit de mort
in Kinshaha, sotrama in Bamako, songa kidogo in Kigali, and kombi in Cape
Town. The failure of state-owned mass transportation services has occasioned
the growth and popularity of these informal and ostensibly unregulated ser-
vices. They are also known as “paratransit,” to indicate an alternate mode of
flexible passenger transport services that caters to the poor in the developing
world. Unlike modern mass transit systems with fixed stops, fares, routes, and
timetables, paratransit services run flexible, even extralegal, schedules. Para-
transit services “follow no particular schedule—they depart when they have
reached maximum capacity and they arrive when they have successfully passed
through all the checkpoints, paid all necessary fees and bribes, and fixed all

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0004
 the politics of informal transport 99

parts that have broken down during the journey” (Green-Simms 2009: 31).
One kombi-taxi slogan in Cape Town sums it up: “This Is A Taxi! It Can Stop
Anywhere, Anytime, Anyplace.”
Paratransit vehicles are notorious for their squealing breaks, bald tires, and rat-

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tling exhaust pipes emitting thick, black smoke. And the practice of overloading
has long been common in many African cities. Nigerian Nobel Prize winner Wole
Soyinka describes paratransit taxis as a form of “transportation torture on four
wheels,” not simply because of the famished roads they ply daily. He describes
“humans crushed against one another and against market produce, sheep, and
other livestock suffocated by the stench of rotting food and anonymous farts”
(1988: 251). On his 1977 album Shuffering and Shmiling, Fela Kuti sang about
the discomfort of paratransit services in Lagos, particularly the iconic molues
(midibuses): “Everyday my people dey inside bus. Forty-four seating and ninety-
nine standing. Them go pack themselves like sardine.” Across African cities, informal
transport services continue to vex vehicle inspection officers. “You wonder how
these buses secured roadworthiness certificates in the first place,” one officer in
Lagos told me. “And when you ban these buses from the roads, they still find a
way of returning to them.”
Although paratransit services are commonly associated with chaos, criminality,
and death, they nonetheless offer more than cheap transportation for multitudes
of city dwellers in Africa. They also provide employment opportunities for many
jobless youths from both urban and rural areas, which partly explains their influ-
ence on politics and popular culture. In Lagos, there are more than 20,0000 okada
(motorbike-taxi) drivers; overall, the industry provides jobs to approximately
500,000 young men as drivers, renters, mechanics, and spare parts dealers. The
popularity of okadas stems from their relatively low start-up capital and mainte-
nance costs, and the feeling of economic freedom and autonomy that motorcycles
afford. In Nairobi, the ubiquitous matatus embody “the era of cosmopolitanism,
multiparty politics, neoliberalism and global hip-hop” (Mutongi 2017). In South
African cities such as Durban, kombi-taxi vans became a powerful symbol of post-
apartheid freedom and an important arena for black economic empowerment,
even as they retained their underworld associations (Hansen 2006). Whatever
their symbolism, paratransit vehicles provide the primary form of mobility for av-
erage Africans, who otherwise rely on walking to navigate the city, especially those
eking out a living on the margins of society.

Multiple Impacts

Considering that the informal transport sector has manifold impacts on the politi-
cal economy of everyday life in Africa, it is remarkable how little research has been
done to understand its contributions to African cities. First, informal transport
100 they eat our sweat

essentially serves the African poor, who typically make up the large majority of
the population—in many cases these services account for over 80 percent of urban
mobility needs. In Africa, owning a vehicle is a key marker of wealth, power, and
privilege. One study finds that 99 out of 100 households in Africa’s poorest cities

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do not own or have access to a private car, and thus are wholly reliant on paratran-
sit services (Agbiboa 2020a: 176). This low motorization rate in Africa is not a new
development. Whereas by 1966 one in four people owned cars in most industri-
alized countries, in West Africa, the rate was about 1 percent in the more well-off
countries, with one in eighty people owning vehicles in Cameroon, Senegal, and
Ivory Coast. Even then, most of these vehicles were likely to be second-hand (used)
cars often purchased at auctions in Europe. Yet, Africans are still eight to ten times
more likely to be in a fatal car accident than those in developed countries (Green-
Simms 2009: 3). Other studies show that the average household in African cities
can afford just one round trip daily; for the poorest, even that is out of reach. In
Lagos, the average passenger spends about 40 percent of their income on bus fares
(Adinde 2020). But walking is the primary way of getting around town for lower-
income people who do not own a car. In Nairobi, only an estimated 12 percent
of the population uses private vehicles (Pandey & Paul 2019), while the rest use
paratransit services such as matatus or simply “leg it.” Although paratransit ser-
vices are widely available, they do not appeal to higher-income groups, because
they are seen as dangerous and unreliable.
Second, informal transport provides opportunities for interaction and a means
of economic survival, shaping circulation patterns for people, resources, and
information in urban space (Mutongi 2006; Hansen 2006). The automobiles them-
selves do not simply express political, social, and economic relations, but rather
shape and produce them. They are in effect meeting points for daily conversa-
tions in which humor alternates with pathos and dreams coexist with existential
angst about bribery and extortion, endless road delays, dysfunctional services,
moribund infrastructure, hard work and marginal gains, poverty, and relative de-
privation. Third, the informal transport sector provides a unique window onto
the political and social conditions of African cities. Operators and unions are
key factors in party politics, often playing a decisive role in determining election
outcomes.
Despite the chaos and disorder for which Africa’s informal transport sector is
deservedly notorious, there is an understudied “logic of practice” (to borrow a
term from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu) that organizes and animates
the sector. African cities do work amid the chaos, and we can gain a better under-
standing of how they work by studying how an apparently chaotic sector such as
informal transport “reinvent order” (Trefon 2004). As Mbembe (2001a: 20) tells
us, “fluctuations, volatility and indeterminacy do not necessarily amount to disor-
der, and any representation of an unstable world cannot be subsumed under the
appellation of chaos.”
 the politics of informal transport 101

Dirty Work

The state of informal transport in African cities mirrors the harsh lived experi-
ences of its workers—mostly marginal men without status. Like many informal

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workers in Africa, transport operators have no fixed income, no days off, and no
social protection. The sociologist Everett Hughes used the phrase “dirty work”
to describe occupations and labor conditions that are perceived as disgusting or
degrading (Hughes 1958). This term well describes the workaday world of infor-
mal transport workers in African cities, from Lagos to Nairobi. Despite lengthy
workdays averaging around twenty hours, informal transport workers take home
meager incomes due to the culture of corruption among police and other street-
level bureaucrats, the exacting demands of vehicle owners, and the extortionate
powers of mafia-like transport union touts who roam bus stations and junctions,
collecting onerous fees from operators with impunity. “At the end of the day
you check the money you have earned and you see it is nothing. You ask your-
self if this is all I have worked for since day break,” said one driver in Lagos
(Adetayo, 2020). Ise ko lowo (“hard work does not guarantee money”) was how
one danfo slogan puts it. “Okada [motorbike taxi] is just daily income,” said an-
other driver. “What you get today you use today, and tomorrow you start again
from scratch.” One driver in Lomé, Togo, noted that, “If you are a zem [motor-
bike] driver, you can eat. You can’t have any projects, but at least you can eat”
(Olvera et al. 2016: 169).
There are four basic figures involved in running a paratransit business in African
cities: the fleet owner (also known as taxi baron), the owner-driver, the taxi driver,
and the bus conductor. In most cities, minibus-taxi drivers often have to remit
a specific target income to the taxi owner each day; they are paid according to
how much they bring in. The driver is responsible for all overhead costs, includ-
ing fines frequently imposed by touts and police. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, taxi
drivers are employed on a day-to-day basis. Owners expect drivers to pay 50,000
Le (USD10) “master money” per day, as well as to cover their fuel allowance and
other small repairs out of their daily takings (Lipton 2017: 104). For motorbike-
taxis, the arrangement is slightly different. Drivers often acquire their motorbikes
through a process of hire purchase; they run their bikes for owners to whom they
must make daily payments. Drivers are under immense daily pressures to meet
the financial targets set by owners or forfeit their vehicles—their primary source
of survival and social status—at the expiration of the twelve-month agreement.
This pressure results in long working hours, high accident rates, and poor health.
In this sense, then, Africa’s informal transport workers are the “precariat” par ex-
cellence. A product of the global liberalization of labor in the post-Fordist phase,
the precariat is a multitude of people united by common fears and insecurities, a
new dangerous class “living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs,
without a narrative of occupational development” (Standing 2011: 1).
102 they eat our sweat

To meet their daily targets, drivers must race between the two end points of
their chosen routes in a survival of the fastest, weaving in and out of traffic with-
out regard for life. These drivers “do not race to experience sensations since they
are not in it for a sport. They speed to meet deadlines if they are to keep their

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jobs” (Mutongi 2006: 564). For some urban workers, “speeding up [is] the essen-
tial criterion for the ability to keep one’s head above water, to eke out minimal
profit in sectors inundated with competition and seemingly infinite layers of sub-
contracting” (Simone 2016a: 14). For paratransit drivers, navigating the African
city demands constant improvisation and experimentation. However, with this
improvisation comes danger. International survey evidence shows that Africa has
the highest number of road traffic fatalities. Of a total of 1.2 million annual deaths
globally, over 225,000, or 19 percent, occur on African roads (Medium 2018).
Aside from speed and experimentation, fatigue is a major cause of road acci-
dents, commonly caused by long hours of work and inadequate sleep, which alter
the body’s circadian rhythms. In Lagos, according to the State Ministry of Trans-
portation, 99 percent of danfo drivers suffer from hypertension (PM News 2015),
a health challenge directly related to the demanding and dangerous nature of their
work. Survey evidence from the Lagos State Drivers’ Institute shows that 22 per-
cent of danfo drivers are “partially blind” (Vanguard 2013a). The poor condition
of the roads, especially the dust and piles of roadside debris, mainly accounts for
this problem (though many danfo drivers have never had to undergo a vision test
since they work without a license). In Nairobi, a study by the International Trans-
port Worker’s Federation (ITWF) found that matatu workers regularly reported
“respiratory problems [resulting from] long hours of exposure to air pollution…
[as well as] back pain, aching joints, swollen and painful legs, eye conditions, dust
related issues, sore throats, headaches, and ulcers” (cited in Agbiboa 2020a: 177).
In Lomé, Togo, nine out of every ten motor-bike taxi (oleyia, meaning “take me
quickly”) drivers suffers from back pain due to a potent mixture of long work-
ing hours and poor road conditions. “Look at the roads, they are so bumpy,”
said one oleyia operator. “Every time I get home I have to apply our renowned
Victago ointment” (Olvera et al. 2016: 170). Between one and two in every five
drivers complained of vision problems, fatigue, headaches, and sexual weakness.
“What bothers me most is the dust,” said one driver, adding, “Although I have
a scarf, I can’t use it much because I’m not used to it. So I often suffer from
coughs and colds. Or, if I stay for long in the sun, I get headaches.” (ibid.). All
this explains why many transport operators in African cities view their workaday
world as a struggle: “Life is War” (Rizzo 2011: 179). “Long hours, ruthless police
and gang harassment, and susceptibility to deadly traffic accidents all render the
work of operators one of the most dangerous jobs [in Africa]” (Mutongi 2006:
564).
The struggle to get by and get ahead forces many paratransit operators to repro-
duce the transgressive system that they condemn. Behavior such as overloading
passengers, speeding dangerously, engaging in arbitrary pricing, failing to comply
 the politics of informal transport 103

with the rules of the road, and feuding contributes to the criminalization and
stigmatization of Africa’s informal transport sector and workers. Driving work in
Accra, Ghana, is referred to as “death work” and is dominated by young men rou-
tinely framed as “criminals, cheats, and bad citizens” (Hart 2016: 183). In Nairobi,

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matatu drivers are commonly viewed by the public as “political thugs who ex-
ploited and mistreated passengers and participated in gang or mafia-like violence”
(Mutongi 2006: 549). In Tanzania, Matteo Rizzo alludes to the static discourse that
“criminalizes the informal transport workforce and attributes the many accidents
and chronic tensions of the transport system to the hooliganism and greed of its
workforce” (2011: 1187). In Senegambia, cross-border drivers were subjected to
social stereotypes, epitomized by the Wollof saying, “the chauffeur [driver] is not
dependable” (Khan 2017: 113). In African cities that have endured civil wars, such
as Monrovia and Freetown, motorcycle taxis serve as a source of income for un-
skilled ex-combatants, without calming “the fears of a resurgence of past violence”
(Olvera et al. 2016: 166). In the capital city of Lomé in Togo, for example, there is
a certain social stigma linked to driving motorbike-taxis. This explains why it is
commonly seen as a temporary way of making ends meet, while “making savings
in order to return to one’s initial occupation under better conditions” (Olvera et al.
2016: 172). Often, the problem is not so much about the income as it is about issues
of social status and respectability.
Against this backdrop, many operators struggle to construct a positive self-
image. They see their work not as a real trade, but as a temporary occupation
to which they resort faute de mieux. But many still derive pride from their
vehicles—the material symbols of their survival, manhood, and respectability.
Across Nigerian cities, it is common to see tricycle-taxi (keke napep) drivers us-
ing dusters to wipe dirt from their vehicles at the slightest opportunity, especially
while stuck in traffic for any number of hours. In northern Nigeria, where a man’s
social and marital status are inextricably connected, okada work is a way out of “so-
cial death” for unmarried men: it enables them to pay the oft-inflated bride price,
marry, and acquire the status of masu gida (household heads) and homi completo
(complete men).

Indigenous Entrepreneurship

Across Africa, the informal transport sector is a site of indigenous entrepreneur-

ship and creative adaptation. Nigerian transport entrepreneurs, such as Dawodu
and Obasa, pioneered the importation and adaptation of cars to fill voids in mass
mobility:

As early as 1913, Dawodu was operating transport services in northern Nigeria

around Kano, and a few years later Obasa was running the only bus and van
service in Lagos. In 1915 Dawodu imported the first Ford cars into Nigeria and
104 they eat our sweat

was converting light Model T. Fords into commercial vans by building stronger
bodies onto the chassis. That same year Dawodu’s firm established an agency in
Lagos where cars, mainly Fords, could be bought, sold, and repaired. By 1920 his
firm was one of the largest vehicle importers, general mechanics, and builders of

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car and truck bodies in Nigeria. (Green-Simms 2009: 56–57)

Nowhere is this versatility more evident than in the building of Lagos’ trademark
molues, locally known as “flying coffins” and “moving morgues.” They are built lo-
cally on chassis derived from second-hand (tokumbo) trucks and engines imported
from Europe. This process of “hybridization” (Osinulu 2008: 49) is the stuff of cul-
tural production and globalization in postcolonial Africa. In cities like Durban
and Nairobi, minibus-taxis fiercely compete to attract passengers with music and
airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama and Osama
Bin Laden. In Lagos, danfo slogans shape the mood and choice of commuters on
a daily basis.

The Corruption Trap

Corruption and violence are prevalent in the informal transport sectors of African
cities. Union touts, urban street gangs, and law enforcement officials run riot. Para-
transit workers say that corruption has eaten deep into the fabric of their workday
world. In Nairobi, criminal gangs (so-called “cartels”) such as the Mungiki use
violence to control matatu terminals and routinely demand “security” fees to al-
low operators to ply a specific route. The mungiki typically work in small units at
bus stations and report to a lieutenant or munene (LeBas 2013: 50). In the Lake
Chad Basin, a volatile region where the violent insurgency of Jama’atu Ahlis Suna
Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, commonly known as Boko Haram, has killed thousands
and displaced millions, long-haul truckers and bus drivers often complain about
the violent extortion and delay tactics of trigger-happy security personnel. For ev-
ery 100 km traveled in West Africa, truckers transporting goods often lose an hour
due to illegal checkpoints en route. “At some checkpoints if you don’t dash [bribe]
them, they can delay you for up to four hours before you will be released,” said a
trucker in Maiduguri. “Due to all the delays, a two-hour journey will take you ten
hours.” A tricycle-taxi driver in Yola complained to me about the choking presence
of security checkpoints in the wake of Boko Haram: “If one is going out of town
through Haying Gida [across the bridge], there is checkpoint in and out. If you’re
going out to Federal Government Girls College, there is checkpoint in and out.
If you’re going to Yola, as you live Bama going to Fufore, there is another check-
point. The whole town is surrounded by checkpoints.” “Before, if I leave from Gire
to Jabbi Lamba, I will meet three checkpoints, said another driver in Damaturu.
“Now, the checkpoints have increased to ten and, anywhere you go, soldiers will
 the politics of informal transport 105

just stretch their hands in your direction to collect ‘water money’ [bribe] from you
as if it is their right. If you complain that you don’t have lower denomination of
money, they will tell you they have change up to N1,000. If you refuse, they order
you to ‘park your car’ and subject you to a time-wasting search. It is always best

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for you to submit to them and report to God.” So rife is checkpoint extortion in
Maiduguri that one checkpoint was known as ko ruwa ka dauko (literally, “even if
it’s water you are carrying”). Armed security personnel manning ko ruwa ka dauko
insist that even if you are transporting water, you must “settle” (bribe) them to gain
passage. “Forget Boko Haram,” said one trucker in Maiduguri, “soldier corruption
at checkpoints is our main concern here.” This reinforces recent comparative sur-
veys which have shown that, among some populations, corruption is perceived as
a more serious problem than unemployment, poverty, and terrorism (Rothstein
2018: 36; Holmes 2015).
In Nairobi, matatu drivers often leave 50- or 100-shilling notes hidden under the
handle of the trunk to avoid any delays, since “time is money.” Traffic police inspec-
tors know just where to reach for the bribe as they “inspect” the vehicle. In Lagos, it
is not uncommon for a danfo driver to drive right to the traffic police inspector and
squeeze a 50-naira note into his hands, saying, “Officer, for beer.” The inspector
will quickly put the bill in his pocket and wave the driver through an illegal “one-
way” lane, a source of many head-on collisions on Lagos roads. Showing any reluc-
tance to pay the required bribe can be a costly mistake that results in lengthy delays
at roadblocks, detention in a police station, vehicle impoundment, or tire deflation.
“We just pay them and go our way. What else can we do?” asked one danfo driver. It
is not uncommon for policeman to open fire on paratransit vehicles when drivers
refuse to surrender a portion of their hard-earned cash. During military rule in
Nigeria, road checkpoints emerged as powerful symbols of corruption and lack of
discipline. In the public consciousness, they have come to signify “the capricious-
ness with which the military resorted to violence but also the notion that violence
could be an acceptable way to solve problems” (Smith 2004: 437). Stanislav
Andreski’s observation about police behavior in Africa in 1969 rings true today:

The Police are among the worst offenders against the law: they levy illegal tolls
on vehicles, especially the so-called mammy-wagons (heavy lorries with benches
and roofs), which usually carry many more passengers than they are allowed and
transgress a variety of minor regulations. [These vehicles] are allowed to proceed
regardless of the infractions of the law if they pay the policeman’s private toll.
(Okereke 1995: 281)

Networks of Solidarity
Africa’s informal transport workers are hardly passive in the face of constant po-
lice abuses, passenger insults, or other trouble (Agbiboa 2020a: 178–9; Olvera
106 they eat our sweat

et al. 2016: 171). Despite their bottom-of-society status, paratransit operators

draw power from their sheer numbers and capacity for collective organizing,
or what Sara Ahmed (2014: 36) calls “feeling-in-common.” In Lagos, accidents
involving cars and motorbike-taxis (okadas) often draw scores of supportive

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okada drivers in a matter of minutes: “I have seen instances when they [okada
drivers] gang up in support of their colleague, even if it is he who is at fault,”
one Nigerian street vendor told me. Informal transport workers often belong
to neighborhood associations that provide networks of solidarity, financial sup-
port, and protection to drivers. In Lagos, this is known as ajo (from infor-
mal cooperatives known in Nigeria as thrift collections); in Freetown, as esusu
(rotating credit association), and in Johannesburg as stokvels (informal saving
clubs). Such associations are characterized by relationships of trust, mutual de-
pendence, and a powerful sense of belonging (James 2014). Given the risk and
radical uncertainty of city life, a transport operator will think twice before re-
jecting associational support, which he is sure to need one day. Operators are
forced to pay one-time union membership fees, as well as “ticket fees” assessed
on a daily basis. These fees tend to be exorbitant, and many operators com-
plain that they cannot afford them. But failure to pay exposes them to violent
attacks by union touts. “If people don’t pay their union fees, their okadas are
taken from them,” said one okada unionist in Lagos. “If they still don’t pay, the
drivers are taken to the nearest police station to face the ‘wrath of law”’ (Peel
2010: 93). This explains why some drivers see their union as self-appointed ex-
tortionists. As one operator in Peel’s study said: “If your wife dies, they will not
give you anything. No welfare—it’s just a group of people working for them-
selves” (2010: 95). This, of course, runs contrary to how unionists in Lagos
see themselves. A leader of a tricycle-taxi (keke napep) union in Nigeria ex-
plained:

If one of us is involved in an accident, it is our job to look after him in the hospital
and take care of his bill and to take him home. If there is any problem between our
member and mobile police, you know this job involves a lot of youth bound to
make mistakes, it’s our job to resolve the problem amicably. Also, if your vehicle
got damaged or malfunctions, the association will give you N2000 [approximately
USD5.50] on credit for you to repair the damage and pay back N1,000. If your
wife delivers a baby and you can’t afford a ram for the naming ceremony, the
association will help you out.

This sense of solidarity and conviviality among informal transport operators

(particularly motorbike-taxi drivers) is often conveyed by vehicle inscriptions
such as “Marry One, Marry All,” “Mourn One, Mourn All,” “Family,” “Brother-
hood,” and so on. In a risky and unpredictable urban environment where material
infrastructures are absent, people themselves become infrastructures that suture
the city and keeps it on the go.
 the politics of informal transport 107

Union Clout

Across large parts of Africa, transport trade unions are politicized organizations
that engage in collective action to protect the socio-economic rights and interests

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of their workers, even as they are also mobilized by profit at the expense of work-
ers. The ambivalent role of unions as protectors and predators is partly a product of
their embeddedness within “gray practices” (Routley 2016) and a politically cap-
tured environment where disorder is politically instrumentalized (Chabal & Daloz
1999). As Jean and John Comaroff remind us, “Vastly lucrative returns inhere in ac-
tively sustaining zones of ambiguity between the presence and absence of the law:
returns made from controlling uncertainty, terror, even life itself ” (Comaroff &
Comaroff 2006: 5). The political power exercised by transport trade unions at
the state and national levels is facilitated by their capacity to impose large ex-
ternalities on society, including through regular strikes and violent protests. By
dint of their sheer size, concentration in cities, and violent potential, trans-
port unions are potentially capable of paralyzing the economy and threaten-
ing the ruling political party (Konings 2000: 168–9). As a result, transport
unions have become key targets for political capture and voter mobilization,
often being (ab)used as “political machines where their members act as po-
litical brokers who deliver votes through their mobilization and influence on
voters” (Larreguy, Olea, & Querubin 2014: 2). Despite their centrality to the
political materiality of African cities, the activities of transport trade unions
are surprisingly muted in studies of real governance and practical norms in
Africa (de Herdt & Olivier de Sardan 2015). By governance here, I mean
the complex networks and multiple arenas within which power dynamics
and practices of governance are expressed, deployed, and contested (Healey
2000: 919; Lindell 2008: 1880).
Transport trade unions in postcolonial Africa tend to oscillate between auton-
omy and political affiliation, cooperation and conflict. They are both agents of
order and specialists in violence (Agbiboa 2020b; LeBas 2013: 243). Across African
cities, transport unions typically double as reservoirs of thugs for politicians (HRW
2007: 26), especially during election season. In return, these unions are allowed by
the state to appropriate transit spaces such as terminals and exploit transport op-
erators with impunity. Motor parks, bus stops, and junctions in African cities are
sites of activity in a gray area between the legal and the illegal (Roitman 2006;
Routley 2016). Consider the NURTW branch in Lagos. Founded in 1978, the
NURTW constitutes the primary support base for the Lagos state governor dur-
ing election campaigns. The state is often unwilling or unable to rein in the union’s
predatory treatment of its workers. The union routinely engages in patronage pol-
itics and voter mobilization in return for permission to levy taxes on transport
operators in public spaces. “The NURTW is a law onto itself,” said a danfo driver. In
South African cities, kombi-taxi operators “enjoy a very substantial de facto auton-
omy in terms of regulation and police intervention” as a result of their “politically
108 they eat our sweat

well-connected bosses….The sheer size and quasi-legality of the taxi industry have
made it an important source of corruption” (Hansen 2006: 188). In his study of the
politics of order and chaos in the informal transport sectors of Kampala in Uganda
and Kigali in Rwanda, Tom Goodfellow (2012: 210) found that bayaye touts con-

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stituted “both an important voting block and a potential source of violence [that]
could be mobilized” by unions.

Modernizing Ambitions

Although paratransit services fill an import void in African cities, they also con-
tribute to urban insecurity through endless traffic congestion, road accidents, air
and noise pollution, and violent skirmishes among rival union touts (Olvera et al.
2016). A study by the Stockholm Environmental Institute estimates that Africa
has less than 3 percent of the world’s motor vehicles, but it suffers 11 percent of
global road fatalities. In Nairobi alone, the notorious matatus account for an es-
timated 95 percent of car-related fatalities; as many as 13,000 people die in road
accidents every year (Agbiboa 2020a: 179). In many African cities, it can take up
to three hours to cover 15 kilometers because of jammed roads at rush hour. In
Nairobi, the daily productivity lost to traffic congestion is estimated at KSh 58
million (USD550,000) (Pandey & Paul 2019). South Africans reportedly lose about
90 working hours per year stuck in traffic. One study found that Lagosians spend
an average of 30 hours in traffic each week, or 1,560 hours annually. Compare this
with drivers in Los Angeles and Moscow traffic, who averaged only 128 and 210
hours in traffic, respectively, in the whole of 2018 (CNN 2019). This inefficiency
explains why Africa’s informal transport sector has increasingly been treated by
policymakers and city planners as disposable, as a problem to be solved.
Today, urban megaprojects and megacity planning in Africa threatens to dis-
lodge thousands of paratransit operators and reshape their spaces of maneuver,
provoking shock, anger, and resistance from below and collectively reinforcing
informal urban workers’ fears about state caprice and coercion. Such large-scale
projects, generally couched in the language of urban renewal, are shaped by ways
of seeing and reading African cities that are still dictated by Western planning and
logic. Such thinking activates state-led interventions and public-private partner-
ships aimed at modernizing and ordering the African city and transforming it into
a clear text that is “planned and readable” (De Certeau 1984).
Driven more by the logic of the market than by the needs of their inhabitants,
urban authorities in Africa increasingly exercise power through their capacity to
construct and reconstruct categories of legitimacy and illegitimacy (Roy 2005: 149;
Agbiboa 2018: 6). From Lagos to Johannesburg and Dar es Salaam, elite-driven
modernizing ambitions have led to support for measures aimed at homogenizing
and partitioning urban space, exemplified by the disruption of informal markets,
 the politics of informal transport 109

the demolition of illegal structures, the deportation of street beggars, the violent
eviction of dumpsite dwellers, and other measures aimed at purging African cities
of supposedly undesirable elements. In 2017, former Lagos state governor Akin-
wunmi Ambode hinted of a plan to ban yellow danfos from the city’s roads: “When

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I wake up in the morning and see all these yellow buses and see okada and all kinds
of tricycles and then we claim we are a megacity, that is not true and we must
acknowledge that that is a faulty connectivity that we are running” (Ladelokun
2017: 18). Ambode’s comments highlight popular perceptions of the informal
transport sector as a chaotic and violent embarrassment that needs to be replaced.
The favored substitutes are bus rapid transit systems (BRTs), generally deemed
more befitting of a “modernizing” city with world-class ambitions. BRTs, typically
operated by public-private partnerships, feature dedicated lanes and right-of-way
infrastructure to facilitate rapid and frequent service (Klopp, Harber, & Quarshie
2019). In February 2020, Ambode announced a ban on motorbike- and tricycle-
taxis, including burgeoning motorbike-hailing startups (e.g. Gokada and O’Ride)
that offer a much safer alternative to the notorious okadas. Given the limited reach
of the state-endorsed BRTs, motorbikes and tricycle-taxis have bridged enduring
mobility gaps. The ban has caused widespread disruption and discontent in Lagos,
leaving many drivers and passengers without options. A leader of one bike-hailing
startup in Lagos believes that the ban reflects long-term state urban planning,
which has no place for paratransit services. “They have a master plan,” he said,
“but okadas are not in it.”
Over the past decade or so, major African cities—such as Lagos, Accra, Johan-
nesburg, and Dar es Salaam—have increasingly turned to BRT projects in their
quest for a safer, more efficient, and cost-effective solution to the need for mass
transportation and the chaos of paratransit services (Klopp, Harber, & Quarshie
2019; Rizzo 2017). In 2008, Lagos introduced Africa’s first BRT-Lite corridor, with
technical support from the World Bank. BRTs undoubtedly can make a positive
contribution to urban lives and productivity. Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya system—
arguably the first true BRT in Africa—carries an estimated 16,000 passengers daily.
According to a New Climate Economy, Rea Vaya has saved South Africa as much
as USD890 million thus far by reducing travel time, improving road safety, and
cutting carbon emissions. In Dar es Salaam, the rapid transit system (DART)
has dramatically reduced commute times for city dwellers, who previously faced
upwards of four hours stuck in traffic each day (ITDP 2016).
But BRT systems present serious challenges. For one thing, their rise has
spotlighted the struggles of Africa’s paratransit workers for survival, recogni-
tion, and inclusion in decision-making processes that affect their livelihoods. In
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, initial plans to restructure key public trans-
port routes and introduce a BRT system were undercut by opposition from the
politically powerful NURTW, which feared that it would be forced out of the mar-
ket if bus routes were reconfigured and sold off to the highest bidder. Similarly,
110 they eat our sweat

in South Africa, efforts to develop BRT corridors and to phase out paratransit
services met with stiff resistance from transport operators. In Johannesburg, the
arrival of BRTs set off strikes and violent clashes between transport workers in the
informal and public sectors. In Kenya, a BRT system launched in 2015 by Presi-

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dent Uhuru Kenyatta has remained on hold due to inadequate funding as well as
protests by private matatu owners, who fear that the new system will relegate them
to the margins of city (Pandey & Paul 2019). In Dar es Salaam, the recent rapid
growth of Rapid Transit (DART) system has given rise to similar tensions (Rizzo
2014; 2017).

Transport Culture

AbdouMalique Simone has argued that, “no form of regulation can keep the city
‘in line”’ (2010: 3). Paratransit services in urban Africa are, above all, a way of life,
an organizing urban logic that cannot simply be banned or wished away. At issue
here is not just the informal sector but the entire transport culture of African cities.
As an “everyday technology” (Foucault 1988) and a vital element of mass mobility,
paratransit services are embedded in human and material infrastructures that are
integral to the functioning of African cities—“a platform providing for and repro-
ducing life in the city” (Simone 2004b: 7–8). Africa’s informal transport sector is
likely to continue to drive mass mobility well into the future and remain central
to the sociality of urban life and materiality of urban economies. This reality is
slowly sinking in; rapid-transit bus lines in African cities such as Lagos and Dar
es Salaam are beginning to change from an ineffective paradigm of displacement
and replacement to a promising strategy of upgrading paratransit services and in-
volving transport unions in the ownership and operation of new BRT systems
(Klopp, Harber, & Quarshie 2019). In Lagos, for example, the state government
sponsored visits for NURTW officials to see how BRTs have been successfully in-
tegrated with existing bus services in other cities such as Curitiba (Brazil) and
Bogota (Colombia). This encouraged buy-in from the NURTW and persuaded its
officials to engage with the new system (Otunola, Harman, & Kriticos 2019: 12).
This points to a gradual drive toward “forging collaborative initiatives between
the formal and informal process” (Kombe & Kreibich 2000: 148). A hybrid trans-
port governance—one that not only absorbs paratransit services but allows them
to coexist with new forms of public transport such as BRTs, light rail systems, and
e-ridesharing—would be the most sustainable way of moving commuter journeys
in African cities onward and upward.
 4
The Art of Urban Survival

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Despite the centrality of paratransit vehicles to the aesthetic characteristics of
cities and their profound effect on the multitude who navigate them on a daily
basis, there are remarkably few studies of the slogans inscribed on those vehi-
cles as a window onto modern urban life, especially its social, economic, and
physical characteristics (Williams 1954: 97). Foregrounding space as a social con-
struction (Lefebvre 1996) and spatial practices as imbued with tactics (De Certeau
1984), this chapter explores what the slogans inscribed on minibus-taxis (danfos)
in Lagos can tell us about the megacity in which they weave their routiine exis-
tence, especially the hopes, fears, and actual material circumstances which may
have informed the operators’ choice of slogans. Using an interpretative approach
to vehicle slogans, this chapter shows how informal transport workers in Lagos
actively translate their dangerous lifeworlds into “scenes and actions that convey
symbolic meaning” (Low 1996: 861–62). Vehicle slogans not only reflect the danfo
workers’ lived experiences and precarious labor, but they also are themselves fun-
damental ways through which these marginal men get by and get ahead. Vehicle
slogans embody not only the power of the unforeseen and the unfolding, but are
the very window into people’s determination to impose order and predictability
on their lives (Mbembe & Nuttall 2004: 349). I want to interrogate how popular
culture manifests itself through vehicle slogans, as a means to interpret the social
experiences of informal transport workers in Lagos as well as an expression of their
“social theory” (Akyeampong, 1996; Meyer, 2001). By popular culture, I mean the
unofficial, expressive culture of ordinary people (Barber 2018: 1). Through an anal-
ysis of danfo slogans, we are able to relate to the precarious lifeworlds and inventive
responses of danfo operators and owners.
This chapter builds upon new approaches to contemporary African urban-
ism that sees and reads the city as lively archives of expression and aesthetic
vision (Mbembe and Nuttall 2008; Quayson 2014; Green-Simms 2017). Specif-
ically, the chapter answers the call to defamiliarize commonsense thinking of
urban Africa by engaging “new critical pedagogies—pedagogies of writing, talk-
ing, seeing, walking, telling, hearing, drawing, and making—each of which pairs
the subject and object in novel ways to enliven the relationship between them and
to better express life in motion” (Mbembe 2004: 352). The invitation here is to ex-
plore how mobile subjects translate the daily challenges of the city into arts, using

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0005
112 they eat our sweat

danfo slogans as a veritable window into the “ordered chaos” that marks Lagos as
both familiar and strange. In so doing, my goal is to contribute to knowledge on the
relationship between texts, persons and publics in the contemporary African city.
In the course of my fieldwork in Lagos, I collected and analyzed a total of 312

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eclectic slogans from the mobile and stationary bodies of danfos on bottlenecked
roads. The analysis of these slogans was informed by unstructured interviews and
informal interactions with drivers, owners, and passengers. These were then sup-
ported by cumulative observations drawn from my long residence in Lagos and
my experience as a regular danfo user. Some of the vehicle slogans were so cryptic
in meaning that it was only by questioning the owners that I was able to appre-
hend the context of the text, or the “text within the text” (Lotman 1988), thereby
forestalling potential bias in textual interpretation. In this sense, vehicle slogans
may be imagined as part of the “hyperreal space” of African cities (Masquelier
2001: 288), that is, spaces where “things no longer exist without their parallel”
(Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 340). It is not uncommon for many danfos in Lagos
to change hands several times during their lifecycle, with subsequent owners very
keen to impose their own slogans, their personal identity, and self-identification,
on their newly acquired or hire-purchased danfos. Inquiring about slogans from
owners helped to reduce the “misleading one-sidedness of textual interpretation”
(Jaworski & Thurlow 2010: 1). However, occasionally, I was unable to question
the owners directly, since I jotted down the slogans from the back of danfos in
motion. Despite this limitation, it is worth noting that lexico-semantic meanings
are fluid and never entirely under the owner’s control. Texts often generate sur-
plus meanings that transcend, even subvert, the purported intentions of the author
(Barber 1987: 4).
Taking a cue from the Yoruba philosopher Olabiyi Yai’s argument that art (visual
or verbal) has ashe (or life force) and is both “unfinished and generative” (1995:
107), I derived the slogan’s essential character (iwa) from the insights offered by
other transport operators and Lagosians who often commented on the slogans,
joked about them or expressed their preferences for one over another. For those
who may question the relevance of slogans to the lived experiences and aspirations
of mobile operators in Lagos, Karin Barber has an apt response: “The views that
ordinary people express may be ‘false consciousness’ (a concept not without its
own problems) but they are also their consciousness: the people’s arts represent
what people do in fact think, believe, and aspire to. Their ideology is forged in
specific socio-historical circumstances and takes specific forms” (1987: 8).

Theorizing Everyday Life: Beyond the Routine

Lest one begin to wonder how a study of painted slogans fits with the thematic
concern of this book, this chapter operates from the overarching premise that pay-
ing attention to the “doing, being and experiencing of the everyday” (Hallisey
 the art of urban survival 113

2015: 307) can shed new light on how everyday people experience, articulate,
and respond to corruption and coercion. Everyday life is an extremely difficult
problem to interrogate empirically because “it asks us to render visible not what
is hidden but what is right before our eyes” (Das 2015: 323). The everyday is

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at once the most self-evident and the most puzzling of all concepts (Agbiboa
2019: 837). Some see it as that time when nothing happens. Others view it as
essentially unknown because the time of the everyday escapes us; it eludes our
grasp. Still others identify it with the repetitive, the negative, the residual, the
taken-for-granted continuum of mundane activities (Felski 2000: 78). If by every-
day we mean that which happens day after day, it follows that it is a temporal
(time-based) term whose essence is in the relentless cycle of repetition, that is,
its “fleeting, ungraspable” nature which accounts for its unintelligibility (Lefebvre
2004: 51). For this reason, therefore, it has become received wisdom to deprive
everyday life of critical reflection or the capacity for transcendence (Schutz &
Luckmann 1983). As Henri Lefebvre (1987: 10) puts it, “In the study of everyday,
we discover the great problem of repetition, one of the most difficult problems
facing us.”
Relatively recently, ethnographic studies of the state have reclaimed the concept
of the everyday in their attempt to challenge conventional ideas of a monolithic
state standing apart from society. These studies reconfigure the state as constituted
through quotidian encounters, practices, and contingent interactions between
citizens and public officials (Titeca & De Herdt 2011; Olivier de Sardan 2008;
Gould, Sherman, & Ansari 2013: 241; Masquelier 2001; Gupta 1995; Mitchell
1999; Piliavsky 2014; Ruud 2000). Joel Migdal and Klaus Schlichte (2005: 15), for
example, have called our attention to “doing the state,” which entails paying an-
alytic attention to the unstable and shifting interactions and responses between
state officials and non-state actors. In this perspective, the state is nothing but a
site of “competition or dispute amongst different interest groups… a repository of
power that can be subverted and appropriated for particularistic interests” (Gould,
Sherman, & Ansari 2013: 242). This chapter sees everyday life as “the site in which
the life of the other is engaged” (Das 2010). In other words, at its core, the study
of everyday life encompasses:

the ordinary, recurring, trivial or crucial actions, struggles, engagements, interac-

tions, enactments, performances, exchanges, needs, communications, and other
manifold forms of deeds or acts that define and condition human existence. These
deeds or acts involving ordinary people are often geared toward attempts to man-
age, cope with, suffer through, struggle with and/or improve the terms of human
existence and human viability in relation to, or in the context of, various agencies,
structures, institutions, rules and regulations that enable or circumscribe living.”
(Adebanwi, forthcoming)
114 they eat our sweat

Far from a world devoid of politics, the everyday is reimagined here as indissolubly
linked to the political economy, often in “unnoticed and pervasive ways” (Moran
2005). In light of de Certeau’s important warning against seeing practices of daily
life as mere “obscure background of social activity” (1984: xi), this chapter elevates

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the everyday danfo slogan to the status of a critical concept in an effort to under-
stand and explain the corruption and precarity that surrounds transport work in
Lagos.

Space, Place, Practice: The Tactics of Everyday Life

This chapter is partly informed by Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory outlined in The
Production of Space (1992). In this work, Lefebvre develops a sophisticated account
of how space is relentlessly constructed at the intersection of “representations of
space” (by architects, planners, and developers), “spaces of representation” (which
denote the vast symbolic associations we associate with specific kind of spaces),
and “spatial practice,” that is, the material, concrete, tangible dimensions of so-
cial activity and interactions. Lefebvre’s spatial theorizing sheds important light
onto how cities embody immense heterogeneity, especially in terms of “their den-
sity as concentrations of people, things, institutions and architectural forms; the
heterogeneity of life they juxtapose in close proximity; and their siting of vari-
ous networks of communication and flows across and beyond the city” (Amin &
Thrift 2002: 2). The reproduction of social relations is vital to the production of
space: “The spatial practice of a society secrets that society’s space; it propounds
and presupposes it in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly as surely as it
masters and appropriates it, i.e., through the network of roads, motorways and the
politics of transport” (Lefebvre 1992: 38). Lefebvre’s conception of space as socially
produced rests on a recognition that space constitutes an integral part of all social
life, both affecting and affected by social action. Perhaps nowhere is this more ev-
ident than in the writings of Doreen Massey, who contends that space is “one of
the axes along which we experience and conceptualize the world.” Massey calls for
space to be conceptualized as a product of simultaneous social interrelations and
interactions at multiple scales, from local to global (1993: 141; 1994: 265).
Lefebvre’s spatial insights are complemented by Michel de Certeau who, in
The Practice of Everyday Life, defines space as nothing but a “practiced place.” In
other words, the way a place is practiced (or used) essentially produces its space
(1984: 117). For de Certeau, practice comprises the entire repertoire of “dispersed,
tactical and makeshift” procedures by which people socially navigate daily life.
In other words, practice involves a method of “textual poaching,” whereby city
dwellers manipulate and conform the commands of a disciplinary power to their
own interests and rules (1984: xiv). Given the fluid nature of practice, space is al-
ways ambiguous, unstable, and mutable (Magee 2007: 112). While acknowledging
 the art of urban survival 115

that space and domination are intertwined (Massey 1994: 81), de Certeau nonethe-
less maintains that the dominated are not passive consumers but rather active
interpreters of the dominant order who create opportunities out of the very condi-
tions of their domination. By way of illustration, de Certeau points to the manner

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in which the stunning victory of Spanish colonization over the indigenous Indian
cultures in the Americas was diverted from its intended aim by the use made of it:

[E]ven when they were subjected, indeed even when they accepted their subjec-
tion, the Indians often used the laws, practices, and representations that were
imposed on them by force or by fascination to ends other than those of their
conquerors; they made something else out of them; they subverted them from
within—not by rejecting them or by transforming them (though that occurred
as well), but by many different ways of using them in the service of rules, cus-
toms or convictions foreign to the colonization which they could not escape. They
metaphorized the dominant order: they made it function in another register. They
remained other within the system which they assimilated and which assimilated
them externally. They diverted it without leaving it. Procedures of consumption
maintained their differences in the very space that the occupier was organizing.
(de Certeau 1984: 32)

Against the above background, de Certeau argues that everyday practices (includ-
ing but not limited to talking, reading, moving about, or shopping) are tactical in
nature. By tactics,1 he means “a calculated action determined by the absence of a
proper locus. No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condi-
tion necessary for autonomy. The space of a tactic is the space of the other… It
operates in isolated actions blow by blow… In short, a tactic is an art of the weak”
(de Certeau 1984: 37). The tactic is time-dependent: “It is always on the watch for
opportunities that must be seized on the wing… it must constantly manipulate
events in order to turn them into opportunities.” In Panama, corruption is com-
monly known as juega vivo, a phrase which describes someone who manipulates
the system to his or her own benefit (Dougherty 2002: 199). De Certeau’s concept
of the tactics is an apt description of juega vivo.
The theoretical insights of Lefebvre and de Certeau are central to our discus-
sions in this chapter because they usefully attribute to urban spatial practice a
form of active agency or capacity for action. In other words, they offer us theories
with significant explanatory power with regard to the agency of people struggling

1 “[A tactic] takes advantage of ‘opportunities’ and depends on them, being without any base where it
could stockpile its winnings, build up its own position and plan raids. What it wins it cannot keep. This
nowhere gives a tactic mobility, to be sure, but a mobility that must accept the chance of offerings of the
moment, and seize on the wing the possibilities that offer themselves at any moment. It must vigilantly
make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers.
It poaches them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse”
(de Certeau 1984: 37).
116 they eat our sweat

to survive under the shadow of the modern world system (Shipley, Comaroff, &
Mbembe 2010: 654). At the same time, both authors acknowledge that space is not
a neutral spectator but an active protagonist in urban lives and livelihoods. This
chapter starts from the major premise that Lagos is not “a series of policies gone

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wrong” (Simone 2005: 1) but rather a system of inventive responses and sheer grit.
As Mbembe notes: “Those of us who live and work in Africa know firsthand that
the ways in which societies compose and invent themselves in the present—what
we could call the creativity of practice—is always ahead of the knowledge we can
ever produce about them” (Shipley, Comaroff, & Mbembe 2010: 654). It is to this
creativity of practice on the dangerous roads of Lagos that I now turn.

Automobile Cultures and the Creativity of Practice

Automobiles have a history of neglect as objects of ethnographic research. In a

seminal essay on “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,”
Igor Kopytoff invites us to track the “cultural biography” of cars because of what
they can tell us about our cultural landscape. Using Africa as an example, Kopytoff
argues:

The biography of the car in Africa would reveal a wealth of cultural data: the way
it was acquired, how and from whom the money was assembled to pay for it,
the relationship of the seller to the buyer, the uses to which the car is regularly
put, the identity of its most frequent passengers and of those who borrow it, the
frequency of borrowing, the garages to which it is taken and the owner’s relation
to the mechanics, the movement of the car from hand to hand over the years, and
in the end, when the car collapses, the final disposition of its remains. All of these
details would reveal an entirely different biography from that of a middle-class
American, or Navajo, or French peasant car. (1986: 67)

Since Kopytoff ’s call, researchers have explored various aspects of automobile cul-
tures in Africa, including vehicles as instruments of African colonization (Gewald,
Luning, & Walraven 2009), expressions of popular culture and political imagina-
tion (Miller 2001; Mutongi 2006; Green-Simms 2017), hybrid environments for
the discourse of identity, faith, and social vision (Klaeger 2009), cars in their sym-
bolical, material-technological as well as spiritual dimensions (Verripps & Meyer
2001), and the politics of car importation and allocation as a window onto the
shifting contours of state authority (Chalfin 2008). In Lagos, as in many other
African cities, vehicles constitute not only the axis mundi of modernity, but they
are also powerful symbols of class differentiation (Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 330;
Adichie 2014: 544). The car you drive tends to determine your social status,
whether you’re olowo (rich) or talaka (poor). Over and over again, Nigerian and
 the art of urban survival 117

Ghanaian home videos and music industry emphasize that “beautiful cars are
much cherished and figure as ultimate icons of modernity” (Verripps & Meyer
2001: 159). In these West African societies, owning or driving a car, even if rented
or old, bestows on the driver a certain importance (eniyan pataki). By contrast, the

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expression “legedisbenz” (a parody of Mercedes Benz) is typically used to taunt
poor urbanites who commute on foot. Tie da? (“Where is yours?”) is a common
danfo slogan in Lagos (directed as an insult from a driver to a passenger) reflect-
ing the pride in owning a vehicle. A certain power inheres in the driver’s control of
the car and in a sense confers on him a privileged citizen status (Lawuyi 1988: 5).
The import of automobiles is also evident in the fact that when a danfo driver
is reluctant to “settle” (bribe) union touts (agberos) on the way, the first action
taken by these touts is to inflict damage on the body of the danfo: they will pull out
windshield wipers, remove fuel covers, detach seats, or smash side-view mirrors.
Danfos are typically fashioned out of Mercedes 911, Bedford, or Volkswagen
chassis and engines derived from second-hand buses (tokumbos) imported from
Europe, around which the steel frame is constructed. Constructing the outer
body of a danfo is very much a hybrid process; local craftsmen build a new
body around an imported chassis, which is then creatively decorated by lo-
cal painters with the state-authorized yellow and black colors. The crafting
of the danfo points to how African city dwellers carve out their own mech-
anisms and forms of production and urbanism by dint of a hybrid mix of
modernist and non-modernist rationalitities (Myers 2010: 10). Most danfos
have lost the padding that is placed in the ceiling to insulate passengers from
heat. Their windows are also permanently sealed off, creating a stuffy atmo-
sphere inside the danfo. Passengers often must sit on bare planks, which are
crudely attached to iron bars. Apart from the steering wheel, the dashboards
of most danfos are without any functioning gadgets. Thus, the danfo driver re-
lies on his conductor (or sometimes on his passengers) to marshal the roads
and bark instructions to him regularly: O wa legbe o (there is vehicle by your
side), wole wa (enter this side of the road), and o nbo le o (a passenger
is dropping).
The form of danfos generally conforms to their slogans. Rickety danfos are
driven by older men and often bear slogans such as E still dey go (“It is still go-
ing”), “God is in Control,” “Slow but Steady,” “No Shaking,” “Tested and Trusted,”
“Experience is the Best Teacher,” and “All that Glitters is not Gold.” In contrast,
newer-looking danfos driven by younger men bear slogans such as “Lagos to Las
Vegas,” “Fresh Boy,” “Obama,” “Land Cruiser,” “Voda Foam” (a very comfortable
local mattress), and “Paradise.” This echoes Olatunde Lawuyi’s point that taxi slo-
gans express social stratification. He identifies three stages of self/business growth
among Yorùbá taxi drivers. Young ones adopt optimistic slogans, those over thirty
are more realistic/stoic, and some over forty tend to celebrate or flaunt their success
(Lawuyi 1988).
118 they eat our sweat

Danfos are also vibrant spaces for petty trading and religious conversion of souls.
Inside the danfo, itinerant traders and preachers typically secure a seat at the front.
As the danfo makes its way out of the garage (bus station), the trader gets up,
clears his throat, and begins to peddle his goods to passengers who are typically

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crowded together, as sardines in cans (“full loading,” as they say in Lagos). A pas-
senger entering an overloaded danfo will ask the other passengers to “abeg dress
small,” which means please move over a little. Sometimes, danfo drivers refuse
to start the journey until passengers in a four-seater row have “dressed small” to
allow space for the fifth person to squeeze in. When there is a pregnant woman
or an elderly person entering the danfo, the conductor will shout to his driver o
loyun oponmo o (she is pregnant and has a child on her back). On hearing this,
the driver will often come to a full stop. Otherwise, drivers slow down at bus stops
but never quite halt, leaving passengers to judge the best time to jump off or jump
on. Apart from saving time, the slow-down-without-halting tactic is meant to re-
duce the time bribe-eating policemen and touts have to climb aboard and demand
cash bribes from the conductor. As passengers jostle to enter barely stopped buses,
they leave themselves exposed to pickpockets. In Nairobi, matatu operators of-
ten insist that incoming passengers kaa kibiashara (squeeze in more tightly) or
tafadhali songa mbele (please move forward and create space for others) in or-
der to maximize profits. On the other hand, passengers exiting the matatus are
ordered by the operator to ruka kama sitima (“jump out with the speed of electric-
ity”), with little regard for safety. The matatu logic is simple: “jump in, squeeze,
jump out—quickly!” (Mutongi 2017: 93). In other capital cities in Africa, such as
Kinshasa and Dar es Salaam, commuters may “hang out of the bus or even sit
on the roof ” (Kumar & Barrett 2008: xv). There are usually more passengers than
seats in Kinshasa, and lines are awfully long. “Without knowing exactly where the
minibus-taxi is heading, people try to squeeze in, even before the arriving passen-
gers have succeeded in making their way out” (Trefon 2004: 30). In Kinshasa, the
minibus is called esprit de mort (“spirit of the dead”), because of its propensity for
fatal accidents.
Virtually all of daily life’s necessities are for sale inside the danfo, from health
care products (agbo jedi—medicine for piles) to household items (e.g. ogun ekute—
rat poison). There is often plenty of time for the trader to peddle his goods, since
commuter journeys in Lagos are often dotted with go-slows—a journey of twenty
minutes can take up to two hours! This is not only due to the poor road con-
ditions which compel slow driving but also the omnipresence of money-eating
police officers and violent union tax collectors (agberos) at almost every bus stop
and junction. Despite their relatively affordable prices, these goods are touted as
working (like) magic: “touch and go.” The sales gimmicks and “sweet mouth” of
most traders, combined with their unbeatable comedian wit, ensure that several
passengers will exchange their money for goods before their bus stop. As the trader
takes his seat, a preacher seizes the moment. “My people, God has sent me to you
 the art of urban survival 119

with good news. This is year is your year of financial breakthrough! I command
the curse of poverty in your life to die.” The chorus of “Amen” are often emphatic.
In a megacity dominated by poverty and scarcity, a doctrine of prosperity sells.

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Vehicle Slogans as Mimesis of Everyday Life

Life in the city today is a process of constant negotiation of the visible and in-
visible. Increasingly, what one cannot see, or cannot see clearly, determines one’s
fortunes. An ability to see the otherwise invisible is a strategy not only for survival
but for profit. And one is always subject to a gaze, whether it is the gaze of jealous
rivals or lovers, witches, international NGOs or media, or the postcolonial state.
(Hoffman 2011: 959; see also Mbembe 1992)

Given the intense visuality of the African cityscape, it is surprising that many stud-
ies still overlook the visual materiality of the city, by which I mean, “the ocular
as well as the tactile and emotional qualities of the urban” (Clammer 2014: 66).
The visuality of the African city can tell us something about the nature of space,
how it is socially navigated, and the bodies that occupy it. To understand how
informal transport workers in Lagos imagine and traverse dangerous roads, I
looked interpretatively at the painted slogans that are prominently displayed on
the rickety bodies of their danfos. The prevalence of vehicle slogans across African
cities makes them a part of the occupational subculture of passenger transport
and the intense visual qualities of the city (Date-Bah 1980; Lawuyi 1988; Rizzo
2011). Danfo slogans in Lagos tend to reflect the life histories, expectations, fears,
and principles guiding the workaday world of transport operators. As part of the
artwork and archive of popular urban wisdom, danfo slogans generally provide
“insights into human beings and social relations that are not readily accommo-
dated within science and scholarship” (Theodore Adorno, cited in Green-Simms
2009: 22). They embody and mirror not only national narratives (Guseh 2008) but
also the simultaneous threat, resource, and possibility of city life (Simone 2010: 3).
In short, they involve everyday Lagosians in the “operations of the productive
imaginations” (Mbembe 2001a: 159). A vehicle slogan is not only that thing that
is present to us because we see it but constitutes the very thing of our experience
(Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 145). Slogans thus possess powers of enchantment
and symbolization which enable the owner “to think of his existence not in a
purely politico-instrumental way, but also as an artistic gesture and an aesthetic
project open as much to action as to meditation and contemplation” (Mbembe
2002: 629). Slogans are not only abstract and discursive but also embodied and
affective entities (Morgan 2008: 228; Stewart 2007).
Vehicle slogans are part of the urban expressive and stylistic forms that “offers
the narrative structure—and the mood that underpins it—into which lifeworlds
120 they eat our sweat

and experiences can be inserted; this structure enables audiences to give a place
to experiences, hopes, and anxieties that cannot be easily anchored in a state-
driven imagination” (Meyer 2004: 105). Across African cities, from Accra to Lomé
and Nairobi, vehicle slogans reflect a wide range of sentiments, to wit: apprehen-

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sion, pride, personal identities, role models, dreams and dreads, financial anxiety,
praise of generous benefactors or patrons, fear of disappointment, joy about suc-
cess, spiritual (in)security, pious platitudes, and waggish quips (Mutongi 2006).
These vehicle slogans “sometimes relate to some personal experience of the driver
or the owner of the truck, such as for instance a happy turn in his life, events or
happenings on the road; they may derive from the fact of a gift (Good Mother or
Good Uncle); or they may relate to a personal idol (like ‘Samson’); or they may
be an expression of the driver’s relationship to God” (Kyei & Schreckenbach 1975:
1). In this light, an interpretative approach to vehicle slogans can tell us some-
thing about the oft-ignored precarious and affective dimension of car cultures.
Slogans may be imagined as conduits for making our sensibility known to the
wider world (Hepworth 1996: 376). Yet, slogans may contradict the very sensi-
bility they project. For example, with all its risks and chaos, I was often struck by
the wry slogans on rickety danfos in Lagos, such as, “No Cause for Alarm,” “Life is
Good,” or “Just Relax.” These slogans mirror the contradictory scene of commuter
journeys in which meanings are “simultaneously represented, contested, and in-
vested” (Foucault 1984: 3). Moreover, slogans furnish us with an entextualised
language to represent urban experiences in Africa. Barber uses “entextualisation”
as a way of describing the close relations between texts, persons, and publics in
urban Africa. (2007: 22; see also Quayson 2014: 144). In terms of structure, most
danfo slogans that I recorded during fieldwork were short and pithy (“Let them
Say” or “Mind Your Business”) and embedded in traditional aphorisms (“Ise loo-
gun ise”—work cures poverty), religious texts (“Blood of Jesus”), or local slangs
(“Chop Liver”—show courage).
Danfo slogans are integral to Lagos life, imbuing it with meaning, purpose, and
humor. A commuter once told me, “I can’t even imagine Lagos without its yellow
danfos and their very funny slogans. Sometimes I am in a bad mood and I see
a slogan that makes me burst into laughter and cheer me up instantly. My two
favorite slogans of all time are ‘No Time to Die’ and ‘Time is Money Don’t Waste
it on Bargaining.”’ Other commuters in Lagos described how vehicle slogans and
mottos shape their decision on which danfo to take to work on a daily basis. An
analysis of slogans therefore offers real insights into how danfo workers develop
and communicate a unique competitive edge through their textual choices and
artistic preferences. The expressions of individual identity through slogans may be
seen as a tactical means of resisting the many (meta)physical forces against which
transport operators struggle on a daily basis. For example, whenever the term aiye
(life or world) is used in slogans, it is usually in recognition of malignant forces or
enemies (ota) of one’s progress (aiye nreti eleya mi—“The world awaits my failure”).
 the art of urban survival 121

For this reason, aiye is a superior that must be supplicated (aiye e ma binuwa—
“World have mercy on us”) and respected (aiye mojuba—“I respect the world”)
lest our destiny be altered (aiye e ma pa kadara—“World, don’t alter our fate”). For
these transport operators, “everyday life has come to be defined by the paradigm

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of threat, danger and uncertainty. A social world has gradually taken form where
general distrust and suspicion go hand in hand with the need for protection against
increasingly invisible enemies” (Mbembe 2006: 310).
Many danfo owners believe that forces, named or unknown, are constantly con-
spiring against their success. Their fears are not surprising if we consider that
vehicle ownership represents wealth, which gives rise to envy from one’s ene-
mies. One slogan reminds people that “God Condemns Envy,” while another notes
“Don’t Envy Me, Work.” During the course of my fieldwork, owners expressed fears
of being struck by juju (sorcery) orchestrated by enemies envious of their success.
As one danfo slogan puts it, ota po (“enemies galore”). Hence, to protect them-
selves, owners use their vehicle slogans as a talisman, a defense against ota aiye
(“enemies of life”), or a constant supplication for “No Loss, No Lack, No Lim-
itation,” as one slogan put it. Danfo slogans such as “Back to Sender” expresses
the owner’s prayer that any bad wish toward his business should backfire on those
who wish them. Others like “Sea never dry” reflect the owner’s wish that his danfo,
his only source of income, never leaves the road. Implicit in slogans such as “No
Weapon Fashioned Against Me,” “Do my Prophet No Harm,” “Heaven’s Gate,”
“Blood of Jesus,” or “Any Attempt!” is a warning of the source of the danfo owner’s
power. In this instance, the message to the enemy is unequivocal: If you want to
take me on, then you must take on God himself, who is regarded as superior to
awon aiye (“the wicked world”).
The above specter of danger is neither unique to road life in Lagos nor a re-
cent development. In her study of the social lives of Ghanaian commercial drivers,
Eugenia Date-Bah (1980: 525) found that owners of passenger vehicles were often
“supplicants at shrines because of a paranoiac fear of failure, perceiving themselves
as the objects of envy of those who wanted them to have financial disaster.” An
even earlier study of everyday security in Ghana by M.J. Field (1960: 134) found
that the lorry owner is “acutely conscious of himself as an object of envy, and has
much anxiety lest those seeking his humiliation should bring it about by bad magic
designed either to wreck his lorry or to bring it financial disaster. Therefore, he
seldom neglects to take his lorry to a shrine for protection.”

Urban Representational Economy

Since Walter Benjamin’s celebrated Arcades Project, it has been evident that
cityscapes are subjects of the gaze. In other words, the city not only constructs
itself to be seen, but also speaks to its residents through what it makes them
122 they eat our sweat

see, that is, through its visual culture (Hooper-Greenhill 2000; Oha 2001; Magee
2007). From the position of urban citizens, the city is “a continuum of sensory
experience, in which sounds, sights and smells, caused by all kinds of things, are
blended into a composite and constantly changing whole” (Williams 1954: 98).

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Of particular interest in this chapter are the intensely visual and expressive cul-
ture of Lagos, most palpable in the proliferation of a kaleidoscope of slogans,
mottos, stickers, and images. It is “impossible to move through [the streets of La-
gos] without being bombarded by a multitude of posters, billboards and banners
advertising churches, services, prayer meetings, revivals, miracles…” (Marshall
2015: 2).
As a site of popular resistance, urban expressive forms such as slogans embody
the “quiet encroachment of the ordinary” (Bayat 2009: 45). This is not dissimilar
to Mbembe’s (1992: 25) description of how ordinary Africans tend to “guide, de-
ceive, and actually toy with power instead of confronting it directly.” Consider, for
instance, the creative resistance associated with danfo slogans. Although drivers
generally stick to the official requirements of yellow and black paint for intra-
city transport by the Lagos State Government, they are constantly finding ways
to elaborate on this system through a process of “subversion by reinterpretation”
(Osinulu 2008) or “textual poaching” (de Certeau 1984: 166). Of the midibuses
(molues) in Lagos, Adedamola Osinulu writes: “One might find that one of the
required black strips is thinner and shorter than the other and that the painter
has made inscriptions within the black strip… The state has legislated conformity
and anonymity, but the [informal transport] painters have carved out an iden-
tity for themselves within the interstitial spaces of the legislation” (2008: 50). By
cleverly superimposing their own unofficial interpretation on formal city regu-
lations, transport operators have found a way of “avoiding, taunting, attacking,
undermining, enduring, hindering and mocking the everyday exercise of power”
(Pile 1997: 14). The Lagos State Road Traffic Law 2012 stipulates that “Except as
prescribed by the Motor Vehicle Administration Agency and the Lagos State Sig-
nage and Advert Agency, the use of marks, slogans, stickers, painting, photos etc.
on commercial vehicles is prohibited” (Lagos State Government 2012). By impli-
cation, the stylistic danfo slogans marks the rise and flourishing of an unstable
and shifting public sphere that can resist confinement to the place assigned it by
the urban government (Meyer 2004: 92, 95). In this light, then, slogans signal a
dominant representational economy2 and semiotic ideology in Lagos, one that is
characterized by a strong emphasis on the assertion of power through a dialectics
of presence.

2 A term used by Webb Keane (2002: 95) to “capture the ways in which practices and ideologies put
words, things, and actions into complex articulation with one another.”
 the art of urban survival 123

Desconstructing Lagos

Before analyzing the danfo slogans, it is important to assess academic narratives

of the spatial context from which these texts emerge and of which they speak.

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Similar to many African cities such as Johannesburg, Lagos typically emerge in
the extant literature as extreme or exceptional, hopeless or hopeful. On the one
hand, Lagos is represented as a bastion of expanding slums, biting poverty, ris-
ing unemployment, and surplus humanity; in short, as a place that falls well
short of the expectations of modernity, which is said to have its fons et origo in
the West (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012; Robinson 2013; Ferguson 1999). This
dystopian reading reclaims colonial images of Lagos as a wasteland dotted with
crime, disease, and “dirty natives” (Newell 2020). Far from being passé, this ten-
dency towards homogeneous and binarized representations of African cities is
alive and well in today’s dominant analytical frames that closely aligns Western
cities with modernity and non-Western cities with developmentalism. African
cities thus enter urban studies as not-quite-cities, as problems to be solved, as
cities struggling to acquire “world class” status – Lagos, for instance, brands itself
as “Africa’s Big Apple” (Agbiboa 2018b), while Johannesburg promotes itself as a
“world class African city” (Sihlongonyane 2016). “To the degree that, from a West-
ern perspective, the Global South is embraced by modernity at all,” argues Jean and
John Comaroff (2012: 114), “then, it is an outside that requires translation, conver-
sation, catch-up.” Relaxing this parochial practice of gazing at non-Western cities
through Western lenses would require treating Africa as people (Achebe 1999)
and “people as infrastructure” (Simone 2004b), that is to say, as products of social
networks and inventive responses that animates the city.
Growing calls to move beyond Afropessimist discourses that view the African
city as a basket case of multiple pathologies have opened a hopeful door for ex-
ceptional readings of the African city, what Matthew Gandy (2005), learning from
Lagos, calls the “aesthetic of chaos.” This approach underscores the coping mech-
anisms, improvisations, and inventiveness of city dwellers in Lagos, whose daily
and defiant struggle for economic survival and social recognition is interpreted as
defying commonsense logic and constricted Western notions of order. This view-
point is exemplified by Rem Koolhaas, who sees the congestion and chaos of Lagos
as revealing a hidden order.

What is now fascinating is how, with some level of self-organization, there is a

strange combination of extreme underdevelopment and development. And what
particularly amazes me is how the kinds of infrastructure of modernity in the city
trigger off all sorts of unpredictable improvised conditions, so that there is a kind
of mutual dependency that I’ve never seen anywhere else. (Koolhaas 2001)
124 they eat our sweat

Far from been a backward situation, says Koolhaas (2007), Lagos is at the
“forefront of a globalizing modernity.” While this aesthetic, if depoliticized and
dehistoricized, framing usefully underscores the emergence of new forms of ur-
banism in contemporary Africa, it overlooks the dire realities facing its informal

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workforce, especially extortion, dispossession, and displacement. Koolhaas seems
to underestimate the ongoing criticism by Lagosians of their own city, especially
the corruption of ruling elites and the daku daji (epileptic) of the nature of automo-
bile infrastructure. In his fascination with a Lagos that works, Koolhaas overlooked
the fact that this kind of city works mainly for those who are able to extract re-
sources, in particular resources from the violent appropriation of its public spaces.
This becomes all the more evident when we consider the ways in which ordinary
Lagosians come to think about their own city. Themes of insecurity (“Remember
Ur Six Feet”), precarity (“Life is War”), exploitation of labor (“Monkey de work,
Baboon de chop”—one person works and another person reaps the fruit of his la-
bor), tactics (the use of juju or road charms), abjection (I dey like deadibody—“I
exist like a deadbody”), and hope (“No condition is Permanent”) are used to piece
together a phenomenology of Lagos life that is pervasive but rarely codified.

“This is Lagos”

“This is Lagos” is a popular saying and sign directed at naïve newcomers to Nige-
ria’s commercial capital (also known as JJC—short for “Johnny Just Come”) to
warn them that Eko lo wa (“you are in Lagos”)—a place where you must shine your
eyes (be street smart) to get by, or risk falling easy prey to everyday deception. The
need to always shine your eyes in Lagos reclaims the true essence of African cities
which “often appear to act in an incessant state of preparedness. They keep resi-
dents in an almost permanent state of changing gears and focus, if not location”
(Simone 2001: 18). Anecdotal evidence in Lagos suggests that “This is Lagos” is an
expression from an old Nigerian joke:

It used to be said that whereas other Nigerian cities receive visitors convivially
with signs such as “Welcome to Jos” or “Welcome to Kaduna,” visitors are not
welcome to Lagos. Instead a terse notice informs you ominously, “This is Lagos.”
To confirm that you are now in a different clime, the familiar but unwelcome
stench of refuse wafts in through open windows to assail the nostrils of those
coming in by road… This is clearly not a city for the faint hearted. (Ngwodo 2005)

During my fieldwork, I asked a group of danfo drivers about what “This is

Lagos” meant to them, as this was commonly painted on the sides of danfos. Their
responses (quoted below) reinforce dominant narratives of the African city as a
bastion of the brutal and the abject (Mbembe 2006: 153). The agency that the
 the art of urban survival 125

drivers below attribute to Lagos tells us that cities are not inert or neutral back-
drops but “commonly talked about as actors: more anthropos than topos” (Gandhi
& Hoek 2012: 3).

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“This is Lagos” means that everybody has to be careful. Because in this Lagos
brothers don’t know brothers, sisters don’t know sisters, uncle don’t know uncle.
Anything you can do and get money you will do it. That’s why they say “This is
Lagos.” No one cares whether you are dying or living. Everybody is angry. Ev-
erybody is frustrated. Even though you are from the same mother or father, they
don’t care. If you like you live, if you like you die, that is all your business.
“This is Lagos” means that this is a land of nobody, a land of no mercy, a land
of no trust. It is a jungle where anything can happen. You have to be vigilant all
the time. No dulling (be sharp) my brother. This is Lagos is not a language of love
but of cheating. At times I start to cry when I look at the situation because we are
living in a loveless place.

“Remember Ur Six Feet”

A great many danfos ply for hire without licenses and brazenly flout traffic rules.
These danfos are often overloaded, perilously speeding, and notorious for causing
noise and air pollution. Due to their regular involvement in fatal road accidents,
some Lagosians now refer to danfos as “flying coffins.” The slogans painted on
the sides of these danfos often ironically alert passengers to the strong possibil-
ity of death: “Carrying me Home,” “See you in Heaven,” “Heaven Could be Nearer
than Home,” “Home Sweet Home,” Orun Ile (“Heaven, my Home”), “Free at Last,”
“Safety is of the Lord,” “Remember Now Thy Creator,” and so on. At a junction
in Alimosho local government area, I asked one danfo driver about his choice of
the slogan: “Remember Ur Six Feet” (Figure 6). He responded, “You see, in this
Lagos anything [can] happen. Even the bible warns us to number our days. This
is why I like to prepare my passengers for the worst. The road is an evil spirit that
is very thirsty for blood.” In Lagos, danfo accidents are so common that newspa-
per headlines announce them with a shrugging resignation: “At least nine killed in
Agege train accident caused by Danfo driver”; “Danfo driver crushes okada driver
to death in Lagos”; “Danfo Conductor falls to his death”; “Seven escape death as
Danfo driving against traffic rams into another on highway.” According to one
commuter whom I spoke to in Oshodi: “Many of us know most of the danfos are
death traps but since we can’t afford the high taxi fares, we have no choice but to
use them. What else can we do?”
The “human factor” is often blamed for the fatality of road accidents in Lagos,
with 75 percent of crashes attributed to “human errors” (Akoni 2013). The Lagos
State Driver’s Institute ran a test on some 65,000 danfo drivers in Lagos in 2013
126 they eat our sweat

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Fig. 6. Ranti ese mefa
(Remember ur six feet)
Photo credit: Author

and found that 22 percent, or 14,300, were “partially blind,” while 99 percent were
“hypertensive.” The former is particularly alarming considering that about 95 per-
cent of sensory input to the brain needed for driving comes from vision (Isawunmi
et al. 2011). The regular consumption of paraga (locally brewed mixture of spirit
and herbs) and hard drug (igbo), sometimes before 7:30 am each day, is part of the
problem of Lagos’s accident-prone roads. Drivers have easy access to paraga due
to the location of paraga-selling vendors and drinking parlors inside or within
100 meters of motor parks, reinforcing the blurred boundaries between trade and
transit.3 All sorts of locally-brewed alcoholic beverages are sold here, from alomo
bitters (herbal-based liquor) to ogogoro (a distilled spirit from the raffia palm tree).
Rollups of different brands are also available, from marijuana (igbo) to cocaine and
heroin. “Fuel the bike, fuel the driver,” one okada driver wryly said (Peel 2010: 93).
Paraga vendors (mostly women and young girls) told me that their most re-
liable customers were danfo drivers. Said one vendor: “Danfo drivers and their
conductors throng to my kiosk first thing in the morning to drink and smoke be-
fore work. Some of them come as early as 5 am and want me to put some igbo

3 In an interview I had with one senior vehicle inspection officer in Alimosho, he alluded to Gover-
nor Babatunde Fashola’s clearing of paraga kiosks in Lagos as a factor in the reduction of accidents and
misconduct in and around motor parks and bus terminals. In his words, “Many operators think when
they take paraga they become invincible.”
 the art of urban survival 127

inside their ogogoro.” “There are no state guidelines on alcohol consumption es-
pecially for commercial drivers in this country,” lamented a commuter in Lagos.
“Police should crack down on the patrons and the bars around motor parks who
sell alcohol indiscriminately. We don’t have restrictive time for sale of drinks and

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it’s particularly wrong for drivers to be under the influence of alcohol while driv-
ing. By this, they are putting the lives of passengers in grave danger” (Vanguard
2013b). The dangers of driving in Lagos are evidenced by road safety slogans such
as: “Drive Carefully. Your Life in Your Hands,” “Are you Following Jesus this Close”
(a sticker on the rear of a danfo), “Choose – Home or Mortuary?” “Drive to Stay
Alive,” “Be easy, Life No Get Part 2.” Many drivers, however, justified their drinking
activities by claiming that the herbs blended into paraga boosts their performance
(driving as well as sexual), while providing much-needed relief for work-related
hazards such as backache. As one danfo driver noted, “I can’t do without taking
the one that is meant for back pain before embarking on any journey or that day
would be miserable for me.” Another driver insists, “I drink it for preventive mea-
sures because I find it to be very effective and I have observed that it boosts my
immune system for my sex life as well” (Vanguard 2013d). This experience is sim-
ilar to that of matatu operators in Nairobi, many of whom drive under the influence
since “they habitually chewed khat or miraa, an addictive tobacco leaf with an am-
phetamine effect. It was the only way they could stay alert during their overlong
shifts” (Mutongi 2017: 94).

“To Live is To Struggle”

For many danfo workers, survival is the ultimate concern. One danfo driver—
whose vehicle had the inscriptions “To Live is To Struggle”—told me, “To survive
in Lagos, you need to hustle 24/7 because our stomach has no holidays. Man
must chop [eat], Man must survive.” Another driver with the slogan “Time na [is]
Money” told me that time in Lagos is a productive but very scarce resource that re-
quires prudent management for maximum achievement of livelihood. In this light,
time expenditure equips a framework for making sense of the dynamics of poverty
management among the urban poor, especially their efforts to increase profit in a
city of innumerable risks and possibilities (Agbiboa 2019). A danfo owner with
the inscription “No Time to Check Time,” who goes by the nickname “No Time,”
explained why he chose this slogan:

I like this slogan because it describes my condition of living from hand to mouth.
I begin work around 5 am in the morning and come home after midnight. In be-
tween, I live and eat on the road, inside danfo, during go-slows. Sometimes I don’t
get to see my little daughter for two or three days because when I am at home she
is already sleeping. Such is life. My oga [his employer] is constantly on my neck to
128 they eat our sweat

deliver N4,000 [USD12] to his house or he will sack me. He warns me that there
are people queuing up to take my job. So my brother, time na money. I need to
speed as fast as possible between Ikotun Egbe and Cele Express if I am to make
extra-cash for myself. Sometimes I bribe the askari [police] to take one-way so

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I can reach the motor-park faster and get ahead of the queue to load “next turn.”
I decided against a conductor to save money and because many are not trustwor-
thy. I beg the passengers to collect the money for me and pass it forward. Life is
hard, my brother, but we are managing. There is God.

Given the few gainful jobs in Lagos, and Nigeria in general, informal transport
workers often attract plenty of labor in form of jobless youth, including university
graduates. Consequently, owners/drivers (some drivers are owners) are usually in
a strong position to dictate the conditions of labor on a person-by-person basis. In
fact, the common practice is that most drivers operate on a daily franchise basis,
earning income only after an agreed fee is paid to the owner, and petrol cost and
other expenses (including road bribes) are covered from the driver’s daily takings.
The situation in Kampala is similar; matatus are run based on a system whereby
the driver pays UGX 60-80,000 (USD30-40) per day to the owner for use of the
matatu. Most of what the drivers make in excess of this they use for fuel, mainte-
nance, and the payment of union fees (Goodfellow 2012: 205). In Nairobi’s matatu
industry, “wealthy owners hired drivers whom they ruthlessly fired if they did not
collect a minimum of money each day” (Mutongi 2006: 554). In Dar es Salaam, a
driver is cited as saying: “they [bus owners] can ask you whatever [daily sales or
fees] they want and you have to accept it” (Rizzo 2011: 1186). In most studies, in-
formal vehicle owners are represented as “government officials, businessmen, or
professionals for whom involvement in public transport provides a way to sup-
plement income without incurring much, if any, tax liability.” These rich owners
often exploit their position and influence to protect their interests in the trans-
port industry; for instance, by ensuring preferential route access for their matatus
(Kumar & Barrett 2008: 8). In Kampala, taxi ownership is a highly secretive space.
This is partly because owners of fleets of matatus are commonly politically exposed
persons with ill-gotten wealth (Goodfellow 2012: 203).
In Lagos, most danfo owners are not necessarily wealthy; in fact, many are in a
precarious position themselves, a dimension which is often missing in analyses of
labor precarity in urban Africa. The level of pressure and precariousness faced by
workers is not the same as that faced by owners (the former, of course, experience
greater pressure and precarity). However, owners experience a level of precarity
about which little research has been conducted. For many owners, some of whom
are low-salaried civil servants, the danfo business is their main source of income.
This is because government jobs are often unrewarding and not as secure as pop-
ularly imagined. The danfo business in Lagos is fragmented and small-scale, with
80 percent of owners holding just one danfo. Owners are typically former danfo
workers or civil servants who have invested their gratuity in the danfo business.
 the art of urban survival 129

In the face of newly amended traffic rules in Lagos, owners are increasingly respon-
sible for vehicle conditions and, like the matatu owners in Kenya, find themselves
having to “buy wipers, give their vehicles a coat of paint, have them panel beaten,
fix breaks, have the engine overhauled and fix new tires before taking their vehicle

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for inspection” (Mutongi 2006: 555) to secure a road worthiness certificate. The
amended Lagos State Road Traffic Law (2012: A89) clearly stipulates: “Where a
person is convicted of an offense relating to the condition of a commercial motor
vehicle then in addition to the person convicted, the owner, if such person is not
the owner, shall also be guilty of the offence unless he can prove to the satisfac-
tion of the Court that he was not aware and could not by reasonably inquiry have
been aware that the vehicle did not comply with the requirements of the law re-
lating to the condition of the vehicle.” A similar situation applies in Cape Town’s
taxi industry, where state rules and tight control over the past three decades or
so have increased the financial burdens on kombi owners, forcing them to “incur
huge debts for ‘safe’ new vehicles and obligating them to purchase broad insurance
coverage, while this wide range of fees and taxes has made taxi owners increasingly
vulnerable to the solicitation of bribes by the police” (Bähre 2014: 591).
One owner that I spoke to in Lagos acquired his danfo for N750,000 (USD3,770)
and spent an additional N150,000 (USD753) on vehicle inspection, registration,
and painting of the danfo to the state authorized yellow and black colors. The price
of danfos fluctuate between N500,000 and N850,000, based on their age and con-
dition. Like drivers, all danfo owners encounter the problem of how to minimize
risk and maximize profit. In Lagos, owners without prior (insider) knowledge of
how the danfo business works (i.e. they were not former danfo drivers) often opt
for a “hire purchase” business arrangement. This involves leasing your danfo to a
trusted driver with the agreement that he would use the danfo for passenger and
goods haulage and pay an agreed daily sum of money (usually N4000, or USD20)
until he covers the cost stipulated in the agreement (usually within six but no later
than twelve months). Upon successful completion of payment, the driver assumes
ownership of the danfo. Failure to meet the target amount at the end of the agree-
ment means that the driver forfeits ownership of the hire purchased danfo. This
explains why danfos are typically overloaded and dangerously speeding, and why
danfo drivers often suffer from hypertension (PM News 2015). According to one
report, a significant number of danfo drivers have died from depression due to debt
burden linked to their inability to pay back the money borrowed to hire purchase
their vehicles in instalments (Lawal 2015).

“Because of Money, No Truth”

The role of money as a major catalyst for the transformation of social life and re-
lations is indexed in the field of anthropology of money (Simmel 1978). Here,
money is seen as driving a wedge between person and things, and spoiling the
130 they eat our sweat

relationships between producers and their produce (Parry & Bloch 1989: 5).
Nowhere is this truer than in the highly monetized and precarious relationship
between the danfo owner and his driver(s), as well as between the driver and his
conductor. A vehicle in reasonable condition and with a reliable driver has the po-

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tential to yield a decent income (Kumar & Barrett 2008: xii). The key word here,
however, is reliable. Many danfo owners complained about the scarcity of reliable
drivers in Lagos. From the vantage point of these owners, drivers will always be
inclined to filch from the owner’s share in order to supplement their wages. Thus,
one owner had the danfo inscription: “Because of Money, No Truth.” This slogan
reflects the owner’s lived experience of being forced on many occasions to dis-
miss his driver who “played” him wayo (“419”), that is, the driver plotted with the
owner’s mechanic to “eat” his money. Another “419” tactic less visible but no less
present in Lagos is the employment of “second” or “third” drivers:

Needless to say, drivers had their own ways of “taking advantage of ” their
employers. This often occurred through arrangements made illicitly and unbe-
knownst to the taxi owners. For example, taxi drivers routinely recruit fellow taxi
drivers, mainly friends from the neighborhood, to take over the operation of the
car—effectively inserting themselves as intermediary bosses. These “second” or in
some cases “third drivers” would be expected to provide a larger “master money”
[daily payment to the owner] rate. This was sometimes achieved by creating an
additional shift in the day, undertaken by a different driver. Sometimes drivers
would take several cars in a single day, and find other drivers to drive them si-
multaneously. The result was that drivers had the potential to make more money
than the taxi owners themselves, as well as to effectively become “bosses” (“own-
ers” of the means of production), even if they were in reality gatekeepers who did
not legally own the taxis they were “managing.” (Lipton 2017: 105–6)

The above imposes fluidity on rigid, Marxian-style divisions between workers and
owners, supply and demand. Owners in Lagos expressed a preference for a ma-
tured driver who is married (preferably with children) to run their danfo business.
The rationale is simple: married drivers are presumed to have more bukata (re-
sponsibilities) and, therefore, likely to take the danfo business, their job, more
seriously than most youth, who are seen as carefree in their approach to life. As
one owner in Alimosho told me:

I personally prefer a family man with children because I know he will try to be
responsible to his family. If he defaults, I don’t ask questions, I just collect the
danfo and show him the door. No abeg [please] sir in this matter. I hate stories
because I have a family to feed. I have my own mechanic. If my driver repairs the
car, it is on his own account, unless I gave him the order to go ahead.
 the art of urban survival 131

Absent a binding “legal contract” between owner and driver, owners turn to infor-
mal social networks to vouch for the background and character of drivers prior to
hiring them. Some owners told me they will only consider a driver who presents
a character reference from the pastor/imam of his church/mosque or was highly

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recommended by a trusted friend. Other owners reported that they prefer mem-
bers of their own family or ethnic group to run their business. For these owners,
“blood is thicker than water.” But this is not always the case. One owner in Oshodi
described how his nephew, to whom he entrusted his danfo business, stole all his
money and “vanished into thin air” along with his danfo. “Till today, I haven’t
heard anything from him. I don’t know whether he is alive or dead. The thing is
like magic. My own nephew whom I thought will be honest with me. It shook me
to be frank with you.” This experience reinforces the argument that “[a] sense of
vulnerability applies even to intimate social relations despite the security these re-
lations appear to offer” (Bledsoe 2002: 21). Other owners shared personal stories
of drivers who had absconded with their danfos and resettled in the southeast or
sold the danfo and changed their contact address. Said one former danfo owner in
Oshodi:

Running a danfo business is like digging your early grave. The drivers always have
one problem. Yesterday police, tomorrow gear problem, next tomorrow radiator
or silencer or tout wahala [trouble]. Everyday same story. One excuse after an-
other. I bought a danfo and within 3 months I was left penniless! The problem is
that my driver was bringing in about N4000 every day. But he was arrested twice
in two weeks and given ticket of N27,000. Each time he brought the ticket to me
to settle [bribe] the authorities.

A commuter in Lagos narrated the distresses her husband endured when he tried
his luck as a danfo owner following his retirement from civil service:

My husband ran this business for a while. So I’m talking from experience. We
nearly died of hypertension I tell you. Every week I had high BP [Blood Pres-
sure]. The driver would work full day, after which he would lie that he was with
mechanic the whole day. He would have pre-arranged with a mechanic who will
testify on his behalf and share your money. Let me tell you, drivers would take
even the money you think you made. Our driver would collude with the mechanic
to remove a spare part that is working and replace it with daku daji [epileptic spare
parts]. When he tells you about the spare part you have to buy, he will inflate the
cost and try to eat your money. I got so vexed that one day I insisted on following
him around. That day, the useless driver kept telling the agberos that I was the
danfo owner, which made them inflate the illegal dues.
132 they eat our sweat

The above statement resonates with Tim Gibb’s research into the taxi-industry in
South Africa. Gibbs notes that during his interviews with migrant factory workers
in Johannesburg’s shack settlements, he was frequently “struck by the number of
men who had dabbled unsuccessfully in the taxi [owning] business and could tell

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bitter stories of failure” (2014: 437). But one may ask: If the danfo business is so
unprofitable, how do we explain the fact that nearly 100,000 danfos still provide
public transport in Lagos? The answer to this partly lies in the fact that many danfo
owners have stopped searching for reliable drivers and, instead, assumed the role
of driver-owners. For these driver-owners, driving the danfo yourself is the best
way to overcome the trust factor. As one owner in Alimosho told me: “There is
money in this business but the problem is that you can never find an honest driver
who would not suck you dry. The best thing you can do is to drive it yourself.” This
is in marked contrast to other African cities like Dar es Salaam, where less than
ten percent of owners are said to operate their own bus (Rizzo 2017: 66).
So much for the precarious relationship between danfo owners and drivers.
What about the relationship between drivers and their conductors? If, for the own-
ers, the goal is to minimize risks and maximize profits in their pursuit of upward
mobility, for drivers and especially conductors, precarity refers to tactics deployed
in the attempt to survive at the margins of society. This distinction is important,
since no matter the uncertainties experienced by danfo owners in Lagos, they are
still owners. That is to say, in the popular imagination car ownership still epit-
omizes wealth and prestige—the owner remains a “privileged citizen” (Lawuyi
1988). The driver is generally responsible for hiring and paying his conductor from
the day’s takings. The conductor occupies a subordinate role as an apprentice to the
driver and therefore has a lesser say in how much he gets each day. The conductor’s
dream is to become a danfo driver someday. In Lagos, conductors have a bad repu-
tation for shortchanging their drivers by pilfering from the day’s takings and from
bus fares while the driver is busy driving. One way in which conductors cash in
on bus fares is through delay tactics, that is, hanging on to the passenger’s change
for as long as possible in the hope that (s)he will forget to ask for it. For any danfo
user in Lagos, “Conductor, shenji mi da? (“conductor, where is my change?”) is a
familiar expression. To which the conductor retorts: Eni suru (exercise patience),
an ironic response since conductors are the very epitome of impatience, especially
in money matters. As is sometimes the case, passengers end up forgetting their
change in the mad rush to exit the bus and catch another one. Ere te mi ni yen
(“That is my own gain”), said one mischievious danfo conductor in Oshodi.
Just as owners find it challenging to find a reliable driver, a major challenge for
drivers is to find a reliable conductor. The Yorùbá concept of work is captured by
the maxim “Whoever works at the altar must eat at the altar” (Lawuyi 1988). In
this light, danfo drivers expect conductors to appropriate some of the fare. At the
same time, stealing must be done in moderation. As one danfo driver/owner in
Oshodi told me: “All conductors will eat some of the bus fares. You cannot really
 the art of urban survival 133

prevent that from happening since they hold the money and you cannot keep tab
of all the passengers that enter or exit the bus while you have your eyes on the road.
You’re lucky if you find a conductor that at least eats you with love.” Increasingly,
danfo drivers are choosing to run their business alone, with passengers filling in the

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gaps. For example, drivers often invite passengers to help them collect the money
row-by-row during the journey. The total money is then passed on to him. This
is where the multi-tasking skills of the driver is put to the test. While weaving
from slow to fast and fast to faster lanes, and avoiding potholes and piles of debris
that have started competing with motorists for rights of way, the driver counts
the money to make sure that it is complete, responds to demands for change by
passengers in undue haste, and settles the violent touts shouting owo da (where
is your money?) Amid all these distractions, the driver still finds time to take an
incoming call and spot passengers heading in his direction, even from far off in
the streets. Multitasking while driving is a dangerous practice that has resulted in
several fatal accidents. To avoid this, drivers now collect their fares and distribute
change before they embark on the journey.

“Police is Your Friend”

A danfo with the slogan “birds of the same feather” told me about how touts (ag-
beros) and traffic police officers routinely combine to create a predatory economy
at checkpoints and junctions. Another danfo slogan in Lagos conveys the same
meaning in a more ironic manner: “Police is Your Friend” (Figure 7).
Many danfo slogans in Lagos speak to the relentless corruption and deceptions
on the road. One danfo slogan reads “Jeun [Eat], Kin Jeun [I eat],” which suggests
that the benefits of corruption should be distributed rather than hoarded since, as
another slogan implies, “eating together makes the exercise enjoyable”. Yet another
vehicle slogan says, “Shine Your Eyes,” which is a warning to always be vigilant to
swindlers (“419ers”), who are never far away in Lagos. Explaining his choice of
the slogan “Life is War,” Wahid, a danfo driver in Alimosho, said: “This business
is what I use to feed my family. I don’t have any other source of money. I have
four children, and three are in school. I thank God for my life.” For Wahid, daily
demand for bribes by agberos, in collusion with the police, presents the greatest
threat to his survival:

NURTW now put their touts at every bus stop in the city. Once you make a stop,
you pay them just to pick a passenger or two from the bus station. Some of them
say they are collecting booking fee (owo booking) others say it is for security (owo
security), some say they are collecting afternoon cash (owo osan), when it is night,
some say they are collecting night money (owo ale). It’s something that is very
irritating. My wife and children advise me that if agberos or police ask me for
134 they eat our sweat

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Fig. 7. Police is your friend
Photo credit: Author

money, I should give it to them without story, so that they will not hurt me. I
believe that leaving my home in good health and coming back home in good
health, there is no greater happiness than that.

“No Pain, No Gain”

Despite their precarious existence, many operators believe that hard work and hus-
tle is key to survival and altering their bad fortunes. As one danfo driver said, “Eko
o gba gbere (“Lagos holds nothing for lazy individuals”). Steeped in Yorùbá culture,
the view of hard work as the antidote for success emerged in various danfo slogans:
“No Pain, No Gain” (Figure 8), “Work and Pray,” “2day’s Struggles, 2morrow’s Suc-
cess.” Other danfo slogans draw upon the traditional Yorùbá worldview that links
laziness or idleness to theft or the propensity to steal: Alapa ma sise ole ni da (“The
one with hands yet refuses to work will turn a thief ”), Eni o sise a ma jale (“The one
who refuses to work will steal”), Ole o raye wa (“The thief has no place in this life”),
Ole sun o daso iya bora (“The thief sleeps, cloaks himself in suffering”), Ole darun
(“Laziness is a disease”), Mura si ise ore mi, ise la fi deni giga (“Focus on work my
friend, work helps you to become a big man”), Eni tio bi ole koromo bi rara (“The
one who gives birth to a thief has no child”), Ewo aiye ole, o ma se o (“Look at the
life of a thief. O what a pity”). Slogans such as Ise loogun ise (“Work is the cure for
 the art of urban survival 135

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Fig. 8. No pain no gain
Photo credit: Author

poverty”) point to the belief that each person is spiritually bestowed with the ca-
pacity for success, but he has to make that success by himself. All this supports the
point that “although the poor are powerless, nevertheless they do not sit around
waiting for their fate to determine their lives. Rather they are active in their own
way to ensure their survival” (Bayat 2000: 539). For many operators, agberos are
the ultimate example of laziness, of thieves who reap where they have not sown.
The foregoing gives a nod to a recent ethnographic study of an informal settlement
in South Africa, which shows how “surplus populations” often connect labor and
income together within “a bidirectional logic that posits both that income must be
deserved through work, and that the hard-working deserve income” (Dawson &
Fouksman 2020: 230). Within this logic of practice, there is “No Food 4 Lazy Man”
and there is “No Success without Struggle,” to string two danfo slogans in Lagos
together.

“Monkey De Work, Baboon De Chop”

There is an ever-growing presence of semi-formal actors on the interface be-

tween public service and citizens in all aspects of public administration in Africa
(Bierschenk 2008: 130). In Oshodi and Alimosho, these oft-violent intermediaries
136 they eat our sweat

can be seen at various junctions, a lucrative spot where miscreants, marauders,

beggars, fraudsters, and union touts converge to exploit moneymaking opportu-
nities (Ismail 2009, 2013). Junctions are typically located at orita—intersections of
three roads. In the mythologies of Yorùbá cultures, orita is a sacred place where

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people offer sacrifices (ebo) to two Yorùbá orishas (gods): ogun and eshu. The for-
mer is much feared for his propensity to induce violence and death at the slightest
provocation, while the latter is the trickster and messenger of the gods whose
shrines are found at the entrances of compounds (esuona), crossroads (eshuorita),
and markets (eshuoja) across Lagos. In his seminal work The Signifying Monkey,
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents a partial list of eshu’s qualities, including:

individuality, satire, irony, magic, indeterminacy, open-endedness, ambiguity,

sexuality, chance,… disruption and reconciliation, betrayal and loyalty, closure
and disclosure… all of these characteristics… taken together, only begin to
present an idea of the complexity of this classic figure of mediation and of the
unity of opposed forces. (1988: 6)

Orita activities are never seen as good ventures deserving of omoluabi—a hard-
working person of good character. Unlike drivers who are seen as involved in
“Honest Labor,” as one danfo slogan puts it, owners of the junction, such as touts,
are seen as omo orita (children of the junction) who take on the very identity of
eshu and see moneymaking opportunities at orita as part of the repertoires of ebo
on offer. The illegal taxes collected by touts are seen as owo eru (“money that
enslaves”) that brings death (owo ree! iku ree! “behold Money! behold Death!”).
Thus, in Lagos, junctions represent a “micro-economic self-organizing system that
embodies the spirit of eshu” (Weate & Bakare-Yusuf 2003).
During my fieldwork, I watched from a newspaper stand as touts were hired
by traffic police inspectors and positioned each day at junctions (oritas) to extort
illegal owo askari (“police money”) from transport operators (Figure 9). At the
junction, the police officer wields a gun, while the uniformed and un-uniformed
tout holds a horse whip (koboko) and a felt marker to mark the vehicles that have
“settled” (bribed) them. At the junction, “functional compromises are negotiated
and renegotiated” (Simone 2005: 5) between touts, officers, and drivers, as all three
parties find “zones of interactions and cooperation in endless search for opportu-
nity” (Pieterse 2011: 19). At the close of day, the motor park tout receives a “fee
commission” from the traffic inspector that hired him. The role of union touts as
aja olopa (“police dogs”) emerged during an interview with a driver whose danfo
displayed the slogan: “Monkey de work Baboon de Chop.”

I originally inherited the slogan “Cool Boy” from the previous owner. After work-
ing in this business for one year, I took the danfo to the painters and decided
to change it to Monkey de work, Baboon de Chop. Why? Because there is no
 the art of urban survival 137

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Fig. 9. A traffic police officer and “her tout” collecting “police
fees” (owo olopa) from a tricycle-taxi (keke napep) driver in a
junction in Alimosho local government area.
Photo credit: Author

“Cool Boy” in this business. I chose this slogan because it really captures the
meagre profits that I make after a hard day’s work due to these agberos. I work
tirelessly each day, while the baboons [touts & police] stand in the roundabout
and just chop [eat] my sweat. The police officer cannot call them to order be-
cause they are their dogs. Many policemen hire touts to collect money from us.
So, you see different touts collecting money for different police. Sometimes even
MOPOL (mobile police) will fight themselves over junctions where they can put
their touts. Junctions bring more income because every vehicle must pass through
it; you can’t avoid it.

The organizing logic that underpins the tout-police mutuality challenges

the common tendency in the existent urban literature to depict city gover-
nance regimes as mutually exclusive.⁴ Thus, it complicates the conventional for-
mal/informal divide that has long characterized urban studies and challenges us
to look beyond the idea of the state to “recognize multiple systems of governance,
multiple forms of political community, and the less formal, everyday interactions
and enactments through which governance and political belonging take shape”

⁴ A prime example is AbdouMaliq Simone’s (2010: 4) account of how two governance regimes (for-
mal and informal) in Lagos can alternate in the course of a single day. Simone argues that Ojuelegba,
a busy area in Lagos, undergoes a nightly alteration in which “the assemblage of discrepant activities
seems to pile up on each other,” only to give way to a regime of formal governance during the day. Far
from this, my own study of the tout-police alliance in Lagos suggests that multiple urban governance
regimes often co-exist and work together to govern urban space and economies (cf. Mbembe & Nuttall
2008: 8). For a more complex treatment of Ojuelegba, see Weate & Bakare-Yusuf 2003.
138 they eat our sweat

(Jaffe 2018: 1099). If anything, the tout-police cooperation suggests that collusions
and collisions between state and non-state actors play a fundamental role in the
politics of order and disorder in contemporary African cities. Given their close
ties with law enforcement agents, NURTW touts are emboldened to conduct their

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predatory activities without fear of arrest from members of the police. The alliance
between touts and mobile police shows how illegal and violent activities are de-
veloped in close connection with formal procedures and actors (Nuijten 2003: 3;
Ismail 2010: 37). According to James Tyner (2012: vii), “violence can become so
pervasive, so prevalent, that we don’t always ‘see’ violence.” This is true of Lagos,
where the driver or conductor’s refusal to pay bribes can result in severe physi-
cal harm, even violent death. A passenger recalled his harrowing experience of
tout violence on a conductor and the “I don’t care” attitude of a nearby police
officer:

The other day, a set of NURTW touts beat one conductor to death at Cele bus
stop. They shoved him down from the danfo in motion and descended on him
with sticks and heavy blows to his face and head. Blood was pouring from his
head, his mouth, everywhere. All because he refused to pay N200 (USD1). Can
you imagine that? The traffic inspector simply watched from a distance and did
nothing. But I’m not surprised. The touts are their boys; they collect bribes on
their behalf. It’s so painful to see.

“One Chance”

The inscription of “One Chance” on a danfo offers a window onto a dangerous tac-
tic that danfo operators in Lagos often deploy to evade police and touts inside the
motor parks and bus stops and make the most of their hard day’s labor. One chance
danfos typically load passengers along major routes rather than at designated bus
stations. These danfos are called “one chance” because they usually have one or two
spaces left, which is ideal for Lagosians who are generally in haste. One chance was
initially a catchword deployed by danfo conductors to inform prospective passen-
gers travelling toward their direction that there is only one seat left. For instance,
a conductor could say “Ikotun one chance!” However, the catchphrase has cre-
ated an opportunity for robbers and money-ritualists in Lagos to execute their
nefarious activities in the city. These dark forces have usurped the “one chance”
tactic to rob, sexually assault, and kill many Lagosians, thus making the term one
of the most feared expressions in daily life. Operating under the façade of danfo
drivers, one chance robbers tend to position their own members inside their fake
danfo, acting as bona fide passengers. This tactic makes their victims—the true
passengers—unsuspicious. “One chancers” generally reserve two or three seats for
unwary passengers, whom they intend to rob, rape, and/or kill for money ritual
 the art of urban survival 139

purposes. They drive their victims to a remote part of Lagos, strip them of their
valuables (such as money, handsets, jewelries) at gun point, and throw them out
of the danfo while it is still in motion, causing them to sustain severe injuries in
addition to losing their personal belongings.

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Media reporting in Lagos suggests that “one chance” has become a constant
feature of a Lagosian’s life. One report notes that nearly two out of ten Lagosians
have been victims of “one chance” at one time or the other. In a megacity of
roughly 22 million residents, the report adds, this amounts to five million victims
(Nigerian Tribune 2018). Another report claims that one of every three Lagosians
has had a one chance encounter (Medium 2019). So common is “one chance”
that it is often the subject of movies and songs in Lagos. During the course of my
fieldwork, I heard stories about the ordeals of “one chance” victims. One story
has stayed with me, that of a young man who was robbed and had a four-inch nail
driven into his skull because he refused to hand over his wedding ring. Stories also
abound of women raped by “one-chance” gangs before being dumped along the
way. “One-chance” gangs tend to operate at times of the day when police presence
is thin on the ground, particularly during the early hours of the morning when
passengers are looking to catch the cheapest buses, before nightfall when people
are in haste to beat traffic, and in the late night. At the start of my fieldwork in
2014, the Lagos State Special Anti-Robbery Squad arrested a gang of “one-chance”
robbers operating under the guise of danfo drivers. One member of the gang
described the gang’s modus operandi:

We don’t go out until 9 pm. I was a danfo driver and I was plying the Oshodi and
Mushin routes. I have been in the once-chance robbery for about 10 years, and
we were able to escape police arrest on several occasions. When we go out for an
operation, I usually drive while another gang member will stand at the door. Some
of our guys will also be at some bus stops. When our bus is full we then drive to
an isolated point, and rob all of them. We collect money, jewellery, gold, phones,
and other valuables. We drop them at areas that we know will be hard for them
to get another bus, thereby preventing them from calling the police. We made
an average of N50,000 [USD128] from each outing. Although we were rough, we
never molested any woman during operation. We did not have guns, but we were
many and we had objects like car jack to deal with any stubborn passenger. The
jack actually looks like a gun, and then in the dark, no passenger wants to risk
finding out if the gun is real or not. (Babajide 2014)

One commuter in Alimosho told me, “At a point, one chance robbery died down in
the state, but unfortunately, the menace is very much on the rise again.” To address
the resurgence of “one chance,” the Lagos State Government established a new
Road Traffic Law in 2012, with a section that required all commercial transport
operators to wear registered uniforms and badges for proper identification,
140 they eat our sweat

as well as to ply only the routes boldly written on their buses. Section 44 of the
Road Traffic Law also bars commuter bus drivers from driving for more than eight
hours at a stretch. The hope, according to one state official, is that these changes
will result in better surveillance and stem the problem of “one chance” in passenger

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transport. According to the former Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation
Kayode Opeifa, “With these moves, we want to curtail kidnapping, robberies and
other forms of crimes perpetrated by the continuous usage of unregistered vehicles
for commercial purposes. We are out to tackle the issue of ‘one chance’ headlong”
(Ibekwe 2013).

“Trust No Body”

The presence of “one chancers” and violent extortionists, combined with bad
roads, compels drivers in Lagos to turn to some form of spiritual protection against
an urban life where “Anything Can Happen,” as one danfo slogan puts it. For many
transport operators in Lagos, roads symbolize their lifeblood, but they are also
fraught with malicious forces that crave blood, human blood. This underscores
the contradictory nature of roads in Africa as objects of fear and desire (Masque-
lier 2002: 831). The road is a liminal space that embodies the contradictions of
modernity, particularly “its inescapable enticements, its self-consuming passions,
its discriminatory tactics, its devastating social costs” (Comaroff & Comaroff 1993:
xxix). In Lagos, danfo drivers tend to embrace juju (charms) as a defense against ac-
cidents and bad luck, as well as to attract passengers, and reduce contact with touts
and police on the way. The jujus, which are indicative of the power that inheres in
social relations, usually come in various forms: the shape of a lock, a dry head of
a rat tied to a cowrie, or a dry animal skin twisted into a rope and tied around the
arm. These symbols—typically hidden under the dashboard, tied to the rear-view
mirror, or placed under the danfo driver’s seat—display “a form of empowerment
which expresses ‘the fact of powerlessness”’ (Gelder & Thornton 1997: 375). One
study of Yorùbá taxi drivers found that 80 percent of Muslims and 60 percent of
Christians had protective charms in their vehicles (Lawuyi 1988: 4). The juju in the
danfos mainly serves to remind drivers of their power to escape from any danger
on the road. At the same time, the juju brings wealth by attracting passengers to
the danfo.
During my fieldwork, I interviewed a group of danfo drivers in Oshodi who re-
lated to me their habitual offering of weekly food sacrifices to eshuona (the Yorùbá
god of the road) before work commences. These sacrifices, they say, are intended
to propitiate eshuona so as to fortify themselves against his malevolent tricks and
to implore him to fi wa le (“leave us alone”). These sacrifices tell us that “local
reality itself has become impossible without a ‘knowledge of the hidden’ and of
 the art of urban survival 141

the spiritual worlds beyond the physical reality of everyday life” (De Boeck, Cassi-
man & Van Wolputte 2009: 36). These repetitive placations of eshuona help drivers
to avert accidents in the nick of time. In this light, repetition indicates “resistance
through rituals” (Hall & Jefferson 1993) as well as “symbolic opposition to a dom-

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inant order” (Highmore 2002: 12). As Rita Felski notes, “repetition is one of the
ways in which we organise the world, make sense of our environment and stave
off the threat of chaos” (2000: 21).
I was often struck by the danfo owner’s “pervasive sense of insecurity in the
face of unseen powers and invisible forces capable of causing real, palpable, mate-
rial, physical effects in the here and now” (Ashforth 1998: 62). The owners that I
spoke to in Oshodi and Alimosho often fell prey to fears that forces, both known
and especially unknown, are working against their success when it may very well
be “[their] powerlessness and estrangement that produces this erosion of self-
confidence” (Jackson 2008: 71). The sense of insecurity among transport workers
in Lagos is best exemplified by their abiding awareness of the ota, that is, “persons
or entities that have malignant feelings towards the individual” (Osinulu 2008: 52).
The concept of ota chimes with occult economies, which is underpinned by the
assumption that power operates in two distinct but connected realms, one visible,
the other invisible (Sanders & West 2003: 6–7). The fear of ota, especially among
owners, evokes hypervigilance and apprehension, as embodied by the danfo slogan
“Trust No Body.”

“No More Person”

Available studies show that the poor often build relationships with big men who
can advocate for them and boost their navigational capacity (Utas 2005a: 405).
In this perspective, patrimonialism is seen as fulfilling “the need for mechanisms
of ‘social insurance’ in the risky and uncertain environment of low-income
societies” (van de Walle 2001: 118). From Lagos to Accra and Freetown, urban big
men are vital to personal security, including finding employment (Paller 2014:
127). In patronage politics, we learn that “things work more by influence than by
bureaucratic fiat. People do not seek a dangerous state of independence. Rather
they seek ever-more powerful mediators who can use personal influence to get
them jobs and scholarships, and protect them from heavy-handed government
bureaucrats or jealous neighbors who might trump up destructive court cases
against them. In fact, the more desperately individuals need something, the more
they need patrons with contacts and resources, and the more they grow vulnerable
to demands of recompense” (Bledsoe 1990: 75). For their part, big men amass po-
litical power by accumulating followers in urban life—urban big men are friends,
entrepreneurs, parents, and preachers (Paller 2014: 123–4; cf. Sahlins 1963).
142 they eat our sweat

In Lagos, danfo drivers often align themselves with big men who provide
them with physical and/or material security, often in exchange for their loyalty
translated into votes during elections. In this way, patron-client relations serve to
bridge “functional gaps” in the social fabric and protect individuals against insecu-

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rity (Wolf 1977: 175–6). In order to win elections and maintain the grip on power,
big men are increasingly under pressure to distribute largesse to their lowly fol-
lowers, which in turn raises the stakes for control over state resources. Such logic
of solidarity networks sheds light onto the forms of social capital of commercial
drivers in the building of social networks that will protect them in times of trouble
(wahala). Sasha Newell, writing about street crime, consumption, and citizenship
in Abidjan, calls this “the productivity of social networks” (2012: 85).
While some big men may assist transport workers when they run into trouble,
others may not. Patrons who have the resources to help and do so are fondly re-
membered in danfo slogans such as “Givers Never Lack,” Ola oga mi l’eko (“The
benevolence of my Big Man in Lagos”), Oga nla fans (“Big Man fans”), Oga
Oga (“Big Man, Big Man”), Oga mi (“My Big Man”), Oga tie da (“Where is
your Big Man”), Ere oga mi (“The benefits of my Big Man”), and Kiku ma pa
alanu mi (“May death not befall my helper”). Vehicle slogans such as Ola Iya
(“mother’s benevolence”) or Ola Egbon (“brother’s benevolence”) express grat-
itude to one’s relative who provided financial support in acquiring the danfo.
In a Lagos context where auto loans from banks or even loan sharks are scarce
(“No Credit, Come Tomorrow,” as one danfo slogan put it), for many drivers,
family members become the most promising avenues for obtaining start-up cap-
ital. Patrons (including relatives) who have the means to help but fail to do so
are labeled Awon Aiye (the wicked world), confirming the beneficial as well as
deleterious possibilities that flow from social/familial relationships. When pa-
trons disappoint, it is time for danfo workers to ponder on the frailty of human
behavior (iwa eda) and the cruelty of Lagos life (aiye ika). This mood is often ex-
emplified by danfo slogans such as: “Such is Life,” “Helpers are Scarce,” “If Men
were God,” eyi a lo (“This will pass”), “Delay is not Denial,” “No More Person”
(Figure 10), and “No One Knows Tomorrow.” These slogans undercore the rel-
atively low level of trust that marks the social structure of clientelistic societies
(Eisenstadt & Roniger 1984: 211). The slogan “No More Person” mourns the
lack of the normative notions of personhood emerging from traditional African
cultures and couched in terms of a dominant communitarian ethic (Oyowe
2015).
To reduce or manage the chances of disappointment, danfo workers tend to keep
many big men simultaneously. Yet, the ultimate lesson for these transport workers
is that igbekele omo araye, asan ni (“reliance on people of the world leads to disap-
pointment”) because olowo kin se olorun (“the rich man is not God”), to string two
slogans together. Thus, transport workers are compelled to turn to God—Oga pata
pata (the “Biggest Man”)—to negotiate everyday setbacks. As one danfo slogan
 the art of urban survival 143

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Fig. 10. No more person
Photo credit: Author

puts it: “Jesus Na Biggy Man” [Jesus is a Big Man]. “In an uncertain and compet-
itive world where fortunes are seen to be made and lost and one’s own fortune
often appears to be beyond one’s control, God, fate and luck are common (and
not unwarranted) categories for the explanation of success or lack of it” (Williams
1980: 114).

“Man No Die, Man No Rotten”

To my social question about how they are doing, danfo drivers typically responded:
I dey like deadi body (literally, “I exist like a dead body/corpse”). According to Julia
Kristeva (1982: 3), the corpse is “the most sickening of all wastes, is a border that
has encroached upon everything…” In like vein, drivers see themselves as sick-
ening wastes waiting for decomposition. Although the waiting may lead to ennui,
it is not entirely unproductive. The very act of waiting denotes an “active state of
the mind” (Cooper & Pratten 2015: 11) which is always on the watch for oppor-
tunities that must be “seized on the wings” (de Certeau 1984: 37). In this light,
then, transport operators are best studied as people who are “conscious actors and
participants in their own lives, struggling to some extent to stay in control, and
therefore continuously busy to seize and capture the moment and the opportunity
to reinvent and re-imagine their lives in different ways” (De Boeck, Cassiman, &
144 they eat our sweat

Van Wolputte 2009: 38). One danfo slogan puts it well: Man No Die, Man No
Rotten. On the one hand, this danfo slogan implies that as long as there is life, one’s
hope is always alive. This cautious optimism inspires operators to “wait out the cri-
sis” and experience the “heroism of the stuck” (Hage 2009). One is reminded here

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of Joshua Grace’s (2013) description of mobile operators in Tanzania as “heroes of
the road.” On the other hand, Man No Die, Man No Rotten reclaims the view of
operators as statusless men, whose daily struggle against anonymity has become
a precondition of their urban life (Le Pape 1997: 47). Anonymity, according to
Marc Le Pape, “menaces the weak” and “permits anybody to accuse you of doing
anything, or of doing anything to you” (1997: 47). Man No Die is neatly précised
in Mbembe’s articulation of the common man eking out a living on the famished
roads of Africa:

Vulgarly carved from day to day by the harshness of the times, brutalized by the
police, the search for subsistence, the fear of having nothing and the obsessive
dread of famine… Life itself is nothing but a permanent struggle. That is the reason
why, here, the ordinary man defines himself as a “fighter.” To the question: “what
is your occupation?” he will reply: “I get by.” (Mbembe 1997: 157; my emphasis)

Imaginations of city life as a permanent struggle are commonplace in Nigeria and,

broadly, Africa. In southeast Nigeria, Annang people often appropriate the idea of
“the rugged life” (Pratten 2006) when describing their lived experience—in An-
nang language, the life of ntime ntime (“trouble”) and of anything can happen
(akeme itipe). In Dar es Salaam, Rizzo (2011) found that daladala minibus-taxi op-
erators were preoccupied with the daily struggle for economic survival. He points
to the example of daladalas with eye-catching inscriptions such as kazi mbaya;
ukiwanayo! (“Bad job; if you have one”), “Money Torture,” maisha ni kuhangaika
(“Life is Suffering”), kula tutakula lakini tutachelewa (“We’ll eat, but we’ll eat late”),
and “So Many Tears.”

“Lagos Will Not Spoil” (Eko o ni baje o)

This chapter has explored the ways in which danfo slogans shape, and are shaped
by, the mobile subject’s lived experience of, and struggle for survival in, Lagos.
The slogans, and the stories behind them, account for the manifold ways in which
informal transport workers inhabit the world and give expression to it. They also
point to spaces of hope that lie beyond the shadows of the state. The danfo slogans
provide us with a unique entry point into not only the precarious labor of informal
transport workers but also their instrumentalities of survival. During my fieldwork
in Lagos, I was often struck by the capacity to aspire of poor transport workers,
which enabled them to project themselves into the future, form aspirations, and
 the art of urban survival 145

commit themselves to their realization. Informal transport workers construed the

realization of the good life as a genuine possibility beyond their chronic state of ab-
jection. Several operators that I spoke to aspired toward owning a danfo or fleets
of danfos (so that they could become their own boss), acquiring a university de-

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gree, wining the American Visa Lottery, becoming eni olokiki (a famous person),
olowo (a rich person), eniyan giga (a high person), or eniyan pataki (an important
person). These aspirations are epitomized by the official slogan of Lagos itself, Eko
o ni baje o (“Lagos will not spoil”).
There is a temptation to dismiss the above hopes and aspirations as mere utopi-
anism, in other words, to smother the danfo driver’s hopes analytically with our
own “wet-blanket ‘realism”’ (Clifford 2009: 241). Yet, these aspirations are not
mere fantasies woven from sleep but rather a technique for navigating the corrup-
tion and dangers of the present in hope of a better tomorrow. “Dreams,” according
to Kenelm Burridge, “tend to pull a future into current sensible reality; they give
definity to hope, adding faith, thereby putting the dreamer in touch with a ver-
ity shortly to be manifest” (1995: 180). The positive expectancy of operators in
the face of extortion, violence, and spiritual insecurities, is exemplified by future-
oriented slogans such as: “One Day,” “Keep Keeping On,” “Never You Give Up,”
“God’s Time is Best,” “Who Knows?” “Time will Tell,” and “No Competition in
Destiny.”
Through the repetitive/replicative power and unclosed possibility of vehicle
slogans, danfo drivers reclaim “a positive orientation to the near future” (Guyer
2017; see also Crapanzano 2003: 6), which is steeped in Yoruba worldview. For
these mobile subjects, hope is at once temporal and eternal. As Jane Guyer (2017)
puts it, “Hope endures as a kind of daily promise that there is, indeed, an eter-
nity, and it lies more in the recurrence by which it ‘springs’ than in any confident
comprehension of an ultimate horizon.” In this light, then, daily uncertainty be-
comes a vital resource that transport operators draw upon not just to carve out
a pathway in the here and now, but also to carry on in the near future. As
Marco Di Nuncio’s ethnography of street life in urban Ethiopia shows, “living
contain[s] the seeds of open-endedness, possibility, and reversibility” (2019: 4).
What emerges from this is a greater appreciation for ways of reading, represent-
ing, and socially navigating the African city that focus less on the product(ion)
of uncertainty (crisis as context) and more on the productivity of uncertainty
(crisis as possibility).
 5
Nigeria’s Transport Mafia

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The nomenclature agbero is a euphemism for a cohort of dreaded urban youths
who survive through their parasitic dependence on the spatial regulation of public
transport in Lagos. Predominantly male, agberos appropriate the spaces of mo-
tor parks, bus stops, and junctions across Lagos, which they use as an operational
base from which to extort cash bribes from danfo operators in the name of the
politicized and violent National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW)
(Albert 2007; Agbiboa 2020b). According to Jimoh, a danfo driver plying the
Oshodi-Ikotun route, “agberos have converted all motor parks, bus stops, junc-
tions/roundabouts in Lagos into ATMs for collecting money from us each day to
the extent of physically assaulting us if we refuse to surrender our hard-earned
income. They break screen wipers, fuel tank cover, side-view mirror, or a pas-
senger seat from our danfo and say that is their share.” Such routinization of
extortion illustrates the predatory micropolitics that embeds many informal sector
provisions in African cities and precludes any aesthetic framing of Africa’s infor-
mal urban sector (e.g. Koolhaas 2001). Yet, the violent appropriation of contested
public transit spaces, and the creation of parallel modes of governance and tax-
ation by the NURTW, constitute a usurpation of the constitutional function of
local governments in Nigeria. For example, Section 7, Schedule 4, of the Nige-
rian Constitution of 1999 clearly states that the control of motor parks in the
federation is the domain of local governments. Indeed, on 21 February 1992, in
the case of The Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) v. The
NURTW, Nigeria’s Supreme Court ruled that the NURTW has no right to col-
lect fees from operators: “The defendant has no right to control or operate by way
of collection of dues, levies and fees or otherwise at any motor parks in Nige-
ria other than to load and offload goods and passengers at such motor parks”
(Supreme Court 1992).
Common to every single agbero that I encountered in Lagos, there was the same
no-nonsense mien, the hair-trigger temper, the scarred face, and the willingness
to get into any fight. The ruggedness of agberos is described by one danfo driver:
“If them give am blow for mouth, agbero go buy ogogoro use wash am down tell
you say na treatment be that. Agbero get plenty action. Agbero no get fear. Agbero

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0006
 nigeria’s transport mafia 147

no be person.”1 Frequently acting under the influence of paraga (locally brewed

alcohol) and morocco (Indian hemp, also known as igbo), agberos are liable to attack
operators who delay in responding to their shouts of owoo da? (Where is your
money?), efumi owoo joor! (Give me your money without hesitation), ma se ‘in lese

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o! (I will injure you), Sho fe ku (Do you want to die?). The agberos are deeply feared
by danfo operators and commuters in Lagos because of their violent extortionary
tactics and the impunity they enjoy due to the NURTW-state mutualities. As one
danfo driver warned me at the start of my fieldwork: “The fear of agbero is the
beginning of wisdom.”
Despite their centrality to the everyday (mal) functioning of public transport
in Lagos, the figure of the agbero has so far escaped scholarly attention. While the
NURTW has been described as the most politicized and violent trade union in
Nigeria (Albert 2007), its intraorganizational dynamics and relationship with the
state and workers are still poorly understood. Yet, “analyses of urban governance
ought to consider not only how civil groups relate to the (local) state, but also the
relations within these groups as they exercise governance” (Lindell 2008: 1884).
In this chapter, I draw on empirically grounded research in Lagos (Oshodi and
Alimosho local government areas) to explain the changing role of agberos in ur-
ban public transport. Locating their emergence within the widespread crisis of the
IMF-led structural adjustment program (SAP) of the 1980s in Nigeria, this chapter
explains the transformation of agberos (from passenger callers [a gba ero] to violent
extortionists) in light of their tacit incorporation into the NURTW as tax collec-
tors and foot soldiers for the union’s “dirty work.” The unionization of agberos had
the twin effect of politicizing and expanding their role and designation in urban
transport. Furthermore, state efforts to rid motor parks of agberos are compelled
by the post-1999 urban renewal ambition of the Lagos State Government, which
seeks to order the chaos and clean the dirt of Lagos, transforming it into a “world
class” megacity. Yet, the ingrained role of patronage politics (e.g. the strategic al-
liance between the NURTW and the Lagos State Government) in the management
and control of urban transport explains the difficulty, if not impossibility, of doing
away with agberos.
By focusing on their changing role in the Lagos passenger transport sector, this
chapter foregrounds the critical and mediating role of agberos in the routine con-
trol of public transportation, while illuminating the politics of violent patronage
and extortion rackets in which they are popularly implicated. Far from the con-
ventional tendency to separate informal/formal, official/unofficial, legal/illegal,
the study of the NURTW in relation to the Lagos State Government underscores
two points. First, that the informal economy is neither residual nor unregulated.

1 When you punch an agbero in the mouth, he would buy ogogoro (local gin) and wash down the
blood with it, saying that it is a form of treatment. An agbero has plenty of action. An agbero has no
fear. An agbero is not a person (author’s translation).
148 they eat our sweat

Second, that formal and informal economy are, in practice, connected and
constitute one another. Understanding statehood in Africa requires careful at-
tention not only to state institutions but also to “the whole spectrum of formal
and informal actors in the ‘field of power’ around state institutions” (Titeca & De

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Herdt 2011: 216).
The material for this chapter was gathered from fieldwork conducted in two ma-
jor local government areas in Lagos: Oshodi and Alimosho. My key informants
from these sites were agberos, danfo drivers and conductors, and commuters. In
total, I interviewed thirty agberos and sixty danfo operators. Occasionally, inter-
views were recorded with audio equipment (a device not without its drawbacks,
see Introduction), and later transcribed and analyzed. But in most cases, I simply
hung out with drivers, operationalizing the “go-along” method that engages the in-
formants’ daily stream of practices in situ as they move (Kusenbach 2003: 458). In
addition, I repeatedly visited newspaper kiosks by the roadsides,2 where I searched
for news involving the activities of agberos in Lagos. For the most part, I spent my
time at checkpoints and junctions, where daily encounters between danfo drivers,
motor park touts, and law enforcement agents were often tense affairs marked by
extortion and complicity. Checkpoints represent “governmental or para/shadow
governmental apparatus that blocks passage between two points, while imposing
criteria—often the checking of ‘identity’ through the examination of documents
and bodies—for passage through the checkpoints” (Jeganathan 2018: 403). More
than just sites through which arrays of governmentality operate, checkpoints in
Lagos are predatory infrastructures that serve to keep transport operators stuck in
traffic, which makes it easier to extort bribes from them. Extortion, violence, and
substantial delays have become a normal part of the everyday that drivers in Lagos
learn to live with, to navigate. “There are loses from bad roads,” a danfo driver told
me, “but losses from checkpoints are higher than losses from bad roads.”

The Politics of Transporting: Mutualities and Double Capture

This chapter is located within an emergent body of works that critically exam-
ines how seemingly representative organizational forms expected to be conducive
to Africa’s democratization process can end up breeding “authoritarian pseudo-
organizations” (Goodfellow 2017) that reproduce rather than challenge predatory
and unaccountable modes of governance (Meagher 2012). In analyzing the inter-
face between the NURTW and the Lagos State Government, I build on a new and
emergent body of works that moves us beyond the pervasiveness of “state thought”
(Bourdieu 1994: 1), that is, the state as an idea, and invites us to engage the state
as practice, as a “translocal institution” (Gupta 1995). This literature criticizes

2 These are discursively vibrant sites where Lagosians gather to share their views on pressing issues.
 nigeria’s transport mafia 149

simplistic renderings of the state and civil society as distinctly separate entities
with clearly defined boundaries. Instead, it calls attention to the blurred bound-
aries of the state, specifically the manner in which it is localized in the politics of
transporting.

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I draw insights from two compelling works on the politics of transporting in
urban Africa. The first is Erik Bähre’s (2014) analysis of “violent and shifting mutu-
alities” as the organizing logic of Cape Town’s mafia-like taxi industry, particularly
the collusion and collisions between taxi associations and urban government.
Mutuality describes “a form of sociability forged in participation in each other’s
existence despite and because of radical difference, where people partially hold
some ground together, by virtue of the circumstances in which they find them-
selves” (Golomski 2020: 286). Bähre’s study sheds light on how political capture is
often disguised as popular legitimacy and how the government tends to cooperate
with criminal taxi associations out of convenience, corruption, or fear (2014: 590;
see also Meagher 2012: 1073). Mutualities, for Bähre, produce particular moral
economies that cannot exist without social networks of trust, reciprocity, and pro-
tection that impose some predictability on unstable urban settings (2014: 577).
The concept of mutuality is critical in light of the manifold risks and uncertain-
ties of everyday, urban life which exposes “the fragile and necessary dimensions
of our interdependency” (Butler 2012: 148). In Lagos, for instance, political life
is governed by patron-client relations, which constitute a vital gateway for politi-
cal participation and upward mobility (Forrest 1993). Here, mutualities serve as a
social infrastructure of major importance for self-protection, economic survival,
and social recognition (Lindell & Utas 2012; Newell 2012: 90). As Olivier de Sardan
(1999: 41) bluntly puts it: “Woe betide the man who knows no one, either directly
or indirectly.”
The second work is Tom Goodfellow’s (2017) account of the phenomenon of
“double capture” in Uganda’s Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA).
Going beyond traditional notions of state capture as a unidirectional process in
which societal interests are “captured” or appropriated by the state as a con-
duit for private accumulation, Goodfellow shows how the organizational power
of UTODA evolved over two distinct phases (which he terms “double capture”):
“First, the government infiltrated the informal transport sector, but subsequently
the transport organization came to wield disproportionate influence over the
government itself, with detrimental effects on both urban services and popu-
lar representation” (2017: 1568). Unsurprisingly, the relations between UTODA
and the state government came to combine “collusion (primarily with national
politicians) alongside the threat of mobilizing opposition if the state (especially
at the city level) attempted to exert control over the industry” (Goodfellow 2017:
1578), with both order and disorder resulting from the shifting relations and scales
(Moncada 2013: 242). The phenomenon of double capture is particularly salient
in light of the sparseness of literature on how formal governance regimes in “state
150 they eat our sweat

space” are linked to informal associational activity that occupies “shadow state
space” (Schindler 2014: 404).
The rest of this chapter is divided into three parts. I begin with a review of the
extant literature and the void that this chapter fills. I then situate the coming of

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the agbero within the widespread crisis, insecurity, and uncertainty wrought by
the SAP years, clarifying, along the way, the misleading conflation of the history
of agberos with that of area boys in Nigeria. This is followed by an analysis of how
the role and designation of the agberos has developed and changed over time, with
particular attention to their incorporation into the NURTW as tax collectors and
foot soldiers. The final section explores the difficulty of removing agberos from the
roads and motor parks (bus stations) of Lagos.

Transport, Labor, and Everyday Survival

Several studies have interrogated thematic issues of the history and chaotic politics
of informal transportation in African cities (Peace 1988; Rasmussen 2012; Heinze
2018; Mutongi 2017), tactics and strategies used by operators to navigate everyday
risks and uncertainties (Date-Bah 1980; Lawuyi 1988; Agbiboa 2018a), struggles
for survival amid abysmal labor conditions (Rizzo 2011; Mutongi 2006; Agbiboa
2018b), and the role of masculinities and becoming in Africa’s informal transport
sector (Gibbs 2014). These key works provide a useful “port of entry” for un-
derstanding how African cities work without extensive “formal” infrastructures.
More recent accounts have pivoted on contemporary neo-liberal reforms (such as
the rapid growth of Bus Rapid Transits [BRTs] across African cities) and the re-
production of precarious livelihoods (e.g. the displacement of informal transport
operators) (Rizzo 2017; Klopp, Harber, & Quarshie 2019).3 In a study of Dar es
Salaam, Matteo Rizzo demonstrates how daladala minibus operators get by un-
der the harsh conditions of flexible labor markets and economic liberalization
(2011: 55 Rizzo 2017). A related literature examines the micropolitics of relations
between informal transport owners, operators, passengers, and infrastructures
(Mutongi 2006; Xiao and Adebayo 2020), as well as the widespread problem of
political patronage and protection rackets implicating powerful unions and vested
government interests (Agbiboa 2019). Combined, these works have advanced our
understanding of the harsh conditions of labor and everyday challenges facing
Africa’s informal transport operators and, perhaps more importantly, how these
operators are negotiating these challenges to make the most of their time.
Important as these insights are, we still know surprisingly little about the
intermediary role and micro-level dynamics of semi-formal transport unionists

3 Since 2002 the World Bank-funded Lagos Urban Transport Project (LUTP) has supported a Bus
Rapid Transit (BRT) system which has coincided with the crowding out of informal midibuses (molues),
and the restriction of motorbike taxis (okadas) on major Lagos routes, resulting in a massive loss of jobs
in the informal transport sector (Klopp, Harber, & Quarshie 2019).
 nigeria’s transport mafia 151

(e.g. motor park touts) forcefully collecting taxes in motor parks and bus stops in
virtually every African city with a vibrant informal transport sector. In some stud-
ies, the tendency has been to conflate these actors with existing social categories
(such as the frequent confusion of agberos with area boys in Lagos). Such confu-

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sion reinforces homogenizing and de-historicized tropes that haunt many studies
on youth politics and urban informality in Africa. The situation is complicated by
the absence of the voices and activities of these intermediaries in studies of ur-
ban transport and city governance, precluding a nuanced understanding of their
changing role in the city, and how that role is perceived by those (i.e. transport op-
erators and commuters) who come into contact with them, negotiate with them,
resist them, or become their victims daily.
Africanist scholars, among them Thomas Bierschenk (2008), Blundo and
Olivier de Sardan (2006), and Mahaman Alou (2006), have recently articulated
a new research agenda on the phenomenon of a “gray area” of intermediaries
on the interface between the public service and citizens in all areas of public
administration in West Africa. These intermediaries come under various epi-
thets: “fixers,” “brokers,” “middlemen,” “auxiliaries,” “go-betweens,” “captains,” and
“bosses” (Mbembe 2001a; Price & Ruud 2009). Intermediaries also surface in
many studies on how youth carve out meaningful temporalities and spaces of
maneuver in urban Africa, including Tatiana Thieme (2013) and Jeremy Jones’
(2010) account of “hustle” economies in Kenya and Zimbabwe, respectively, Janet
Roitman’s (2006) work on road bandits, unregulated economic activities, and
the “ethics of illegality” in the Chad Basin, and Sasha Newell’s (2006) study of
a “moral economy of theft” in Abidjan. A key quality of intermediaries is their
local knowledge (even appropriation) of how things really work on the ground,
making their services indispensable to the daily functioning of African public ser-
vice and to navigating popular urban culture (Bierschenk, Chaveau, & Olivier
de Sardan 2002: 17; Gopfert 2016). Intermediaries often portray themselves as
those who “make things happen” and they demand a “commission” or “do-
nation” for their role or services (Bierschenk, Chaveau, & Olivier de Sardan
2002: 16). Located within this growing body of work on real governance and the
political economy of everyday life in Africa, this chapter focuses attention on the
role of intermediaries in the daily management of urban transport in Lagos. In
particular, it seeks to explain the dynamic role of agberos—the most visible and
violent face of the NURTW—as intermediaries at the interface between the union
and the state and between danfo operators and the union. The analysis sheds new
light on the embedding of corruption (in particular, extortion) in the “normal”
regulation and functioning of informal transport in Lagos, and the centrality of
agberos to this process. In this way, the chapter goes beyond the usual tendency
to portray Africa’s informal transport sector as ungoverned and chaotic, without
any engagement with the contours of networks that organize and galvanize the
sector.
152 they eat our sweat

The Emergence of the Agbero from the Era of SAP

Under the SAP of the 1980s, the prices of food items spiraled upward, transport
costs increased, and education became the prerogative of the rich. In Lagos, the

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incomes of the working class became so devalued that it was difficult for salary
earners and those on marginal and inelastic incomes to survive on their offi-
cial earnings, forcing many hard-pressed civil servants into multiple modes of
urban social livelihoods (Mustapha 1992) and “occult economies” (Comaroff &
Comaroff 1999). With the dwindling socio-economic and traditional support base
occasioned by the “SAP-ed” years, youths in Lagos were pushed to the limits of sur-
vival on the fringes, becoming “victims and agents” (Momoh 2000; Osoba 1996).
Meanwhile, the sustained withdrawal of the state from social provisioning made
it extremely difficult for young Nigerians to attend, or even remain in, school. The
situation was further complicated by the lack of gainful employment after grad-
uation. Such disempowering circumstances revived (colonial) tropes of youth as
“a smoldering fire ready to burn African urban areas” (Bay & Donham 2007: 10).
With this market fundamentalism in Nigeria emerged an increased blurring
of the putative boundaries between the “informal and the illegal, regulation and
irregularity, order and organized lawlessness” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006: 5;
Roitman 2006). These blurred boundaries are most evident in the case of Lagos,
where the SAP years contributed to the institutionalization of organized street
gangs as a means for youth to negotiate economic distress and social exclusion.
One of the main results of the SAP was the impact it had on the identity of
area boys—the precursors of agberos in Lagos. Identities undergo constant change
in situations of significant socio-economic flux (Mustapha 2000: 86). This is true
in the case of area boys—that is, youths who identify themselves with the area in
which they live and seek to control the flow of goods and services in that area to
their advantage. To be called an area boy “used to be a thing of pride,” said an
elderly resident and former area boy in Lagos. The meaning of area boys had its
origins in omo eko (“child of Lagos”) or omo area/omo adugbo (“a child of the com-
munity or street”). Thus, youth in Lagos were ordinarily identified with the streets
where they lived, and once you belonged to a particular street, the youth of that
street protected you from abuse from youth from other streets (Omitoogun 1994).
Historically, the designation of area boy was perceived as a form of identity
and social control. As one informant in Olawale Ismail’s study recounted, “Back
then, youth are known by two ways… their family name and their area. From your
area, people will know the area boy group you belong to… so if you do anything
bad like fight, steal or cause trouble anyplace, you are easily traced to your area
boy group” (Ismail 2009: 470). Prominent figures in Lagos—including Dr. Wahab
Dosunmu (former Nigerian Minister of Works and Housing), Bola Ahmed Tinubu
(former Governor of Lagos), and Prince Demola Adeniji Adele (former Chairman
of Lagos Island Local Government)—all claim to have belonged at some point to
 nigeria’s transport mafia 153

omo area which they recall as made up of “responsible, respectable and well-to-
do” indigenes of Lagos Island (Momoh 2000: 188). While this category is seen as
the “real” area boys, counterfeit area boys are identified with the influx of post-
SAP migrants, which altered the identity and respectability of omo area as a social

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category in Lagos. This view emerged in an interview with a government official
in Lagos:

When we were much younger, area boys meant youth of the area. It was mainly to
do with various pockets of youth in various locations, hanging out together, living
life, and just generally being boys and girls. But gradually with SAP and urban
migration, youth increasingly coming into Lagos from villages and the other areas
around Lagos, the term now soon degenerated to include undescribed miscreants,
confused young men and women, tax collectors, and political thugs.

While urban scholars have studied area boys and organized street violence in Lagos
(Momoh 2000; Ismail 2009), the related phenomenon of agberos has received scant
attention. This dearth of literature on the figure of the agbero is partly due to
the regular conflation of agberos with area boys, as if both social categories were
interchangeable. Yet, from my interviews with veteran operators and unionists
in Lagos, it seems that agberos came into existence during the socio-economic
flux from the mid-1970s onward, when the material and mental insecurities of
the Nigerian urban and rural economies generated a range of everyday prac-
tices for youth to get by. To ward off the “specter of nothingness” (Mbembe &
Roitman 1995: 324) and cope with “a world that seem to be falling apart be-
fore their very eyes” (De Boeck 1998: 25), a cohort of dispossessed and desperate
youth turned to urban transport in droves—touting at motor parks and riding
okadas. It was during this economic crisis that the figure of the agbero emerged as
a mode of survival and making do, a “trickster who survives and can ‘eat’ with-
out ‘handiwork”’ (Pratten 2013: 246–47). While the notion of area boys is tied to
a particular area (omo area—area child), agberos are identified with omo garage
(child of the garage).⁴ This nomenclature clearly marks out the primary opera-
tional base of the agbero. According to one danfo driver in Alimosho, “omo garage
is superior to omo area. To move from omo area to omo garage is to step up big
time.” Yet, agberos may be said to have carved out their identity from area boys
with a longer history of “juvenile delinquency,” dating back to the colonial period
(Heap 2010; Fourchard 2006).
In contrast to area boys, agberos are institutionally embedded within the daily
management of public transport by the NURTW. Unlike area boys, who are fre-
quently seen as deprived street urchins surviving on the social margins of the
megacity (Omitoogun 1994), “real agberos”—by this, I mean those agberos who are

⁴ In Lagos, garage and motor-parks are used interchangeably to mean the same thing.
154 they eat our sweat

able to appropriate the union’s name to legitimize their extortionary activities—are

seen as moneyed (olowo) and powerful (alagbara), with strong multiple connec-
tions to big men (ogas) at the top. As one danfo driver said to me: “Some of these
agberos have been doing this work for over ten years now. They won’t leave it be-

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cause it is very lucrative. Where else in this Nigeria can you chop [eat] over N10,000
in one day without really working for it? Where else can this happen?” In 2019, Pre-
mium Times (Nigeria) estimated that a minimum of N200 billion (USD514,163
million) is generated annually from dues collected by NURTW agberos in Lagos,
representing about one half of the state’s internally generated revenue in 2018.
“With an average of 150,000 buses paying N2,000 daily, the union generates about
N300 million daily from buses, if all dues are collected. 100,000 motorcycles and
100,000 tricycles also pay N1,000, respectively, averaging a minimum of N200 mil-
lion from these sources daily” (Olawoyin 2019). Thus, unlike the marginalized and
excluded area boys, agberos are, in fact, the “included” youth who play a central role
as conduits for the daily extortion rackets of the NURTW. As one danfo driver told
me:

Agberos have mouth [connections in high places] and money. Put agbero in prison
and his ogas will bail him within 24 hours. Put area boy there, he will rot there.
You will always see police arrest area boys but not agberos because they are well
connected. They are dropouts who live better than many university graduates.
And you wonder why more youth nowadays are trying to become agberos.

According to one agbero I spoke to in Oshodi:

We are not like area boys who are hungry people and have no mouth [connec-
tions]. They beg and steal money in addition to their owo ita [street money]. We
are not like that. Let me tell you, we agberos, we no dey hungry. We work for our
ogas [big men] and they feed us well. That is why we are loyal. Anywhere they
send us, any job they ask us, we just go there and conquer for them. They treat us
like humans. They nourish their boys.

In fact, my understanding during fieldwork in Lagos was that to call an agbero an

area boy was an insult, because it implied that you were debasing them by implying
that they were talakas—that is, a person without an official position; a common
man or woman in the street. While area boys occasionally solicit tolls from oper-
ators under duress, this ordinarily happens when, in a bid to avoid the extreme
traffic gridlock or “go-slow,” danfo drivers use alternative street routes. When this
happens, area boys—boys from that area—will block the streets with sticks that
have open nails, and demand owo ita [street money] from the drivers. Owo ita is
not to be confused with owo garage (“garage money”) collected by agberos. Fur-
thermore, many agberos made a distinction between themselves (awa—we) who
 nigeria’s transport mafia 155

represent the interests of the NURTW, and “other touts” (awon—they) who col-
lect taxes from operators pretending to belong to the NURTW. The agberos that I
spoke to in Oshodi, for instance, saw themselves as the “official” and “rightly con-
nected” agberos (in Yorùbá, awon to lenu nbe—“those who have a voice”) because

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they work every day for the NURTW on a commission-only basis; the “others” are
renounced as “unofficial” (awon ti o lenu nbe—those who have no say or belong
to rival unions). These are seen as the “fake” agberos who collect money from op-
erators by (ab)using the NURTW’s name for criminal purposes. “These people are
spoiling our name,” said one agbero in Ikotun.
During fieldwork in Oshodi and Alimosho, many operators complained to
me about the confusion between “real” and “fake” agberos. Drivers regularly be-
moaned the fact that they ended up paying triple of the charges imposed on them,
since different sets of agberos claim to be representing the NURTW and threaten
to unleash violence (at the slightest provocation) if their demand for money is not
met there and then. In fact, during the course of my fieldwork, some danfo drivers
in Oshodi went on strike, not because they had to pay taxes to agberos for each
trip, but because of the confusion surrounding how much is to be paid, where they
should be collected, and, crucially, who should collect it. Reinforcing this point,
one danfo driver in Oshodi told me:

It is total confusion. You don’t know who is who, my brother. The more you look
the less you see. Every tout claims to represent the union and threatens to un-
leash violence if you don’t pay them. Maybe it’s a moneymaking strategy that
they use to extort more money from us. I really don’t know. With this people
anything can happen. I don’t trust them from here to there. Some of them now
wear uniform but these are all re-packaged agberos. Lagos should be a place for
well-mannered and educated people just like the civilized countries like America
and Great Britain. Then we can call it the “center of excellence.” At the moment,
it is the center of confusion.

This confusion partly explains why “official” NURTW agberos in Lagos now in-
creasingly wear a green and white uniform and carry with them a union identity
card to determine those who really “belong” from fakes (Newell 2006: 179). Many
agberos whom I encountered in Oshodi and Alimosho were quick to claim legit-
imacy through the proud show of their union card. Key officials in the transport
sector see those without uniforms and/or form of identity as “hoodlums” who con-
stitute a nuisance to the free flow of traffic in Lagos. According to an official in the
Ministry of Transport: “It is because the system has become so fluid that a lot of
people have decided to take advantage of it. Some hoodlums have taken that op-
portunity to terrorize these motorists, because nobody will ask them who they are.”
The confusion between real and fake agberos is hardly surprising when we consider
that even within the NURTW, there are various rival fractions (each with their
156 they eat our sweat

own loyal sets of agberos and unit chairmen) jostling for ascendancy and control
of public transit spaces (Albert 2007). This confusion partly explains why many
Lagosians tend to lump all transport workers together as criminals. One commuter
in Alimosho stated, “They are all looking for where they will get easy money and

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satisfaction. I don’t care if they are drivers or agberos. They are all the same thing.
They reap where they have not sown.” Yet, many agberos insisted that they are not
“thieves” but responsible citizens doing all it takes to survive (like any other hard-
working Lagosian) and getting a just reward for their hard labor. Ise wa lan se (“We
are only doing our work”) or E se nidi pepe a je nidi pepe (“Whoever works at the
altar eats there”), meaning you make your wealth from where you work, were re-
current responses from agberos. The wisdom of the motor parks, junctions, and
bus stops is that resisting agberos may be penny-wise but pound-foolish. Many de-
fiant operators end up being beaten (to death) and/or their vehicles, their main
source of livelihood, vandalized beyond recognition.⁵ In Oshodi and Alimosho,
transport operators explained to me that daily demands for “donations” (bribes)
by agberos remains the biggest threat to their pursuit of survival. To be sure, the
lists of settlements demanded by agberos are endless and borders on farcical:

Booking fee (owo booking), loading fee (owo loading), dropping fee (owo drop-
ping), money for weekend (owo weekend), money for sanitation (owo sanitation),
security fee (owo security), Chairman’s meal (onje Chairman), LASTMA’s money
(owo LASTMA)), police money (owo olopa or owo askari), money for parking
(owo parking), money for the morning (owo aro), money for afternoon (owo
osan), money for evening (owo irole), money for the night (owo ale), money for
party (owo faji).

These fees of various sorts imposed on drivers are “designed to tire out the bodies
of those under it, to disempower them not so much to increase their productivity as
to ensure the maximum docility” (Mbembe 2001a: 110). Any hesitation to pay any
of the above fees spells wahala (trouble) for the danfo driver and his conductor. As
one danfo driver explained: “Agberos and police are the kings. We serve them. We
do the work while they eat the food. More than half of my takings goes into their
pockets. We are at their mercy. What can we do when they violently attack us in
broad daylight without fear? This tells you that they have political backing. If they
don’t, they will not be terrorizing us like this.” This view reinforces the collective
action thesis, which states that in a context where corruption is the rule rather than

⁵ This is mainly based on anecdotal evidence and the author’s first-hand experience in the motor
parks, junctions, and bus stops of Lagos, specifically Oshodi and Alimosho local government ar-
eas. There are no “official” figures of operators killed in a year/over years by agberos in Lagos. Many
deaths/injuries by agberos go undocumented or are simply ignored by security personnel who are of-
ten complicit in the violent extortion of the NURTW. This helps to conceal the internal politics that
surrounds mutualities in Nigeria’s transport industry.
 nigeria’s transport mafia 157

the exception, individuals often see little option but to participate or be punished.
Yet, the association of agberos with the union and its violent patronage was not
always the case during its early years.

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The Changing Role of Agberos

From the onset, agberos assumed the self-imposed role and responsibility of re-
cruiting and organizing passengers who wished to travel by road, and for this work
they earned a fee or a “commission” that was usually paid by the danfo drivers
shortly before departure from the motor parks or bus stops. Hence, in Yorùbá,
agbero means “caller of passengers.” My interview with Ibikunle, a veteran danfo
driver plying the Oshodi-Ikotun route, suggests two kinds of agberos that have
emerged in light of the increased association of agberos with the NURTW’s dirty
work (illegal tax collection and political thuggery): “The agberos at the top they
are somehow closer to the government. And the ones below they are the eruku—
they are the ones dying for the ones up. The ones up they can travel abroad, have
big investments, but the one dying for them they have but not much. They are very
loyal to those at the top who reward them handsomely for their loyalty. The erukus
aspire to rise through the ranks one day, to become patrons to other erukus.”
Most agberos are recruited from a large, ready pool of unemployed “area boys”
roaming the streets of Lagos. Many young men who became agberos migrated to
Lagos from neighboring states with the goal of “becoming somebody in life.” The
majority of agberos are from extended families, with a mother in one place and
a father in another. The agbero dreams of one day becoming an oga agbero (head
of agberos, an NURTW boss) and leading a motor park. Oga agberos have scores
of agberos who deliver money to them on a daily basis. Many oga agberos take
home about N60,000 (USD190) each day, according to one agbero whom I spoke
to in Oshodi. They also own and/or control choice properties across Lagos, send
their children abroad for schooling, wear the most expensive accessories (such as
gold chains and gold teeth), and generally “eat very well.” “It is not out of place to
see transport union leaders around with bundles of cash when attending parties
particularly during weekend. A union chairman could stand before a Fuji musician
for several minutes spraying N1,000 notes to the consternation of spectators and
the more an artiste showers encomium on them, the heavier they rain cash on the
singer” (Hanafi 2020). The agberos are encouraged by the fact that most oga agberos
started out as erukus in one of the many bus stops across Lagos. In fact, there were
many “grass to grace” stories in circulation in motor parks during the course of my
fieldwork.
But to become an agbero, it is not enough to be unemployed; you must also be
feared. As one veteran danfo driver in Oshodi said to me in no uncertain words:
“If you’re in your street or area and you can create a scene, cut somebody’s head,
158 they eat our sweat

do whatever. They [the NURTW] will find a motor park for you immediately as
an agbero. You’re born to kill.” Another driver told me that he used to be an agbero
until the day he saw another agbero detach a person’s head with a cutlass in a motor
park clash in Oshodi. According to him, “Na dat day I run comot for agbero” [that

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was the day I quit agbero work]. These gory accounts reinforce the point that “the
streets have become the arena for what is learned and expected by others to gain
recognition and approval” (Vigil 2003: 230). In a BBC documentary entitled “Law
and Disorder in Lagos” by the noted documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, one
of the agberos interviewed claimed that “when you want to be an NURTW mem-
ber, you have to control some part of your area. You have to be a tough guy. When
you want to be a tough guy, you have to go through scarring things in your streets.
You get caught several times in violence and life goes on after the wounds have
healed” (BBC 2010). Thus, violence, along with its visible scars, are critical to the
making of an agbero in Lagos. Indeed, nearly all agberos that I spoke to in Os-
hodi and Alimosho had multiple cuts on their faces sustained from street brawls.
Whenever I asked them how the wound came about, they simply said, “It comes
with the territory.” In fact, my sense from interacting with agberos was that the
more scars one has, the more respect one garners inside the motor parks. As such,
scars were a powerful signifier of belonging, something to be proud of, something
to be displayed.
My fieldwork interviews and analyses of media reporting suggest that the prac-
tice of collecting dues from transport operators at motor parks and bus terminals
used to be a non-intimidating survival strategy for many young boys who fled
to Lagos because of their parents’ inability to provide for their basic economic
needs (obviously made worse by the SAP). However, with the establishment of
the NURTW in 1978, the agberos morphed into a serious menace and became in-
creasingly connected to violent party politics (Agbiboa 2018; Albert 2007). As the
following quote from a danfo driver in Alimosho elucidates:

Agberos were historically poor and hopeless people among us. They were the
youth without food to eat or shelter to lay their head. The drivers who were once in
business but suffered a great misfortune because their vehicles were destroyed in
an accident or because they lost their jobs. And we their colleagues often helped
them out of pity by asking them to load passengers for us so we can pay them
a token for food. But with the coming of the union, agberos have become more
powerful and bolder. They have seen that they can make more from the business,
especially during election, and have organized themselves into a strong union to
oppress us, to bite the fingers that once fed them. Nowadays, the table is turned.
Agberos are now the rich and influential ones with power and connections in high
places. But right from the start agberos were the wretched ones, the unfortunate
ones among us. Nobody wanted to be an agbero back then.
 nigeria’s transport mafia 159

The coming of the NURTW gave agberos “a new kind of independent aura of
invincibility, and [they] slowly became more of a nuisance to the transport indus-
try” (Newswatch 2013). There is a widespread perception among Lagosians that
the NURTW is a major supplier of political thugs recruited among its battle-ready

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agberos to advance the Lagos State Governor’s electoral campaigns and interests
(through voter intimidation and the billions of naira generated at the motor parks,
junctions, and bus stops), in exchange for the full autonomy to control and exploit
motor parks and bus stops across the state (Fourchard 2010: 51). The NURTW is
generally viewed in Lagos as a mafia-like union that is home to “a bunch of illiterate
thugs, extortionists, murderers, and highway robbers” (Adejumo 2016). Explain-
ing how the NURTW works, one driver in Lagos said: “They can beat you, beat the
conductor, just for 50 naira (18p). They are not a union, they are a group. You can
say they are a kind of gang, really” (The Guardian 2016). Ironically, on its official
website, the NURTW defines itself as a trade union that “represents employees’
interests to management on such issues as wages, work hours, and working condi-
tions” and that was formed to “protect, defend and promote the rights, well-being,
and the interests of all workers in the union against discrimination and unfair la-
bor practices.” In reality, however, the union engages in patronage politics and
systematic voter mobilization to support the state government and ruling political
party with whom it forges mutualities over time in return for uninterrupted con-
trol of motor parks and bus stops and the extortion of monies from road transport
workers.
The close relations between agberos and the NURTW illuminate a model of
urban youth clientelism, that is, “the social production of dependency on patron-
age when local and national structures fail to provide for the social and economic
needs of youth” (Murphy 2003: 62). Many agberos in Lagos told me they became
dependent on the patronage of their NURTW bosses as a way of escaping eco-
nomic despair and becoming somebody. This view reinforces the youth clientelism
model, which sees patronage as providing youth with a response to the political
marginalization and economic destitution enforced by the corrupt regimes of the
nation state (Murphy 2003). The menace of agberos in Lagos has been explained
in light of a nationwide unemployment crisis, where youth with few opportuni-
ties see politicians as a “meal ticket.” As Adewale Maja-Pearce writes, “there [are]
too many young men hanging around, waiting for some action. All you have to
do is go and meet them and pay them and they will do what you want… you
can’t blame the youths… they want to eat” (AFP 2015). While this is generally
true, Maja-Pearce omits the fact that youth in Lagos are not simply pawns in a
political game of chess, but active agents capable of manipulating just as they are
able to be manipulated. Like the tactical but “ordinary practitioners of the city”
described in de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984: xix), agberos can see
and seize opportunities “on the wing.” In Oshodi, for instance, a set of agberos
bragged about how they would organize themselves into small groups and meet
160 they eat our sweat

with local politicians on their own turf to broker a deal, which involved eliminat-
ing or warning a political rival. In this light, the relationship of interdependence
between agberos and NURTW bosses is best understood according to Anthony
Giddens’ (1979: 76, 93) association of autonomy and dependence in his dialectic of

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control, or Jean-François Bayart’s (1989: xiii) view that “subjection can constitute
a form of action.”
Interviews with danfo drivers confirmed that the intensity of NURTW violence
increases during election seasons, when agberos are generally under immense pres-
sure from their union superiors to raise enough money to fund the expensive
electoral campaigns of the ruling political party (Agbiboa 2018). As one danfo
driver said, “Agberos have become political. They can determine who becomes
the commissioner or governor. During elections, who will be used to snatch ballot
boxes and disrupt the electoral process? They are now political tools, the instru-
ment of winning elections. That is the problem” (Adetayo, 2020). Nigeria is not
unique in this respect. In a study of the politics of order in the informal transport
sector of Kampala and Kigali, Goodfellow (2012: 210) found that bayayes (matatu
touts) constituted an important “voting bloc” and a “potential source of violence”
that was mobilized by their respective unions, whose affair with local politicians
involved “collusion alongside the threat of opposition.” In Lagos, NURTW lead-
ers are connected to state politicians and local government officials according to
a deal that satisfies the vested interests of the actors involved and which has little
to do with urban planning or the smooth running of the transportation system
(Fourchard 2010: 51).
Since the 1950s, local government councils in Nigeria have been statutorily
charged with the task of establishing, maintaining, and collecting fares at motor
parks. During the Second Republic (1979–1983), however, the control and man-
agement of motor parks and bus stops, especially in Lagos, became the epicenter
of political antagonism when transport unions usurped their management.

The politicization of the management of motor-parks started in Lagos as the

capital was the place of two concurrent powers: The Federal government, the
president Shehu Shagari, and his party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) on
the one hand, and the governor of Lagos State, Lateef Jakande and the UPN on
the other hand. NPN decided to enlist the support of members of a new union,the
NURTW created a year before, in 1978 under the leadership of Adebayo Ogun-
dare, known as Bayo Success who was given the assignment of winning all the
motor parks in Lagos over the UPN [Unity Party of Nigeria]. He did so in mo-
bilizing his large clientele of drivers during the 1979 electoral campaign and in
resorting to violence and killing of his potential opponents in most of motor parks
in Lagos. (Fourchard 2010: 40–56)

It was during this time that agberos were instrumentally mobilized and
incorporated into the NURTW (both adversely and/or willingly) as tax collectors
 nigeria’s transport mafia 161

and foot soldiers to do the union’s bidding. Ever since, agberos have continued
to be potent weapons in the hands of local politicians as thugs to kill or threaten
political opponents, settle political scores, intimidate legitimate voters, disrupt
political rallies, rig elections, and disseminate fear throughout the state (Fourchard

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2010; Albert 2007; Uyieh 2018). In both the 2003 and 2007 general elections,
the then-ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos hired the services of
agberos as thugs to chase away would-be voters in order to stuff ballot boxes and
rig elections in favor of their candidates. The need for “hard men” who can deliver
votes during elections fosters the patron-client relationship between political god-
fathers, office holders, and political candidates in Nigeria (Pratten 2013). To my
question of why most agberos are so feared, a danfo driver in Alimosho replied: “It
is not about them, it is the big men around them that protects them, so they must
show loyalty at all cost. Even if you arrest the agbero, before you treat the wound
they inflicted on you, they are back to their duty post. The NURTW chiefs ensures
they are freed. That is how the system works. They’re all like mafias.” In return for
their services, agberos are offered cash rewards, which they often spend lavishly
on hard drugs (igbo), alcohol (paraga), and casual sex with prostitutes (ashewo).
The NURTW’s practice of providing thugs recruited among its workers to assist
the state governor during elections (Fourchard 2010: 51) is neither new nor spe-
cific to Lagos state. In Gombe state, a group of violent touts known as Kalare boys
have proven “easy prey for politicians who offer them small amounts of money,
drugs, alcohol, and weapons in exchange for engaging in acts of intimidation and
assaults or simply to accompany their campaigns in a demonstration of muscle”
(Aniekwe & Agbiboa 2014: 12). The activities of the Kalare boys have included as-
sault, rape, and extortion of ordinary Nigerians. Many of the Kalare boys worked
for the PDP as political loyalists during the 2003 and 2007 elections. As Ma’azu,
the PDP youth leader in Gombe state puts it, “thank God we have more boys than
the opposition” (HRW 2007: 94). Gombe aside, in the 2003 elections in the Niger
Delta region, one astute commentator observed:

Politicians from the major political parties mobilized and surreptitiously armed
groups of unemployed and disenchanted youths, and deployed them to cause
mayhem and manipulate the electoral process. In this contestation and compet-
itive arming of young groups, the party, which controlled the state government,
got the upper hand. These political elite rivalries, coupled with a struggle for turf,
contributed immensely to the rise of armed militancy and inter-militant armed
violence, which preceded the 2003 elections and became consolidated in the pe-
riod between the 2003 and 2007 general elections in the Niger Delta. (Ayoade &
Akinsanya 2013: 295)

In light of the 2003 and 2007 elections, Human Rights Watch (HRW 2007) con-
cluded that the NURTW was “largely converted into reservoirs of thugs for local
162 they eat our sweat

politicians.” A prime illustration is the political fallout of Rashidi Ladoja, former

governor of Oyo State (2003 to 2007), with the late Chief Lamidu Adedibu, the
political “godfather” of Oyo state (whom we briefly encountered in Chapter 2).
Adedibu had endorsed Ladoja as the ruling PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) can-

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didate in the 2003 elections, using his ability to mobilize violence and money to rig
the elections in Ladoja’s favour. Once in office, however, Ladoja attempted to break
free of Adedibu’s influence, neither granting him access to “eat” the treasury nor
allowing him to handpick the Commissioners who would serve in his cabinet. The
tensions between Adedibu and Ladoja caused the State House of Assembly to split
into two and played out in motor parks, streets, and bus stops across the state (such
as Ibadan) through regular battles between proxy union gangs. This illustrates the
ways in which urban politics and the state are located across diverse sites, from
official government buildings to the space of the street (Pilo & Jaffe 2020; Gupta
1995). The political instrumentality of the NURTW in the violent clash between
Adedibu and Ladoja led an Oyo state senator, Lekan Balogun, to call for the total
ban of the NURTW, noting that “They do not have any purpose. They are available
for negative activities including thuggery and they [politicians] draw their thugs
from there” (HRW 2007: 56).
Due to the association of agberos with party politics in Lagos through the pow-
erful NURTW, there is a widespread perception among transport operators and
Lagosians that the agberos have become “undisputed kings of Lagos roads.” “The
relationship is parasitic,” said one danfo driver, “each component is taking advan-
tage of the other with the drivers at the base. The government takes advantage of
the union and uses them for what they want, like using them to challenge political
opponents during elections; the union takes advantage of the drivers” (Adetayo,
2020). The mutuality between union leaders and state officials is evident in the ob-
served ways in which agberos join forces with law enforcement agents to unleash a
predatory economy on Lagos roads, especially at checkpoints and junctions. Since
its creation in the 1970s, the political party in power in Lagos state (whether PDP
or APC) has tended to give the NURTW leadership, who supported their can-
didature, the freedom “to do and undo” within the motor parks. In fact, during
the 1980s, NURTW played a central role in the Second Republic (1979–83) elec-
tions. This gave them enormous political power to run bus terminals across Lagos.
NURTW chiefs took the liberty to create more illegal motor parks and bus stops
from where they violently extort fees from operators through their battle-ready ag-
beros.⁶ This instrumental NURTW-state mutuality mirrors discussions of “patron-
age democracy” in India, where political choice is often “an ongoing calculation

⁶ A similar alliance was found among taxi associations in Cape Town, South Africa, where “the
state cooperates with criminal taxi associations sometimes out of convenience, sometimes as part of
corruption, and sometimes out of fear. Equally, businesses rely on violent association leaders. Banks,
insurers, car manufacturers and car dealers cooperate with suspicious taxi association leaders in order
to sell their products to the thousands of members they represent” (Bähre 2014: 590).
 nigeria’s transport mafia 163

of loss and profit” (Piliavsky 2014: 15). The NURTW’s autonomy is thus protected
by “big politics”—most union chiefs remain loyal and supportive of the ruling
All Progressives Congress (APC) party, others to the People’s Democratic Party
(PDP), or other fringe political parties. In such a politically charged environ-

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ment, violent clashes between rival unions and their agberos are the rule of the
game (Albert 2007). As one editorial observes, “50 percent of the violent activi-
ties in Lagos is because of the activities of the agberos. Their frequent clashes with
rival groups constitute about 50 percent of the spate of insecurities experienced
in the state” (AutoJosh 2018). Given their lucrative and politicized nature, motor-
parks, bus terminals, and junctions across Lagos are some of the most insecure
and fractionalized spaces, and their control has become purely a matter of life and
death.
The NURTW generates its funds through the numerous levies it imposes on
its members and enforces through its feared agberos. Each day, agberos bru-
tally collect and make returns to their respective unit chairman, who reports to
the state chairman, who is the direct link to the national chairman. Along this
chain, financial returns must be remitted daily. As earlier noted, the NURTW
in Lagos generates an average of N200 million daily (Olawoyin 2019). Accord-
ing to one senior agbero in Oshodi, “The NURTW chair for Oshodi pockets
up to N5 million [USD31,250] daily from the different units under him.” Upon
receiving this sum, the chairman is expected to “declare surplus”—that is, to
circulate the returns among other higher union executives, police inspectors,
local council chairmen, and party officials. This everyday system of redistri-
bution is in tune with the NURTW’s guiding slogan: “Eat Alone, Die Alone.”
This political settlement echoes the depiction of a “trickle-up economy” in Cape
Town’s taxi industry, which relies on mutualities to distribute cash to the state,
to transport trade association leaders, and to officers (Bähre 2014: 590). It also
resonates with a study of corruption in Latvia, which shows that corruption is
generally considered morally acceptable—and the money associated with it as
“fertile”—when it benefits the social community. However, it is considered “bar-
ren money” when it benefits only the individual (Sedlenieks 2004). The huge
revenue collected by the NURTW and the high social mobility this facilitates ex-
plain why the union remains the most politicized, factionalized, and violent in
Nigeria.

Every member of the union aspires to become a chairman—whether at branch,

city, state, zonal or national level. This partly explains why the members regularly
engage one another in bloody skirmishes. It explains why NURTW members and
members of other transport unions kill each other in defense of their position in
most Nigerian cities. (Albert 2007: 154)
164 they eat our sweat

Modernization and the Drive to Eliminate Agberos

Until 1999, Lagos was largely regarded as an “urban jungle,”⁷ a prime example of
Third World urban dysfunction, crime, and corruption. However, during his time

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in office, the civilian government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu (1999 to 2007) envisaged
a radical change to the status quo, announcing a rescue operation “to make Lagos
the reference point of harmonious physical development in Nigeria through best
practices and physical planning and development.” Building on Tinubu’s legacy,
Governor Babatunde Fashola (2007 to 2015) started his term in office by announc-
ing his plans for “a new and beautiful Lagos that would become a reference point
for best practices found anywhere in the world” (Basinski 2009: 6). Fashola sought
to realize his megacity vision and “aesthetic governmentality” (Ghertner 2011)
through the elimination of the violent extortion by agberos in transit spaces like
motor parks and junctions. As one commuter in Oshodi told me: “We have been
complaining about agberos for many years but nothing happened. But now that
Governor Fashola want to attract investors to Lagos and create this model megac-
ity of his dreams, they have decided that agberos are no longer needed in this new
and beautiful Lagos. They don’t make the city beautiful. But it’s too late. Agberos
have become institution.”
In February 2008, Fashola inaugurated a twelve-member Tribunal of Inquiry,
headed by Justice Dolapo Akinsanya, to investigate the role and operations of the
NURTW and their agberos in motor parks and bus terminals across the state. The
expectation was that the “instant inquiry” would help the Lagos State Government
to identify “a unique opportunity to unravel the circumstances which might have
precipitated violent clashes in the past and the challenges confronting passenger
transport system, in order to avert future re-occurrence” (Agbiboa 2018c: 77-78).
The Tribunal’s findings included “(f)ighting and misuse of motor-parks, collect-
ing money on the roads indiscriminately, stopping passengers, abusing alcohol,
among others” (Punch 2012). The Tribunal found that agberos have morphed
into a “complete menace that must be immediately addressed; what we consid-
ered needed to check the menace is the total enforcement of the existing laws on
the NURTW because if enforcement takes hold, Lagos will become the real and
desired megacity” (The Nation 2008). Citing the Nigerian Constitution of 1999,
which empowers local governments to collect tolls at motor parks, Justice Akin-
sanya lamented the fact that, “[agberos] have taken over; they now collect tolls
at these places with impunity; they even rape innocent victims after taking hard
drugs” (The Nation 2008).
The Tribunal’s recommendations inspired the enactment of the Road Traffic
Law of 2012 in Lagos, which prohibited agberos from collecting taxes inside mo-
tor parks, bus stops, and junctions. Thus, to address the ubiquitous problem of

⁷ A term used by President Olusegun Obasanjo, on the occasion of his first official visit to Lagos.
 nigeria’s transport mafia 165

agberos, the Lagos State Government, under the Fashola administration, resorted
to interventions within the framework of spatial governmentality—a principle that
gathers “new mechanisms of social ordering based on spatial regulation” (Merry
2001: 16). This concept focuses essentially on space in lieu of networks and institu-

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tions. The fundamental aim is, therefore, to regulate people’s behavior by (lawfully)
prohibiting particular conduct in particular places (Geenen 2009: 350). As former
Commissioner for Transport Kayode Opeifa declared:

Henceforth, union activities are no longer allowed at our parks. They are to re-
locate to offices from where they will operate just like the National Union of
Teachers and the National Union of Journalists. Also, no union member must
be seen collecting money on the road. We recognize the right for them to asso-
ciate but we believe that the motor-parks should be made easy for those who want
to carry out their legitimate business of commuting in the state… no union mem-
ber should be seen on the road collecting money from transport operators as it is
illegal. (The Guardian 2015)⁸

There was early evidence of a determination to succeed when the local author-
ities attempted to enforce the ban by targeting the physical presence of agberos in
public spaces such as motor parks and bus stops across the state. In June 2013, for
instance, the Task Force on Environment and Special Offences arrested forty-six
agberos who were collecting illegal taxes from danfo operators, intimidating road
users during heavy traffic hours, and causing extreme traffic congestion on most
routes in Lagos. The Special Offences Court in Lagos later sentenced these agberos
to fifty hours of community service for “constituting nuisance to the public peace,”
noting that “we are simply telling them to repent” (National Mirror 2013). In an
interview with the National Mirror in June 2013, Bayo Sulaimon, Chairman of the
Lagos State Task Force, stated:

We have declared war against agberos again; we will not allow them to take over
the state. We have flushed them out and they are coming back and we will flush
them out again. In the next few hours now, more of them will be arrested. We are
moving to different places to arrest more of them. Soon, we will move to other
areas in the state. With this arrest, we are passing a message to others. Their leaders
should call them to order. (National Mirror 2013)

⁸ This is not the first time that the Lagos State Government has banned the activities of agberos
in motor-parks, or that the question of control of motor-parks has surfaced. Fed up with the violent
activities and internal clashes of the NURTW, Fashola’s predecessor Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu
(1999–2007), made a landmark decision in 2002 by banning NURTW from operating in motor-parks
across Lagos. Tinubu’s government argued that the NURTW does not have the constitutional backing
for some of the powers they arrogate to themselves (Albert 2007: 135).
166 they eat our sweat

However, the authorities failed to sustain the ban against agberos, mainly because
of their connection to the politically influential NURTW. This reinforces not only
the selective enforcement of laws in Lagos, but also intensifies public perception
that the NURTW is a “sacred cow” that operates in realms above the law. As one

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commuter in a motor park in Oshodi remarked:

The government themselves know that it is impossible to remove agberos from

the roads where they eat and gain respect and recognition. They created a monster
from beggars and now they can’t tame it. Instead, they are now trying to rebrand
agberos as responsible union workers by giving them green and white uniforms—
the colour of our own national flag. You can’t change who an agbero is by changing
what they wear. You need to change the space they occupy and cut off the con-
nections that give them power and confidence to do and talk anyhow. You need
to create better jobs that give them other options.

Other danfo operators and commuters were very sure that government inter-
ventions have intentionally proven ineffective so far, since the billions routinely
extracted by agberos finds its way into coffers of the ruling political party in
Lagos—the All Progressives Congress (APC). To my question about what they
think about their ban, some agberos in Oshodi boasted: Ta lo fe dan wo? ni bo? Oga
Fashola gon ko to be. Ti won ba dan wo, a ma dagboru (Who can try it? Where?
Even Fashola cannot ban us. If they try it, we will make this city ungovernable). To
the same question, another agbero taunted the lip service of the Lagos State Gov-
ernment: Enu ni’joba ni, won’ni action. Nah we get Lagos. ti be. (The government
has mouth without action. We own Lagos). Governor Fashola, widely applauded
in international circles as an “action governor” who “tamed Nigeria’s most lawless
city” (Ekundayo 2013: 201; The Telegraph 2014), failed to show his action against
agberos represented by one local newspaper as “untamed monsters” (The Guardian
2015). This failure only served to deepen the fear of agberos among Lagosians, fuel-
ing the view that agberos are omo ijoba (state children), omo oba (child of a king),
or omo onile (owner of the land) and, thus, “untouchable.” Today, agberos cash
in on their much-dreaded status on Lagos roads to solicit various “settlements”
(bribes) from transport operators and street hawkers. As one “pure water” hawker
in Alimosho said to me: “There is agbero for everything. Their code is simply tax
anybody taxable.” Mr. Ibrahim, the Area Commander of the Vehicle Inspection
Service in Alimosho, tells me that the blame for extortion and chaos in Lagos
should not be heaped entirely on agberos but also on operators and commuters
who facilitate their anti-social activities and complicate the free flow of traffic:

Agberos are supposed to generate their funds inside motor parks. They are not
supposed to come to the main roads to collect tolls. When you see them go on
the main roads to collect their money, it is because most of these vehicles do not
 nigeria’s transport mafia 167

want to enter motor parks. You’re not supposed to pick or drop passengers along
the road. You’re supposed to get to the designated parts of garages to board ve-
hicles. Because even members of the public too, we are a very serious problem
to the society. Why do I want to stand by the side of a road and board a bus

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when there are bus stations? These are the issues. Because most of these vehicles
due to their menace, due to their socio-economic problem the minibus operator
wants to meet up his target and he feels going into the motor park to queue up
for his turn will delay him since he can readily see people to pick on the road and
make quick, good money. In this way, they boycott the standard and that’s why
you see those boys [agberos] coming out to collect money. So the two parties are
very wrong. Even the three parties: the commuters, the vehicle operator and the
unionists [sic].

Mr. Ibrahim’s statement echoes the analysis of poor people in Mexico, which pre-
cipitated a “culture of poverty” in which the habits, values, and behaviors of the
poor were appropriated to explain their daily predicament (Lewis 1966). This, in
turn, gives rise to myopic state-instituted solutions that end up “treating the phe-
nomenal forms rather than the essential relations behind the problem” (Lugalla
1995: 178–79). Such a representation is often couched in a neoliberal ethos that
attributes equal agency to all, including those who are struggling daily to survive
(Scheper-Hughes 2006: 155). The problem with Mr. Ibrahim’s statement is that it
obscures or downplays the role of government failure in the emergence and in-
fluence of agberos, especially the ineptitude of law enforcement agents. As Mike
Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, notes:

How can any serious and responsible government say it cannot control forcible
collection of dues by motor park touts from drivers that are plying the routes
on legitimate business? Why should innocent drivers and vehicle owners be
subjected to multiple taxation in the presence of a government whose first
and primary duty is the security and welfare of its citizen in accordance with
Section 14 of the 1999 constitution? There is freedom of association and also free-
dom of movement. No one can be forced to belong to a union it does not want to
belong to. Any exertion of force to actualize such by a union borders on criminal-
ity, for which the culprits should be brought to book. We cannot afford to have a
government within a government. (The Guardian 2017)

Reinventing Order

This chapter has interrogated the changing role of agberos in the informal trans-
port sector of Lagos. While the figure of the agbero emerged during the difficult
years of the SAP as a means of getting by, it gradually transformed into a menace
168 they eat our sweat

in urban transport as a result of its association with the politicized and violent
NURTW. This interdependent association between agberos and the NURTW
illustrates the routine instantiation of violent extortion within networks of pa-
tronage that have become an endemic feature of electoral and informal politics

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in African cities (Bähre 2014: 409). The mutuality between the NURTW and
the Lagos State Government has had the double effect of weakening formal state
capacity while emboldening the union to gain a much stronger foothold, even le-
gitimacy, over the control of lucrative motor parks across Lagos. This, in turn,
has resulted in more violent and predatory forms of interaction between (and
among rival) unions and operators, eroding the moral and epistemological cer-
tainties of operators who are increasingly unsure about who stands for what.
Indeed, there is a sense in which both violence and order result from the shift-
ing interactions among these multiple territorial and institutional scales in Lagos
road transport. For example, efforts by some local governments to reclaim their
authority over the control of motor parks have frequently triggered violent re-
sistance from agberos controlling that area. In one case during my fieldwork,
Oshodi saw a violent eruption when the local council secretary ordered the im-
mediate cessation of extra-legal tax collection by agberos in motor parks and
bus terminals across the local government. Expectedly, the decision did not go
down well with agberos and their unit chairman in Oshodi. In a matter of days,
agberos brutally attacked motor parks en masse, razing any danfo in sight. Wor-
ried about the threat to lives and properties in the densely populated area, the
council secretary was compelled to rescind his order within the same week of
its issue. Violence, in this case, functions as a tactical means of re-establishing
“order” (business as usual), social control, and everyday profiteering in contested
urban spaces.
The analysis presented here contributes to a grounded, place-based understand-
ing of corruption, informal governance, and labor precarity in African cities,
especially its dynamic, predatory, and seemingly chaotic functioning. In partic-
ular, the focus on the changing role of agberos reveals an “organizing urban logic”
(Roy & Alsayyad 2004) that underpins the perception and practice of informal
public transport in Lagos and, more broadly, the politics of urban informality
in Africa (Meagher 2010; Khayesi, Nafukho, & Kemuma 2015). Beneath the ap-
pearance of menace and chaos in Lagos’s informal transport sector exist webs
of relationships (between the union and the state) that structure its everyday
functioning. As intermediaries, agberos play a critical role in managing these trans-
port mutualities through running the NURTW’s extortion rackets. Thus, a study
of agberos enhances our understanding of how the blurred boundaries between
the state and non-state play out on the ground in the informal urban sector of
Africa (Blundo & Le Meur 2009). This chapter also provides us with a deep-
ened knowledge of the micropolitics of elections and the precarious nature of
patronage politics in Nigeria. Elections are times of uncertainty that highlight
 nigeria’s transport mafia 169

the precariousness of both transport union leaders and state officials, who strug-
gle to remain relevant and influential. Through a case study of the agberos, this
chapter affirms the critical observation that the dynamics and lines between state
and non-state actors are less straightforward than commonly assumed.

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 6
The Paradox of Urban Reform

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As engines of growth and livelihood opportunities, but at the same time spaces
of poverty and deprivation, African cities are fast becoming “rebel cities” (Harvey
2013), characterized by discontents and contestations. This chapter focuses on the
disconnect and resulting tensions between, on the one hand, the elite-driven am-
bitions to make Lagos a “model megacity for the twenty-first century” and, on the
other hand, the practical consequences of the application of these goals to the ev-
eryday and lived experiences of the ordinary inhabitants of Lagos in general and
operators of informal motorbike-taxis (okadas) in particular. The chapter delves
into the violent and predatory manner in which the Lagos State Road Traffic Law
of 2012 was adapted by the state to restrict the space and mobility of okada drivers
as a function of making Lagos a “world class” megacity. This analysis extends to
the manner in which okada associations are using legal channels to counter these
neoliberal urban legislations that constrain their opportunities and their “right
to the city.” It illuminates our tenuous grasp on how informal urban workers in
Africa exercise agency as they attempt to intervene in the corrupt, violent, and un-
equal processes of urban renewal as driven by elite interests and “public-private”
partnerships (Myers 2011).
This chapter draws on the legal case (Suit No. ID/713M.2012) filed by Lagos state
okada drivers and their associations against the Lagos State Government over the
wanton violation of their right to the city, particularly their restriction from ply-
ing major routes in Lagos. In analyzing this dispute, I draw insights from scholars
who argue that the process of dispute opens a window into “the socio-cultural
order at large” (Comaroff & Roberts 1981: 249) while also foregrounding “con-
tested meanings and conflicting interpretations” (Caplan 1995; Roy 2013: 3). The
data presented here were gleaned from several pages of court records (comprising
originating summons, affidavits, and counter-affidavits) obtained from the Lagos
State High Court. Obtaining access to these records proved a complex, lengthy, and
costly process. This is partly because “gatekeepers” at various levels control access
and brazenly demand bribes before allowing access. Court records were triangu-
lated using in-depth interviews with okada drivers and their associational leaders,
officials of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road
Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), passengers, legal represen-
tatives (Bamidele Aturu & Co), as well as press materials. The chapter is inspired,
in part, by an analysis of how the urban poor use state laws to negotiate their rights:

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0007
 the paradox of urban reform 171

While citizens might often not act according to state law themselves and also
make strategic use of the extra-legal practices of state agents, they are at the same
time engaged in a protest that uses legal terms against the transgressions of law by
state agents and other bodies of governmental authority. This is evident in their

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efforts against a misuse of state powers and their fight against corruption. In this
we see a shift towards state law as a means of resistance as well as a parameter of
the “good order.” (Eckert 2006: 45)

During my fieldwork in Lagos, I used okadas as a primary means of transport;

I seized the moment to ask questions during the ride. This “go along” method
gave me access into the transcendental and reflexive experiences of daily mobility
in situ, especially “an array of dispositions and arts of negotiation that are con-
stitutive of subjectivities of conflict” (Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 329). By viewing
the okada as a field site, my attention was constantly drawn to the okada driver’s
daily struggles to make the most of their time and assert themselves as valuable
and rights-bearing members of Lagos. Further insights were derived from attend-
ing meetings of okada associations, specifically in the Oshodi and Alimosho local
government areas, where I was primarily based. Oshodi is the key terminus for
commercial road transportation in Lagos. It is commonly ranked among the worst
urban conditions on the planet (Probst 2012; Aradeon 1997). Alimosho, on the
other hand, is the largest local government area in Lagos, with more than two
million residents. Both Alimosho and Oshodi can be said to be positioned at the
interstices between “the real and abstract, official and unofficial, local and inter-
national, and the legal and illegal identity and manifestation of the Nigerian state”
(Ismail 2010: 30).
Following this introduction, the rest of the chapter is divided into four parts. The
first part explores the post-1999 urban renewal campaign in Lagos and its mixed-
bag results. The second part focuses on the displacement of the Lagos poor by the
urban megacity plan. The third part examines the controversial Road Traffic Law
of 2012 and its malcontents. The fourth part focuses on Henri Lefebvre’s concept
of “right to the city” and how it applies to and helps us to understand the okada
struggle in Lagos. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the culture of legality
that is emerging in Lagos.

A “World Class City” for Whom?

African cities are all too often seen as spaces of rapid urban growth, marginaliza-
tion, unemployment, expanding slums, where around 60 percent of city dwellers
live in, and an intensifying informal economy that accounts for about 87 percent
of employment. Far from being the exception to these sobering realities, Lagos is
the quintessential example. Until 1999, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital and
172 they eat our sweat

Africa’s largest city,1 was widely considered “the armpit of Africa.” The rottenness
of Lagos life is taken to be a microcosm of Nigeria, which at the time held the
unenviable record of being the second and first most corrupt country in the world,
in 1999 and 2000 respectively. A fast-growing population (600,000 people added

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annually) without commensurate improvements in basic social services gave rise
to nightmarish visions of a “coming anarchy” (Kaplan 1994). However, after nearly
three decades of systematic neglect by successive Nigerian military governors and
the Federal Government (Gandy 2005; Kuris 2014),2 the new Lagos state gov-
ernment (starting in 1999) made great strides toward laying the foundations of
a functional, livable, and sustainable megacity that, inter alia, can attract foreign
investors. The civilian and technocratic3 administrations of Bola Ahmed Tinubu
(1999 to 2007) and his successor, Babatunde Raji Fashola (2007 to 2015), over-
hauled city governance, raised new revenues, improved security and sanitation,
reduced traffic gridlock (go-slow), expanded infrastructure and public transit, and
attracted global investment (Kuris 2014; Cheeseman & de Gramont 2017).
Breaking from the “business as usual” mentality in Lagos in particular and Nige-
rian politics in general, Tinubu promoted a ten-point agenda “to make Lagos the
reference point of harmonious physical development in Nigeria through best prac-
tices and physical planning and development matters” (Basinski 2009). On the
road to making Lagos a “world class” city, Tinubu’s first priorities were to reform
the civil service and set the state on a firm fiscal footing through taxation reform
and new private investment (Kuris 2014: 7; De Gramont 2015). Tinubu’s govern-
ment notably initiated a project aimed at revitalizing the historical core of Lagos
Island in an attempt to reverse the decline of previous decades. His efforts were
inspired, in part, by a new urban policy in Nigeria, entitled the National Urban De-
velopment Policy, introduced by the Federal Government in 2002 with the central
goal of developing “a dynamic system of urban settlements, which will foster sus-
tainable economic growth, promote efficient urban and regional development, and
ensure improved standard of living and wellbeing of all Nigerians” (Fajemirokun
2010: 268). The majority of Tinubu’s reforms came to fruition under his successor,
Babatunde Raji Fashola, who assumed office in 2007.

A New and Beautiful Lagos

Building on Tinubu’s legacy, Fashola started his tenure by announcing his over-
arching vision of “a new and beautiful Lagos which would be a reference point

1 Lagos is the eighth fastest-growing city in Africa and is home to some 21 million people.
2 The deliberate punitive underdevelopment of Lagos under previous military governors “partly
conditioned the chaotic environment that became stereotypical of [Lagos] in the global imagination”
(Owen 2015: 655).
3 For a detailed discussion of the politics of technocracy in Nigeria, see Alexander Thurston (2018).
 the paradox of urban reform 173

for best practices that you can find anywhere in the world” (Basinski 2009: 6).
His rallying cry was “Think Africa, Think Lagos.” This world class megacity
ambition coincided with growing interest in “Third World” megacities, exem-
plified by notable books such as Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums (2006), Suketu

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Mehta’s Maximum City (2004), and Robert Neuwirth’s Shadow Cities (2006). In
a government-endorsed YouTube documentary, titled “Lagos: Africa’s Big Apple,”
the Fashola administration projected the brand new image of Lagos as follows:
“Welcome to Lagos… [a] vibrant mega-city whose pulse is felt as wide as its in-
fluence reaches, a discovery of opportunities at the heart of Africa… a world of
unique possibilities where untold opportunities are never far away… whatever it
is you are looking for, Lagos has it all and is waiting for you” (YouTube 2013).
Fashola sought to realize his world class city aspirations through a number of
channels, including the overhauling of the tax revenue systems in Lagos, reforming
of waste collection systems, introducing high-capacity Bus Rapid Transits (BRTs)⁴
funded by the World Bank, and efforts to address the culture of violent extortion on
the road by agberos and police inspectors (Agbiboa 2018). The wheels of the urban
renewal plan were set in motion with the radical and largely unannounced clearing
of so-called illegal shops and sprawling slums, evictions of dumpsite dwellers, and
beautification of parts of Lagos (Oshodi, for example) notorious for their clutter
and criminality. This move was cast in media circles as a warning to Lagosians that
Fashola means business, but not as usual. In light of his radical reforms, Fashola
garnered global praise as the “action governor” who “tamed Nigeria’s most law-
less city” (The Telegraph 2014). Al Jazeera even produced a documentary entitled
“Boom Time in Nigeria: Action Government Transforms Lagos.” Seth Kaplan of
the New York Times (2014) viewed Lagos as a “Model City” of effective gover-
nance in Africa, while The Economist (2015), in a piece titled “Learning from
Lagos,” claimed that Lagos was “a model for the rest of the country… a lesson
in how one big city can sometimes kick-start wider change.” Back home, the lead-
ing Vanguard (2014a) newspaper claimed that, “since the lofty days of [Governor
Lateef] Jakande,⁵ no other leader has filled us with such adulation as Fashola.”

⁴ The BRT was adopted to provide safe, affordable, and reliable transportation services to all
Lagosians, while simultaneously formalizing the obstreperous transport industry. The post-1999
government in Lagos gave pride of place to transportation as the key engine of economic development.
⁵ Lateef Jakande (nicknamed Baba Kekere—“small father”) was the first elected governor of Lagos
State from 1979 through 1983. During his time in office, Jakande advanced a strategic plan for Lagos
and undertook large municipal investments in housing, schools, and transportation, including plans
for an urban rail system which was later abandoned due to military incursion into politics in 1983
(LAMATA 2013: 13). In ten years, military governors (nominated by the government) in Lagos had
managed to complete only one waterworks to serve the upper-class town of Festac (supplying four mil-
lion gallons of water each day), whereas in four years, the Jakande government built ten waterworks
in various poor and middle-class areas of Lagos (twenty million gallons per day). Also, in five years,
Jakande’s government built more primary schools than all the schools built by previous military gover-
nors combined (Fourchard 2010). Though Jakande was later criticized for accepting a ministerial post
under Abacha’s regime, his progressive political legacy from the early 1980s extended to education,
housing, and sanitation (Godwin & Hopwood 2012).
174 they eat our sweat

Public perceptions that the Fashola-led government is delivering the goods is said
to have enhanced tax compliance in Lagos (de Gramont, 2015). With 70 percent
of its entire budget funded by taxpayers’ money in 2014, Lagos was touted as the
only state in Nigeria whose Internally Generated Revenue about doubled its federal

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allocation from oil earnings (The Guardian 2014b).
Yet, the success narratives of the Fashola government pale in the face of the ad-
verse effects that the urban renewal project had on the lived realities of Lagosians,
especially those surviving in the dark underbelly of the informal transport sec-
tor. Far from a state learning from informal service provisions (Banks et al. 2020),
the Lagos State Government saw urban informality as a major threat to its urban
renewal plan and conflated informality with illegality, in a manner similar to the
reorganization of markets and the regular clearing of the streets by Zimbabwe’s
Harare Municipality (Chikolo, Hebinck, & Kinsey 2020: 8–9). Particularly strik-
ing about the Lagos megacity plan is the fact that it carried neither the promise
nor the pretense of resettlement or alternative source of livelihoods for its vic-
tims, who were mostly informal urban workers. Instead, Fashola’s government
unleashed a systematic deportation program against street beggars, mobile hawk-
ers, and the homeless poor, drawing widespread criticisms from poor Lagosians
and human rights activists. As one astute observer decried: “Making Lagos a mega
city does not mean that the poor will be banished from the state. The menaces of
area boys and agberos are more inimical to making Lagos a [modern] megacity
than the presence of beggars.” Reacting to the partial demolition and discharge of
thousands of Lagosians from their slum dwellings, one Lagos resident lamented:
“[This government] want a Lagos that looks good, that feels good, that glitters.
But they forget that Lagos is Lagos because of the people that live here. They’re
doing this without regard for people who live here” (The New York Times 2013).
This reinforces the critique that to be a “World Class” city is “to ‘look’ new and
cater to the needs of the elites seen as exclusive drivers of a modern city’s future”
(Bedi 2016: 393). As another Lagosian puts it, “Development is not about high-rise
buildings and flyover bridges,” but about the people and “how their basic needs are
taken care of.” These remarks constitute the real sinews of the influential idea of
“people as infrastructure,” which moves us beyond common understandings of
infrastructure in physical terms and emphasizes “economic collaboration among
residents seemingly marginalized from and immiserated by urban life” (Simone
2004b: 407).
A comparison, if cursory, may be drawn between the Lagos State megacity
campaign and the Mumbai evictions in India—“Vision Mumbai”—where local
authorities pulled down numerous slums in a matter of weeks, rendering an es-
timated 300,000 people homeless (Roy 2012: 7). As in Lagos, “Vision Mumbai”
sought to transform Mumbai, a city famous for its enormous slums, terrible traffic
congestion, and poor infrastructure, into a “world class” city—one that is glob-
ally competitive with other Asian successes (McKinsey & Company 2003). The
 the paradox of urban reform 175

municipality officer who led the demolitions declared that it was time to turn
Mumbai into the “next Shanghai,” and to do so “we want to put the fear of the con-
sequences of migration into these people. We have to restrain them from coming
to Mumbai” (Roy 2012: 8).

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Tinubu and Fashola’s bid to transform Lagos into a model megacity for the
twenty-first century provides us with an account of the ways in which theatrical-
ity and performativity are increasingly dramatized in African metropolises, from
Accra to Cape Town and Dar es Salaam. Painted street slogans—such as “For a
better Mega-City, Pay Your Tax” (Figure 11)—have been used to significant effect
by the Lagos Internal Revenue Service to raise tax consciousness in the city. Oth-
ers like Eko o ni baje (“Lagos will not spoil,” Figure 12) have been used not only
to remind Lagosians of their duty to “Keep Lagos Clean” but also to sound a note
of warning: “Don’t Mess With Lagos” (Figure 13). These slogans, combined with
emphasis on accountable governance, due process, and service delivery, plug into
the “urban perfomativity” thesis which states that “good city planning demands
an ethics of performance, whereby citizens become spectators and co-performers
in the urban drama” (Makeham 2005: 150). Yet, performers and spectators of-
ten exist in a complex web of power that “heightens the drama of living” (Bacon
1974: 19). This urban drama begs uneasy questions: Who controls the performance
space? Who has the right to it? And, importantly, whose interests are fostered by
the performance?

Fig. 11. Lagos State public service announcement

Photo credit: Author
176 they eat our sweat

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Fig. 12. The motto of Lagos
Photo credit: Author

Fig. 13. Public posting by the Lagos State Signage and

Advertisement Agency (LASAA)
Photo credit: Author

No Place for the Poor?

The Lagos urban renewal campaign reinforces the logic of the market that shapes
so-called “progressive” cities in contemporary Africa. The banning of roadside
 the paradox of urban reform 177

vendors, the deportation of beggars, and the flattening of extra-legal structures are
all external markers of the internal pains inflicted by the Fashola-led government
on Lagosians, 60 percent of whom live below the poverty line. This pain was
palpable in an interview I had with Abosede, a roadside okro seller in Oshodi,

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whose goods were destroyed by officers of the Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI), the
paramilitary task force charged with enforcing the Lagos world-class city vision.
Abosede tells her story:

I am a roadside okro seller who was chased out of Oshodi by member of KAI
[Kick against Indiscipline]. I used to earn my living from this okro selling but
since oga [big man] Fashola’s campaign, my source of livelihood has been taken
away from me by force. Those with shops gloat at me because they think I am
the one spoiling their market and preventing customers from coming to meet
them in the shops. In less than one month, I became half of my body size. My
children all quit school. I tried to go back to my village to start something. But
those in my village chased me out of the market saying that there is no space for
me. They mocked me that I have come from the big city to take their work. I
cried.

Difficult experiences such as that of Abosede surfaced throughout my fieldwork in

Lagos; they explain why many local newspapers have mocked Fashola’s megacity
vision by stating, “The true Lagosian is the rich man. The poor have been served
quit notice. They are no longer wanted in Lagos… they can have no place in Lagos,
if Lagos is to become the megacity of Fashola’s lofty dreams!” (Vanguard 2013c).
Other headlines are more explicit: “The Kidnapping of Poor Nigerians by Gov-
ernor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos” (The Village Square 2013), “WARNING:
Poor People are not Wanted in Lagos Megacity” (Vanguard 2013c), “In Nigeria’s
City: Homeless are Paying the Price of Progress” (The New York Times 2013),
“Can’t the Poor Live in Lagos?” (NewswireNGR 2015). An editorial from the re-
spected Osun Defender newspaper raised some critical questions about the impact
of Fashola’s megacity project on the Lagos poor in general and informal transport
workers in particular:

From mobile street hawkers consistently terrorized by KAI operatives to taxi

drivers [increasingly] priced out of business by the government’s decision
to phase out the trademark yellow-and-black taxis in favour of brand-new cabs, to
dumpsite dwellers at the mercy of a government that has no plans for them, to
the multitudes forced out of the city into the hinterland under a puzzling “de-
portation” programme. Are we asking ourselves this troubling question: All these
former okada drivers now out of work—where are they; what are they doing; how
are they surviving? (Cited in Agbiboa 2017: 184)
178 they eat our sweat

In a similar vein, the Punch (2014a) newspaper noted:

Today, the average Lagos commercial driver bears the burden of multiple levies.
How can any business survive under such a draconian regime? With all its preten-

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tions to attaining mega-city status, Lagos has the worst transport extortion regime
in Nigeria, Africa and perhaps the world… the different levies and impositions
being heaped on commercial buses in Lagos State have become a disincentive to
commercial bus operators. And the danfo [minibus-taxi] drivers ultimately pass
on the heavy bill to the commuters, the common man, who will be forced to pay
more for public transportation.

While the focus on Fashola’s megacity project has been on multiple displacements
of slum dwellers and informal settlers, there is remarkably little work on its im-
plications for informal transport workers in Lagos, and how these marginalized
and stigmatized “dirty workers” are experiencing and responding to this change.
Yet, there is no denying that reforming the transport sector forms the engine of
the Lagos world class city strategy. While the clearing of places such as Oshodi is
an oft-cited example of displacement by some observers (e.g. de Gramont 2015),
in reality it was a result of transport planning by Fashola’s administration to ease
flows through the city and test the possibilities of clearing the railway corridor in
advance of a light railway planned to run along the existing rail tracks. Indeed, the
most important document to have emerged from the modernizing urban renewal
project was the Lagos State Road Traffic Law 2012, which, relegated okada drivers
from the city’s lucrative center to its slow periphery. In what follows, I explore
the effects of, and resistance to, this law by okada drivers and their association.
But first, it is important to understand how and why an okada culture emerged in
Nigeria.

The Emergence of Okadas from the Era of SAP

Since the 1980s, the majority of urban Nigerians have relied on cheap, two-
stroke engine motorcycles for their daily commute, the common man being
too poor to own a car. Produced by foreign manufacturers, mainly Honda and
Yamaha, and imported secondhand, okadas emerged as a popular means of pub-
lic transport for lowly Nigerians during a time of massive urban population
growth, when increased demand for mobility widened the gap between supply
and demand (Madugu 2018). By way of illustration, in northern cities such as
Kano, the population increased from 900,000 in 1983 to four million in 2012.
Prior to okadas, bicycles and donkeys constituted the primary forms of mobil-
ity for country dwellers (farmers) and poor inhabitants of outlying urban areas
 the paradox of urban reform 179

in northern Nigeria (Udo 1970: 184). The emergence and reach of okadas rev-
olutionized Nigeria’s transport industry, positioning them as the number one
means of movement and survival for people and off-road communities trapped
in transport poverty. Although okadas have never been officially recognized as an

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income-generating activity in Nigeria, authorities have tolerated their operations.
In this sense, okadas mirror the Nigerian society, where what is non-legal is not
necessarily illicit.
The culture of okada in Nigeria is part of the broader informal transport
industry that emerged in Africa around the 1980s as an indigenous response
to government failure to provide adequate and affordable mass transportation
services (Cervero & Golub 2007). In particular, the proliferation of okadas is trace-
able to the IMF-led Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) introduced by the IBB
regime in mid-1986 to address the economic crisis that greeted the fall in oil prices.
Nigeria’s oil boom lasted from 1974 to the early 1980s, before being replaced by
serious recession and debt crisis by the mid-1980s. The SAP was advanced by
the IMF and World Bank as a panacea to the 1984 oil crisis in Nigeria, and its
early phase saw the implementation of currency devaluation, elimination of sub-
sidies, and reduction of state intervention in the economy. The SAP was meant
to restructure and diversify the Nigerian economy, especially to reduce its de-
pendence on oil and gas (Roy 2017: 10). However, these implementations led to
the devaluation of the real incomes of the working class, so much that it became
very difficult for salary earners to survive on their real earnings, forcing many
struggling civil servants into multiple modes of livelihood, self-identification, and
expression (Mustapha 1992).
Following an abrupt reversal in their living conditions, everyday life for many
Nigerians became increasingly precarious. With the dwindling economic and tra-
ditional support base caused by the SAP, youth were pushed to the limits of
survival; “many young men lost even the possibility to establish themselves as
adults, by building a house or getting married—though they continued to be-
come fathers, of children for whom they could not provide” (Utas 2005b: 150).
In particular, the lack of social services along with the rising cost of education in-
tensified by the withdrawal of the state from social provisioning made it difficult
for Nigerian youth to attend, or remain in, school. The situation was not helped
by the lack of available jobs after graduation, as was once the case. Such disem-
powering circumstances brought on frantic imaginings of the Nigerian youth as
“a smoldering fire ready to burn African urban areas” (Bay and Donham 2007: 10).
Nigerian newspapers of the 1990s and early 2000s painted a picture of the moral
panic about the chronic crisis of youth in that era. In its piece “Nigerian Youths:
What Hopes, What Future?”, the Post Express of 1998 wrote: “Formerly a vibrant
force for positive social changes, today’s Nigerian youth has been clobbered by so-
cietal contradictions unto at best a supine state of schizophrenia and at worst unto
a state of dare-devilry with increasing properties for anti-social activities… with
180 they eat our sweat

its army of unemployed but qualified and able-bodied youth, Nigeria could be said
to be sitting on a tinder-box” (Beekers, 2008).
The SAP introduced a mobility dimension to exclusion in Nigeria. By this I
mean, “the process by which people are prevented from participating in the eco-

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nomic, political and social life of the community because of reduced accessibility to
opportunities, services and social networks, due in whole or in part to insufficient
mobility in a society and environment built around the assumption of high mobil-
ity” (Kenyon, Lyons, & Rafferty 2002: 210–11). Specifically, the withdrawal of the
Nigerian state from social provisioning negatively impacted the public transport
sector. “Roads deteriorated rapidly because of the shortage of funds for mainte-
nance, vehicle purchases declined as a result of the escalating costs of imported
vehicles, spare part supplies declined for the same reason, and much pressure was
placed by the Bank to force cuts in fuel subsidies” (Porter 2012: 6). On top of
this, Nigeria was hit hard by high inflation, which increased the cost of imported
vehicles and made it difficult to replace worn-out vehicles with newer-looking
ones. For instance, vehicle imports plummeted from 15,750 units in 1979 (dur-
ing the oil boom) to only 2,729 units in 1986 when the SAP was implemented
(Samaila 2015). The number of buses in circulation was severely affected. In Kano,
for instance, the state official statistics show that in 1982, 5,000 buses were regis-
tered, but by 1986, that number fell remarkably to 565 (Kano State Motor Vehicle
Statistics 1986: 4–5). This was a marked contrast to the halcyon years of the oil
boom, when vehicle ownership was so high that even relatively poor farmers could
afford an okada (Guyer 1997: 86). Official records show that the number of reg-
istered cars in Nigeria during the decade of oil boom doubled between 1976 and
1982 (Kumar & Barrett 2008). This unprecedented scale was largely due to the
massive pay increases in the public and private sectors. Even those who could
not afford a car of their own had the means to pay transportation fares (Porter
1995: 4).
Efforts by the federal government to address the problem of reduced mobility
amid the economic crisis from the mid-1980s, most prominently the Urban
Mass Transit program introduced in 1988, failed woefully (Madugu 2018: 45).
To supplement their meagre wages, low-income workers increasingly converted
their private cars to commercial use. But these car owners were reluctant to take
their cars beyond paved roads because of the difficulties of obtaining spare parts
and the soaring cost of pre-owned vehicles in Nigeria. As Gina Porter writes: “So
long as sufficient business could be found on a motorable paved road, no trans-
porter would risk his vehicle operating off-road routes” (2012: 16). As a result,
people living in peripheral regions and off-road communities found it difficult to
bridge spatial distance and improve their chances of upward mobility, giving rise
to further exclusion and inequality. Women in particular were adversely impacted
by poor roads and transport services, which impinged on their access to mar-
kets, services in health and education, agricultural extension services, and banking
 the paradox of urban reform 181

facilities and credit. This reinforces the point that “being mobile and immobile are
important factors of social differentiation and a generator of patterns of inequality”
(Ohnmacht, Maksim, & Bergman 2009: 20).
A combination of high population growth, desertification, moribund

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infrastructures, and shortage of investment stretched the carrying capacity
of Nigeria’s rural economy to its limits, provoking a hemorrhaging of young,
jobless, and single men into urban areas in search of survival jobs and/or access
to formal education (Meagher 2013: 170). The youth turn to urban centers
as a survival strategy supports the argument that “for many people across the
world, moving into the city from rural areas or smaller towns is a first step in
achieving social mobility” (Jaffe, Klaufus, & Colombijn 2012: 644). Urban life,
however, offered no guarantee of instant financial security for rural migrants.
Once in the cities, many youths turned to okada work (Figure 14), reinforcing
the argument that transport work in Africa often provides a route out of poverty
and is central to attaining successful, sustainable livelihoods (Porter et al. 2017).
Okada drivers soon became “men who have not been put to work in factories,
or farms, who cannot enter the civil service, who in many cases are even denied
the rights to full adulthood within a hierarchical society because many cannot
marry. They are men without status” (Walker 2016: 137–38). This is particularly
true of northern Nigerian cities, such as Maiduguri, where driving okadas
became a way for single men to pay often inflated bride prices, marry a wife,
and overcome shame by carving out new spaces of belonging. In short, “Bike
riding is about building up one’s personhood as a responsible and full member
of society, an adult, in continuous check and balance with the environment…
[by] riding a bike, young men had found a way to overcome at least partially
the social inertia of not becoming adults, caused by the lack of resources”
(Burge 2011: 60).
Okada drivers exploited an unmet need in Lagos, tapping a revenue stream
that had not existed previously for timely transport (Ismail 2016: 148). The okada
driver’s time-saving tactics included driving on the wrong side of the road and
ignoring traffic regulations. Because okada drivers could weave in and out of
traffic gridlocks and take people to their destination in time (a rush hour com-
muter in Lagos can take three hours to cover fifteen kilometers), they became
very popular among Lagosians of all walks of life, navigating both spaces of
enormous wealth and privilege (such as Lekki, Victoria Island, Maryland, and
Ikoyi) and “bastions of the uninhabitable” (Simone 2016b) (such as Ajegunle,
Agege, and Amukoko). The time-space compression that okadas embody in La-
gos meant that okada drivers were constantly exposed to, and reminded of, larger
systems of exclusion and exploitation (cf. Sopranzetti 2014: 125; 2017). Okadas
were soon nicknamed Okada Air, which, during the 1980s, was the most popular
local airline in Nigeria. Okadas in Lagos serviced an estimated ten million com-
muters every day and provided jobs to more than 500,000 urban youth (including
182 they eat our sweat

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Fig. 14. Okada drivers in
Alimosho, waiting for passengers
Photo Credit: Author

graduates) as drivers, renters, mechanics, and spare-parts dealers. Taxes paid by

okada drivers constitute an important source of revenue for the local government
through the umbrella transport union, the National Union of Road Transport
Workers (NURTW). During my fieldwork in Lagos, the roads were often burst-
ing with young men carrying passengers on their okadas and weaving in and
out of go-slowed traffic, often recklessly, their passengers holding on for dear
life.
The popularity of okadas among marginal men in Lagos derives precisely from
their relatively low start-up capital and maintenance costs (Ismail 2016), as well
as the feeling of economic freedom and autonomy that okadas afford. As Thomas
Hansen writes: “The promise of earning a fast buck in a job that does not require
formal training, the cool style of the drivers, and the sheer promise of a world flush
with quick cash and potential have made the industry a highly attractive place
for many young men” (Hansen 2006: 187). For many okada drivers, the okada
business is their primary source of income. “Okada business puts food on my table
and change in my pocket. Otherwise, I will be on the streets,” said a young driver
in Alimosho. The okada business is made more attractive by relatively high daily
takings. The majority of okada drivers that I spoke to have a net daily earning of
between N3000 (USD9) and N5000 (USD13), a substantial pay, considering that
Nigeria is home to the largest number of people living in extreme poverty, with
 the paradox of urban reform 183

around half of the country’s population thought to be living on less than USD1.90
a day (CNN 2018).
To most Lagosians, okada drivers symbolize the precariousness and struggle
economy of city life, but they also represent the “do-it-yourself ” mentality of

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Lagosians in the face of crisis. Commuters who used okada did so because of their
easy maneuverability on congested routes and poorly maintained roads. However,
some commuters disliked okadas because of their propensity to cause accidents as
well as their expensive nature compared to other means of public transport. Nearly
all commuters accused okada drivers of being rude men, inclined to violence, law
breaking, and criminally minded. “These okada men you see everywhere are good
for nothing,” said a commuter in Oshodi, adding that “They are foul-mouthed and
violent.” The okada experience is publicly humiliating for some women because of
“the indignity of having to roll up your skirts past your knees, sometimes reveal-
ing your underwear. A respectable housewife, a corporate lady, a college principal,
all having to sit behind a stinking dirty okada driver. Sometimes body hugging [to
avoid falling off]. And the risk to limbs and arms” (Saheed n.d.; Animasawun 2017:
246). Despite their dangerous reputation, many Lagosians continue to use okadas
for lack of a better option. Said one resident of Lagos: “When you’re involved in
okada accident, the fastest way to hospital is on the back of an okada. When your
wife goes into labor, okada is the fastest way to the hospital. Okada is like water—
it has no enemy.” Herein lies the contradiction of okadas. “If you are in a car or
bus, you will curse their incessant horn-blowing and gadfly dodging across lanes;
if you are late for a meeting, you will silently cheer your okada driver as he rides
roughshod over traffic laws to get you to your appointment in time” (Peel 2010: 91–
92). Okadas are symptomatic of government failure in Lagos and, more broadly,
in Nigeria. “Why Exactly are Lagosians attracted to motorcycles? Why, despite the
deaths and robberies, do they keep flying bikes on highways?”, asks one Lagos-
based journalist. “The answer is traffic—the maddening Lagos traffic that makes
multi-car owners abandon their intimidating machines at home and fly bikes to
work instead. Solving the traffic conundrum is what [the state] should be doing,
not the self-confessed ‘wielding the big stick”’ (The Cable 2020). In their blatant
flouting of the rules of the road, argues Michael Peel, okadas reflect and reinforce
“an economic system in which a lack of regulation has allowed debatable charges,
hidden taxes and extortion to flourish” (2010: 92).

“Na Condition Make Crayfish Bend:” Why Youths

become Okada Drivers

At the outset, the work of okada is embedded in a “complex situation of disadvan-

tage” (Mehretu, Pigozzi, & Sommers 2000: 14). Narratives of circumstances that
pushed many young men to take up okada work are emblematic of the “tortuous
184 they eat our sweat

paths and the complex trajectories” of motorbike-taxi drivers elsewhere (such as

Bangkok; see Sopranzetti 2014: 124). During the course of my fieldwork in La-
gos, many okada drivers adduced various circumstances of social disadvantage
that had compelled them to do okada work, most commonly a lack of economic

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alternative, desire to achieve a personal ambition (such as acquiring a university
degree), dreams of paying bride-price and marrying a wife, or simply the need to
chop (eat). Nearly all okada drivers described some difficult experience in their
life that made them “try their luck” in the okada sector. A common saying among
okada drivers in Lagos was “Na condition make crayfish bend,” which suggests
that poor conditions (such as the failure to find employment after graduation)
forced many youths to join the okada business. For these young men, okada work
was essentially a means to a desired end rather than an end unto itself. The per-
sonal narratives of Tayo, Akeem, and Akangbe—three okada drivers in Lagos—are
particularly revealing.
Tayo, a twenth-eight-year-old university graduate, explained the frustrating
experience that pushed him into the okada business:

I am a graduate of public administration from AAU [Ambrose Ali University].

I graduated with a second class upper. Upon graduation, I did the compulsory
NYSC [National Youth Service Corp program] for one year. But I did not get a
job after. For two years, I roamed the streets with my CV with nothing to show.
Most of the money that I saved up from my alawi [a government stipend dur-
ing NYSC] was spent in applying for jobs. I made it to several interviews but
I was rejected. My brother, we both know that in Nigeria it is all about “long
legs” [connections] and whom you know. If you don’t have any Big Man like my-
self, it is almost impossible to make it. I saw candidates who had third class or
even a pass. They were offered a job ahead of me because they had connections.
Me, I don’t know anyone but God. Sometimes, I was told to bring N50,000 or
N25,00 to “settle” [bribe] those who will review my job application. But these
were all “419” [fraud]. My money was eaten and there was no job. Seeing my
plight, my poor mother took out a loan from her informal cooperatives, which I
then used to purchase this okada to put food on the table for myself and daugh-
ter. I feel like I wasted my time and funds in the university because now I can’t
use my certificate to eat and thank my poor mother who worked hard to train
me. I feel like the system has failed me and I am really sad. But since stealing
is not an option for me, I have to continue in this okada work to survive. My
wife used to assist me with some cash from her hair making business. But she
died last year from appendix, which burst in her stomach because we did not
have money to take her to the hospital on time for the operation. Life is really
hard but I have to be strong, at least for my little daughter and my mother. Life
goes on.
 the paradox of urban reform 185

Tayo’s case sums up the trouble with Nigeria, which compels many highly qualified
but unemployed university graduates to turn to okada driving as a survival strat-
egy or to avoid the shame that comes with unemployment. In Nigeria, most jobs
for graduates offer meager salaries that are barely enough for basic survival. It is

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common for a university graduate to earn a monthly salary of N15,000 (USD75),
out of which s/he must devote N10,000 (USD70) for the cost of bus fare. However,
many graduates still accept such jobs partly to avoid the stigma associated with
idleness in Nigeria. As one graduate told me, “I needed to get out of the house and
search for job, any job. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” For such poorly paid
graduates, a worthless job does not exist. To ensure their daily bread and avoid
a life of shame, they would do anything (Mbembe 2001a: 157; cf. Trefon 2002:
487). On the poor salary situation in Nigeria, one retired traffic police officer in
Alimosho told me, “Things are getting worse daily because there is [a] scarcity of
jobs outside. Look at the turnout of students everyday in the university. There is
no job for them. [It] is just the problem of this country. So, if it happens that I say
I want to employ people for [a] traffic job and I ask them to pay N50,000 up front,
they will bring it, because there are no jobs outside. And it fuels corruption. The
Yorùbá adage says eni ebi npa ko gbo wasu [‘You don’t preach to a hungry person’].
So, you find out that corruption increases.”
The second story is that of Akeem, a thirty-year old man who migrated to Lagos
from Osun state in search of a better life. Akeem’s father sold his only plot of land to
raise the money needed to acquire his okada. Through okada work, Akeem hopes
to raise enough money in a few years to return his father’s favor and acquire a
college degree.

I have always wanted to be a graduate of mechanical engineering—that’s my

dream. I desire it a lot. It is my passion. But my family is very poor. My dad is
a farmer and my mum sell okrika [second-hand clothes]. My parents could not
afford to send me to university. We are five in my family. I’m the last born and the
only boy. My elder sisters had to sell bags of pure water on extremely dangerous
highways so that I can raise money for my secondary school. One of them was
even forced into early marriage to raise money for us. None of my sisters went
to school as my parents felt they were girls and it was a waste of time. I came to
Lagos and took this okada business to make something good of my life. It’s not
easy but I am coping by God’s grace.

Then there is Akangbe, a forty-five-year-old “youthman” who became an okada

driver to save up toward getting married and socially becoming a man.

I joined okada to raise money to marry so that I can become somebody, a man.
I will be 45 years old this year and I’m still not married and no children. Most
186 they eat our sweat

people laugh at me and call me a boy because I can’t take care of a family. So, I
took up okada work to raise money in order to marry a wife, to feel good about
myself again. You know, it is not easy to marry a wife these days. The family of
the woman wants so much and the list of things you have to buy is a lot for a

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poor man like me. My girlfriend of many years left me last year for another man
because he had money to throw around and her family encouraged her to leave
me, even though we have been together for more than five years. I know she love
me more, but she was under pressure. Nowadays, girls their eyes are open. They
like money and will go for comfort than love.

Okada Associations: Predators and Protectors

Okada driving in Lagos is embedded in strong support networks that put the no-
tion of “people as infrastructure” (Simone 2004b) into practice. Ordinarily, all new
okada drivers in Lagos must obtain drivers’ cards and register their motorcycles
with one of the several okada associations affiliated with the National Union of
Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the Road Transport Employers Associa-
tion of Nigeria (RTEAN). These include the All Nigerians Auto Bike Commercial
Owners and Workers’ Association (ANACOWA), the largest okada association in
Lagos with about 57 branches, the Amalgamated Commercial Motorcycle Owners
and Riders Association of Nigeria (ACCOMORAN), the Motorcycle and Tricycle
Operations Association of Nigeria (MOTOAN), and the Motorcycle Association
of Lagos State (MOALS). These associations control the market through self-
regulation; they provide protection to their members, represent their interests, and
use their economic power and numerical strength to influence political or policy
decisions. These associations emerged to fill the void left by government failure
to regulate the public transport sector (Kumar 2011: 17). Okada associations are
often highly organized into zones, with each zone controlled by a branch of the
union.⁶ In addition to the daily taxes collected by the local council—known as
“tickets”—all okada drivers are required to pay a one-time NURTW membership
fee in return for the right to operate and form an identity. Ticket collections con-
stitute a primary source of revenue for the agberos, who purchase them in bulk
from the local government and sell them to okada drivers at inflated prices.
In Lagos, the NURTW’s control is enforced by the agberos who extract ticket
payments from okada drivers, a day-to-day practice which can quickly turn vi-
olent should the driver be reluctant to pay the illegal ticket fee. The NURTW’s

⁶ Across Nigeria, okada associations have sometimes demonstrated themselves to be highly orga-
nized and politically engaged. For example, Smith recalls how okada drivers were among the most
ardent supporters of the new Biafra movement: “They spent hours at newsstands in towns across south-
eastern Nigeria, discussing the country’s ills, debating the best solutions to problems of corruption and
inequality, and sharing the latest political rumors…” (Smith 2014: 796–97).
 the paradox of urban reform 187

chain of command is generally well defined: the agbero is in charge of ticketing

and collection of illegal dues, which he remits to his unit chairmen, who report
to the zonal chairman, who reports to the local chairman, who, in turn, reports
to the state chairman, who is the direct connection to the national Chairman and,

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along this chain, financial returns must be made on a daily basis. These burden-
some ticket dues—a constant source of (violent) confrontation between drivers
and agberos—are used to manage and oil the NURTW’s operations by seeking
favors from politicians and police chiefs. During my fieldwork in Oshodi and Al-
imosho, okada drivers shared harrowing stories of clashes over inflated taxes on
the daily tickets issued by agberos, resulting in the death of, or injury to, fellow
drivers. One okada man had this to say about the routine ticket extortion:

Every morning we have to pay ticket money to agberos. On the ticket from the
local government is written N100, but agbero will add one more zero to it to make
N1,000. If you argue, they will beat you up, damage your okada, and stop you from
working. Some of the union boys carry juju (charms) in form of a ring (oruka).
When they slap you, you’re gone! Because of their spiritual power, we don’t waste
time arguing with them. We settle them and get on with our work to avoid delay.
What else can we do?

One okada driver who plies the Oshodi-Ikotun route told me that he pays N1,400
(USD3.58) daily (for booking and loading) to the agberos. Of this amount, he
gets a receipt of only N300 (USD0.77). He pays another N100 (USD0.26) called
owo chairman (money for the union chairman), bringing his daily total to N1,500
(about USD4). This largely unreceipted payment to the NURTW is separate from
another N500 collected by a different set of agberos contracted by traffic police
inspectors in complicity with members of the Lagos State Traffic Management
Authority (LASTMA). Recently, NURTW-affiliated okada associations in Lagos,
such as NNAMORAL Motorcycles Owners and Riders Association, have been
embroiled in a negotiation with the new wave of bike-hailing startup companies
(Gokada, Oride, and Max.ng), whose drivers are forced by agberos to part with five
times the original price of union ticket fees on a daily basis (Quartz Africa 2019).
On the front of most “official” tickets issued by the agberos, the sum of N100 is
printed in bold. On the reverse side, however, the handwritten sum of N500 next
to an official stamp is the real charge, according to many okada drivers whom I
spoke to in Lagos. An NURTW official explained this apparent discrepancy: “For
our collaboration with the companies and the government, we have allowed them
to pay N500 (USD1.38) which is half of what the normal okada in Lagos pays. And
then they will also get N100 (USD0.27) tickets from their local governments, that
brings it up to N600 (USD1.66) daily per bike” (Techpoint.africa 2019). However,
an executive of one of the bike-hailing companies dismissed this claim: “Except
government taxes [N100], every other thing is extortion” (Quartz Africa 2019).
188 they eat our sweat

Resisting the agberos in Lagos is generally not recommended since “with these
unions, matters ranging from takeover of motor parks, failure to pay for tickets
and dues by drivers, conflict of interest, as well as minor arguments, could spiral
into bloody wars within hours… innocent members of the public caught in the

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crossfire end up paying the ultimate price” (Sunday Magazine 2017). As a result of
having to pay daily union tickets, many operators in Lagos have been forced out
of work/contract. As one driver explains:

Many people get their vehicles on hire purchase basis and they have had to de-
liver certain amount to their principals. But if you calculate how much goes into
payments to union people in Lagos, it has forced many people out of this busi-
ness. There are many people who got vehicles from people in the past but could
not pay when it develops fault because of the huge number of tickets you have to
purchase before you can be allowed to work. It is pathetic. It’s a huge tax empire.
(Olawoyin. 2019)

The complicity of the NURTW and the Lagos State Government reinforces the
argument that “state agencies often do not act on their own interest. Non-state
agencies of governance are implicated in the transgression of state law by state
agencies” (Eckert 2006: 53). Despite popular perception of the NURTW in La-
gos as aggressive protection rackets mobilized by profit at the expense of laboring
workers, along with growing calls for their statewide ban (Sunday Magazine 2017),
membership in okada associations remains a supportive network of personal pro-
tection and solidarity for poor, often migrant okada drivers. For these drivers, the
okada association is a means through which their everyday interests are protected
within the predatory and unpredictable roads of Lagos. At the neighborhood
units, members of okada associations, such as ANACOWA, form close-knit groups
with a strong sense of collective identity. Drivers in Lagos described their asso-
ciations as “brothers” and “extended families” in which all members provided
each other with unwavering support, especially in time of wahala (trouble). As
one driver puts it: “When we are driving okada, we are one… we protect the in-
terests of the okada driver—whether right or wrong.” Said another driver: “It’s a
system you enter by force—force of the economy. That’s what always bring our
solidarity—people united by frustration. It’s like particles attracted by magnet”
(Peel 2010: 93).
Okada associations render financial support to needy members by keeping a
common savings (ajo) that is allocated to members “turn-by-turn” or based on
emergency needs such as accidents, funeral, or marriage expenses. Such convivi-
ality is fostered by mutual need and the prospect of mutual gain. The sense of soli-
darity among okada drivers cuts across ethnic and religious lines and is popularly
expressed in slogans such as “Family” or “Mourn One, Mourn All,” “Come Rain,
Come Sun.” These solidarity slogans reclaim the traditional Yorùbá worldview that
 the paradox of urban reform 189

generally frowns upon working exclusively for one’s own profit (Beekers & Gool
2012: 23). Beyond financial support, members of okada associations also display
a strong (sometimes blind) sense of loyalty, evident in the swift mobilization of
okada drivers against any threat to their individual or collective survival. Acci-

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dents involving cars and okadas often draw scores of supportive okada drivers in
a few minutes. Even the police are careful in how they deal with okada drivers;
the Nigerian press has carried many accounts of deadly clashes between the two
groups (Smith 2014: 796). “When we are driving an okada we are one,” said an
okada associational leader in Lagos. “We protect the interests of the okada driver—
whether wrong or right” (Peel 2010: 93). In 2005, okada drivers destroyed property
to the tune of N4 million in solidarity with one of their members who was shot and
killed by a military officer after he crashed his okada into the officer’s car (ibid.).
It is in this context of solidarity that we must understand why okada drivers and
their associational leaders took to the streets en masse to protest the Lagos State
Road Traffic Law of 2012, which they perceived as discriminatory and violating
of their right to move freely in Lagos, and therefore, their chances of everyday
survival.

Conforming to the Right Path? Motorcycles, Morality,

and Marginality

The late geographer Doreen Massey (1994: 156) draws our attention to the politics
of mobility and access, arguing that “some are more in charge of it than others;
some initiate flows and movement, others don’t; some are more on the receiv-
ing end of it than others; some are effectively imprisoned by it.” Two points are
noteworthy here: on the one hand, the close relationship between power relations
and the production of space, and on the other, the embeddedness of automobility
within the political. As Tim Cresswell reminds us, “Movement is rarely just move-
ment; it carries with it the burden of meaning and it is this meaning that jumps
scales” (Cresswell 2006: 6–7). To these, I add a third important point—the closely
intertwined nature of mobility and morality. All discussions of mobility are un-
derpinned by “moral overtones of one sort or another” (Morley 2000: 238). This is
true of okada work in Nigeria which, has been all along a site of monitoring, en-
forcement, and protection of public morality and sanity, reinforcing the manner
in which urban spaces tend to give rise to “attempts to separate and draw lines; to
policies of order-making and securitization” (Christensen & Albrecht 2020: 389).
Nowhere is this more evident than in northern Nigeria (especially Kano and
Zamfara states), where Sharia law has been used to exclude women from using
okadas in the name of public morality, generating popular discontent and protests
among poor okada drivers (Adamu 2008: 148). The popular practice of men and
women sitting very close to each other on okadas or siting astride an okada was
190 they eat our sweat

interpreted as an offense to public morality. A group of concerned husbands dis-

approved of such type of iniquitous mobility. As the Acting Director-General of
the Sharia Commission in Kano commented: “Everyone knows the type or man-
ner in which women sit on okadas and it looks quite adulterous because women

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sit quite close to okada drivers with their bodies touching each other. If mere
looking can lead to adultery, then the manner in which women sit on okadas
can increase the rate of adultery” (Weekly Trust 2006). Subsequently, authori-
ties in Kano and Zamfara banned women from using okadas to get around town
(Adamu 2008: 148).
In Kano, the State House of Assembly passed its Traffic Amendment Law in
May 2004, which forbade women from using okadas. The state then imported
some 1600 three-seater motorized rickshaws (known as adaidaita sahu, literally
“conforming to the right path”) which, unlike okadas, preserved the sexual segre-
gation of men and women. The law punished defaulters with six-month impris-
onment and a fine of N5000 (USD37). A 9000-strong hisba vigilante was set up
to stop okada drivers from carrying as passengers women unrelated to them. The
hisba was entrusted with the powers to fine drivers and confiscate their okadas.
Over 2000 okadas were confiscated by the hisba, who often ordered women off of
them. A report by the Human Rights Watch alleges widespread abuses by hisba
groups, including extrajudicial arrests and floggings; stopping vehicles carrying
men and women and forcing the women to disembark; disrupting conversations
between men and women in public places on the grounds of alleged immoral-
ity; the seizure and destruction of alcoholic drink and the causing of damage to
the vehicles transporting them; and the violation of the rights of people to pri-
vacy (Mustapha & Ismail 2016: 3). Excluded and enraged okada drivers took to
the streets in protest, attacking members of the hisba group, and setting fire to the
state-endorsed tricycle-taxis. The okada protests were largely economically driven,
as drivers stood to lose substantial income if the law held. Women, for instance,
made up the bulk of okada passengers. Also, in barring women from driving with
men, the law deepened the inequality between men and women. Equal access to
transportation must be understood as critical to ensuring social and spatial equal-
ity (Polk 1998: 208). In Kano, the law banning okada drivers from carrying female
passengers met with such resistance that Governor Shekarau had to relax it in his
second term in order to avoid alienating the large Muslim okada constituency,
leaving it to each operator’s conscience whether to carry women passengers or not
(Meagher 2018: 193).
If the rationale for banning okadas in northern Nigeria was public morality and
decency, in Lagos, the official ban on okadas was legitimized as part of making La-
gos a “world class” megacity and restoring sanity to chaotic roads. While in the case
of northern Nigeria, local authorities made some effort, if woefully inadequate, to
 the paradox of urban reform 191

provide an alternative to okadas, in Lagos, okada drivers were left to fend for them-
selves, reinforcing popular views that the post-1999 Lagos renewal campaign had
“no place for the poor.”

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The Lagos State Road Traffic Law

No urban transport policy has elicited more heated debates in Nigeria than the
Lagos State Road Traffic Law implemented in 2012 by the Fashola-led govern-
ment as part of its efforts to make Lagos a “world class” megacity and a “center of
excellence.” The Road Traffic Law (Schedule II) restricted the activities of okada
drivers on 475 major routes, claiming that okadas facilitate incidences of armed
robberies and constitute a menace to urban lives and properties. To support this
point, the government produced a documentary, entitled Aye Olokada (“Life of
an okada driver”), aimed at demonizing okada drivers and discouraging millions
from using them. Labeling okada drivers as criminals was part of an official pro-
cess of “erosion of the claim of the poor to be legitimate urban citizens” in the
neoliberal city (Bhan 2009: 140). In a speech titled “Freedom from Fear,” Fashola
challenged critics of the traffic law to visit the hospitals and emergency wards and
observe the countless poor Lagosians who have lost limbs and arms; those who
have lost children; or those who have become orphans due to the recklessness of
okada drivers. In less than two decades, argues Fashola, okadas have gained such
huge prominence that they have become a phenomenon that should not have been
allowed in the first place: “The only way to stop the business from flourishing is by
not patronizing them… If the income from okada business dwindles, the business
proposition of those in it will change” (Vanguard 2012a). Subsequently, in 2008,
the Fashola government set up a Tribunal of Inquiry into okada activities across
Lagos state. The Tribunal recommended that:

It is necessary to restrict okada operations to those Local Government Areas

where they are needed and even then, to certain roads within those Local Gov-
ernment Areas. They should then be prohibited from inter-Local Government
operations as well as operations on our major highways and bridges like Third
Mainland Bridge, Eko Bridge and all Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) designated routes.
(Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry 2012)

At issue here is not simply the future of okadas, but of the entire okada culture
in Lagos. As a fundamental aspect of mobility for millions of Lagosians, okada
driving is embedded in affective economies and support social networks that build
the infrastructure of Lagos. This, of course, is not to glorify okada drivers, whose
dangerous conduct on the road has caused the untimely deaths of many Lagosians,
192 they eat our sweat

earning them the tag “murdercycles.” One senior editor of the Vanguard describes
Lagos as at the mercy of okada drivers:

Almost on a daily basis, bus and truck loads of youths are being transported

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into Lagos. These young ones have no relations in Lagos and are basically illit-
erates. They have no jobs and hope to get menial jobs in Lagos. Many of these
end up as mai-guards, cart pushers, load carriers and majority end up as okada
drivers who learn to drive okada on the high ways. They learn on the job and
the result is the increase in accident rate. These okada drivers are everywhere in
Lagos. You will find them on Apapa, Mile-Two, Oshodi-Apapa Expressway, in-
side streets and roads in Lagos. There are no rules guiding them. They ply their
okada against the traffic and are often the cause of major okada accidents in Lagos
which have claimed the lives of many…. These okada drivers have worsened the
already chaotic traffic situation [in Lagos] due to deplorable condition of the road.
In many places they occupy more than half of the road and policemen
are helpless. They park on the roads, causing heavy traffic and obstruction.
(Vanguard 2018)

In northern Nigeria, okadas are also known as dàfàa-dukà taxi (“cook all”)
because of their reputation of being frequently involved in road accidents—where,
metaphorically, all will be “cooked.” General hospitals across Nigerian cities from
Lagos to Maiduguri often have a dedicated “Okada ward” or “Jincheng ward” (after
the Jincheng motorcycles manufactured in China), where only victims of okada ac-
cidents are treated. In some cities, hospital records show that 75 percent of corpses
in the mortuary belonged to okada drivers or their passengers (Dan Borno 2011).
It is no wonder that for many operators, okada work is “a last resort because of the
high risk involved in it. You could collide with a car, bus, tipper or trailer, or even
your fellow okada driver” (Daily Trust 2015). Yet, according to one okada driver in
Lagos, “the danger of driving a motorcycle is much less than the danger of starv-
ing without a job” (Animasawun 2017: 243). While acknowledging the dangers of
okadas, one driver in Alimosho lamented the lack of a viable alternative:

Okada used to be a very serious problem on our road. Drivers won’t use their
okadas to carry passengers but to snatch people’s handbags. Before the law, okada
accidents were 24/7. Some okada dead bodies are pulled out under trucks and
trailers in Lagos almost on a daily basis. But with the law, accidents have reduced.
So, governor Fashola has tried. But the real problem is that he has not given us
okada drivers another option for eating. As far as you don’t have anything to do,
you will do and undo. Anything you see you will do. If you don’t have work at
hand, hunger will beat you. A hungry man is an angry man.
 the paradox of urban reform 193

A leader of one of the okada associations believes that the real threat to public
safety lies in Nigeria’s poor quality roads rather than in okadas: “Our problem here
is that of roads. The roads the government built since 1982 have not been renewed.
The roads used by motorists are the very same ones used by cart pushers, water

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vendors, wheelbarrow, and my members—the okada operators. And the roads are
not wide enough to contain the vehicles. This is why you see this congestion. It is
not caused by my members alone. This is why a lot of road accidents involving my
members happen.” This claim is not without merit. Roads in Nigeria and much of
West Africa are in a state of decay and dilapidation: “Central avenues are as bad as
streets in peripheral neighborhoods. Many roads that were paved a few years ago
are now paths of beaten earth. They are broken up by sections that juxtapose efforts
at resurfacing with potholes, crevices, and ditches which can be as wide as the road
itself. Most traffic circles are nothing more than a heap of old tires or empty, rusted
barrels” (Mbembe & Roitman 1995: 328). No wonder a Yorùbá adage describes
roads in Nigeria as the “long coffin that holds 1400 corpses” (Isichei 2004: 213).
One columnist in the Nigerian Osun Defender compared the scale of deaths
caused by bad quality roads in Lagos to Boko Haram—the violent extremist group
in northeast Nigeria that kills innocent people on a daily basis. The columnist ad-
duces the case of the Lagos-Badagry expressway, which in the past seven years has
become a death trap:

From Seme, the Nigerian-Benin Republic border to Volkswagen in Ojo local gov-
ernment area of Lagos State, there are over 10,000 potholes and several other
valleys that are big enough to consume a car. Ordinarily, from Seme border to
Mile 12 is not supposed to be more than 45 minutes for any vehicle speeding at
the moderate of 80km per hour, but due to the horrible condition of the roads,
commuters spend more than 4 to 5 hours lurking one another up in hundreds of
the bad spots on the road. As a matter of fact, vehicles plying the road get spoilt so
easy, thereby making owners spend lot of hard-earned money in repairing their
vehicles (Osun Defender 2012).

Turning now to the Lagos Road Traffic Law, the bone of contention centers on
Section 3(1) (5) and (8), which restricts the spatial and temporal activities of okada
drivers in the city and imposes serious punishment on offenders (up to three years
imprisonment):

3—(1) No person shall ride, drive or propel a cart, wheelbarrow, motorcycle or

tricycle on any of the routes specified in Schedule II to this law.⁷

⁷ From the perspective of the Lagos State Government, Section 3(1) of the LSRTL is a deliberate
legislative response to the growing public concern about the spate of avoidable deaths, crime, and high
casualty rate directly associated with the commercial motorcycle operation in Lagos.
194 they eat our sweat

(5) Any person who fails to comply with any of the provisions of this Section
commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to—

(i) Imprisonment for a term of three (3) years or render community service

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in accordance with the provisions of Section 347 of the Administration of
Criminal Justice Law of Lagos State; and
(ii) Have his vehicle forfeited to the State

(8) As from the Commencement of this Law Commercial motorcycles shall only
operate between the hours of 6.00 am—8.00pm within the State
(Lagos State Road Traffic Law [LSRTL] 2012: A76–A77)

The law gave much discretionary power to officers of authority to ensure imple-
mentation and zero tolerance. Section 28 of the law states: “Any Police Officer or
officer of the Authority may apprehend without warrant any person who commits
within his view, or whom he reasonably suspects of having committed, an offence
under this Law” (LSRTL 2012: A88). The public outcry among okada drivers over
such powers is not unjustified, considering that the Nigeria Police Force has an
unenviable legacy of corruption, brutality, and low accountability (Agbiboa 2015).
For instance, the #EndSARS protests that erupted across Nigerian cities in October
2020 were the result of decades of brutal and unaccountable policing. In giving
discretionary powers to police officers, therefore, the law, ostensibly enacted to
protect lives and properties on Lagos road, paradoxically created a vicious circle
where insecurity produces the very behavior that fosters corruption and further
urban insecurity. What the Lagos State Government is being indicted for here is
the commission of “lawfare,” that is, “the resort to legal instruments, to the violence
inherent in the law, to commit acts of discrimination, coercion, even erasure…
reducing people to bare life” (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006: 144).
Despite these restrictions (Figure 15), many okada drivers remained defiant
by continuing to ply the restricted routes, daring the government-run paramil-
itary task force known as Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI). During fieldwork,
I watched as KAI officers impounded or crushed hundreds of okadas and arrested
their drivers en masse. According to Tunde, an okada driver in Alimosho: “Any-
time we hear that KAI is around, we will take cover because there is nothing you
can do but run. If you drag the okada with them, they will carry you and the okada
to Alausa [Lagos State headquarters], which is double wahala [trouble]. What can
you do? So, we run for our dear lives.”
For many okada drivers such as Tunde, the state is at fault because it has not
provided drivers with an alternative source of livelihood while depriving them of
the only means that they have managed to create for themselves. On the issue of
okada restriction, Lagosians that I spoke to were generally torn between a legal-
istic and survivalist approach. For some Lagosians, okada drivers are lawbreakers
 the paradox of urban reform 195

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Fig. 15. A street posting
restricting road access for
commercial motorcyclists
(okadas)
Photo credit: Author.

who constitute a nuisance to Lagos roads. As one commuter said: “If they [okada
drivers] are violating the law, then whatever happens is good for them. No one is
above the law.”
Other residents in Lagos took a different approach. Having just witnessed a
crackdown on okadas by KAI officials, one market woman in Lagos told me,
“In Nigeria today, there is unemployment everywhere you look. Universities are
churning out graduates without jobs. These okada men are trying to survive on
their own. The state needs to provide jobs for them. You can’t just limit their mo-
bility or take away their only means of eating, something they use to feed their
family, and you expect them to disappear just like that. They won’t.” Taking this
survivalist view further, civil rights activists in Nigeria have generally criticized the
state ban on okadas as lazy and “anti-people”:

The restriction on okadas is not only a lazy approach to problem solving, but
pedestrian, unjust, inhumane, callous and vicious. Taxis and buses are used for the
famous “one chance” [theft and kidnapping], why weren’t they banned? Militants
and pirates use[d] speed boats to bunker oil and attack ships on the high sea.
Were they banned even at the height of the Niger-Delta militancy? For years,
Nigerian airlines have become flying coffins leading to the death of hundreds, not
even the lives of prominent Nigerians were spared. Aircrafts and air travel should
have been banned! It becomes glaring why okada drivers are singled out for ban,
throwing their families and dependents deeper into the abyss of privation. For
196 they eat our sweat

Vehicles Involved in road accident In Nigeria (Q4, 2018)

Saloon car 1,312

Minibus 821
Motorcycle 747

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Truck 460
Trailer 182

Fig. 16. Vehicles involved in road accidents in Nigeria

Credit: Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (2018).

such an anti-people move to be taken somewhat hastily without due consultation

with stakeholders, to a large extent, is an indication that these state Governors
have lost touch with the common man (Ilevbare, 2013, cited in Animasawun,
2017: 247).

For their part, okada drivers and their associations felt expressly discriminated
against by the Lagos State Government, since other forms of transportation in
the megacity were not restricted. In his Sworn Affidavit against the Lagos State
Government at the Federal High Court in Ikeja, Mr. Aliyu Wamba, Chairman of
the ANACOWA, claimed that okada restrictions were imposed by the Lagos State
Government, “[on] account of our being poor and underprivileged as some of the
deadliest robberies and felonies are committed using cars, and there are more fa-
tal car accidents than okada accidents. We all pay permit fees to the government
as conditions for operating okadas from which they (the government) earn size-
able revenue for Lagos. We are not averse to regulations which are limited to speed
limits, use of helmets and maximum number of passengers.” Survey evidence from
the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics on cars involved in road accidents in Nigeria in
2018 confirms part of Wamba’s claim (Figure 16).
Wamba’s statement should be interpreted as an attempt by okada drivers in La-
gos to lay claim to equal rights of membership in a political urbanity that is not
only spectacularly unequal but also highly uneven. In the wake of their restriction,
okada drivers took to the streets to protest indiscriminate arrest of their members
and forcible seizure of their okadas by corrupt and violent police and KAI officials.
The protesters carried placards with inscriptions such as: “You gave us no job, we
gave ourselves one and you are killing us for it.” “People like okada pass motor. Al-
low us! Free us!!!” “They say okada drivers are robbers, who gave them the guns?”
“Fashola, give me my vote back.” According to one of the protesters, “We are here
to tell the Lagos State Government that enough is enough of the humiliation of
poor people. The law banning okada is a bad law. This is the start of the struggle to
liberate the poor people in Nigeria and the struggle must continue until we win”
(Izuekwe, Dedeigbo, & Toheeb 2012).
 the paradox of urban reform 197

Some protesters took out their anger on the World Bank-funded BRTs, vandal-
izing them and pelting their uniformed operators with stones. For okada drivers,
the BRTs are symbols of their marginalization and oppression in the city they call
home (Eko Ile). Of course, the introduction of the BRTs into parts of Lagos, along

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with the creation of dedicated bus lanes for them, coincided with the prohibition
of okada drivers from plying major roads and bridges across Lagos. That restric-
tion led to the disappearance of okadas from many parts of the coastal city, leaving
many Lagosians with no way to get to and from work. In addition, transport fares
tripled with the contraction in supply. As one editor notes:

The [okada] ban has abruptly eviscerated the means of livelihood of tens of thou-
sands of Lagosians, mainly the already poor or semi-poor. There are families just
getting by before that will now truly struggle to eat three meals daily. With the
crowds at bus stops and terminuses these days, Nigerians are technically fighting
a bloodshed-less civil war to navigate the otherwise simple task of finding a bus
to office. Those who aren’t strong enough for the challenge, or those who aren’t
patient enough to wait endless minutes, end up enduring the arduous option of
long treks to their office and back home. (The Cable 2020)

The politics of patronage surrounding the Lagos state urban renewal project is
also noteworthy. Many okada drivers felt betrayed by the Fashola-led government
and his ruling political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). During the
mass protest, one okada driver displayed a banner with the inscription: “Fashola
Distributed Helmets in 2011. NOW Destroying OUR Bikes.” The import of this
banner emerged in an interview with the late Dr. Fredrick Fasheun, the founder
of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and National Chairman of the Unity Party
of Nigeria (UPN):

Lagos citizens must remember that this [APC] party used and dumped okada
drivers after harnessing their support and services in the elections of 1999, 2003,
2007 and 2011. During campaigns for those polls, APC politicians even donated
to okada drivers branded helmets, motorcycles and reflective jackets. But no
sooner did the Action Congress of Nigeria [now a part of the APC] come into
power than they turned around to bite the finger that fed them, by banning okada
all over Lagos. (The Punch 2014a)

During my fieldwork in Lagos, many okada drivers told me that they received
their okadas and crash helmets from Fashola’s aides in the run-up to the 2011 elec-
tions, in exchange for their votes and loyalty to the APC. Such political stratagem
is neither new nor unique to electoral politics in Lagos. Orji Uzo Kalo, the for-
mer governor of Abia state, won substantial support in his state by pledging and
then creating a program to provide okada drivers with new motorbikes on credit
198 they eat our sweat

(Smith 2007: 198). Similarly, in Borno state, buying thousands of motorcycles for
supporters was key to Ali Modo Sheriff ’s re-election in 2007. In the run-up to the
2015 elections in Lagos, the enforcement of the ban on okadas was appreciably re-
laxed across Lagos state in what was a deliberate political ploy aimed at securing

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the votes of okada drivers. In offering instant reprieve to okada drivers, political
elites in Lagos had mastered the art of “manipulat[ing] the mechanisms of dis-
cipline and conform[ing] to them only in order to evade them…” (de Certeau
1984: xiv).
De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) is often deployed to illus-
trate how social actors in structurally weak positions use tactics in the absence
of the possibility for more enduring strategizing. Here, however, I ascribe these
tactics to political elites, not the okada drivers. In the wake of the traffic law,
politicians from other Nigerian states seized the opportunity offered by the sour
relations between okada unions and the Lagos State Government to shore up their
own patronage. In the build-up to the 2015 elections, the governor of Ekiti state,
Ayodele Fayose, pledged not to ban okadas as they had done in Lagos, arguing,
“If you cannot provide an alternative, you must not take away the only one that is
available. I won’t ban okada in Ekiti state.” Instead, Governor Fayose challenged
okada associations across Ekiti to partner with his administration in registering
all its members, in view of the incessant robbery operations that plagued the state.
Addressing okada drivers in Ado Ekiti, Fayose said: “If they cancel okada in ev-
ery other state, that won’t happen in Ekiti State. But what I want is disciplined
and responsible motorcyclists’ association that can partner with government for
meaningful development. Government alone cannot maintain security; I have
to partner with an organization like you. But I won’t tolerate unruly behavior”
(The Sun 2014). The former governor of Edo state, Adams Oshiomole, also ex-
pressed similar sentiments, saying “It is a class issue and I belong to the working
class, so I cannot ban okada. First, I believe that okada is a response to certain
deficit in our intra-urban transportation system” (Ilevbare 2013). In like vein, the
former governor of Anambra state, Peter Obi, commented: “I agree that okada con-
tributes to crime, but we must also accept that many of them are also good people
and we cannot punish the multitude because of the sins of a few” (Animasawun
2017: 246).
Of interest in this chapter is the fact that okada drivers in Lagos articulated their
grievances in the language of rights (e.g. to free movement), their everyday strug-
gle for rights being the means of contesting the perceived injustices and violence of
the government toward them. As one okada protest banner read: “Okada and Tri-
cycle workers! They have Human and Constitutional Rights!” The open defiance
of okada drivers against the Road Traffic Law resulted in violent clampdowns from
the KAI and the mobile police. In his sworn affidavit in the Ikeja High Court, Mr.
Wamba criticized the fact that “On a day-to-day basis officers of authority forcibly
seize our okadas and detain our poor members at the Task Force Office in Alausa.
 the paradox of urban reform 199

Law enforcement officials have arrested me on a couple of occasions along with my

okada forcibly seized from me and detained.” If dealing with informality requires
recognizing the right to the city of informal urban workers (Roy 2005: 148), then
it is vital to probe deeper into what that right entails and how it applies to the daily

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struggle of okada drivers for economic survival and recognition in Lagos.

Right to the City: The Okada Struggle for Survival

Henri Lefebvre’s (1996) “right to the city” remains a tour de force on how we the-
orize the politics of urban space and the transformative possibilities and practices
of city life. Here, “right” refers not just to a “legal claim enforceable through a
judicial process” but essentially a “right to totality, a complexity, in which the
parts are part of a single whole to which the right is demanded… a collectivity of
rights, not individualistic rights” (Marcuse 2009: 193). Lefebvre’s right to the city
is based on two fundamental rights—appropriation and participation—which are
both earned through meeting particular responsibilities and obligations, in which
each person helps to create the city as artwork by performing one’s everyday life
in urban spaces (Lefebvre 1996). By blending appropriation (usage) and partic-
ipation (decision-making) rights into the inhabitance of urban space, Lefebvre
challenges the fictional division between the public and private, while simultane-
ously rethinking both liberal-democratic forms of citizenship (Purcell 2003: 565)
and capitalist social relations (Butler 2012: 150).
Lefebvre’s concept of right to the city has some limitations. To start with, right
to the city is imbued with a diversity of often-contradictory meanings (Marcuse
2014: 8). Many analysts (mis)read Lefebvre’s right to the city as one aimed specif-
ically and literally at the city as a built environment, that is, a fixed physical space.
This “collaborationist” spatial reading, as Marcuse (2014) calls it, tends to overlook
the power relations that entrench patterns of exploitation and adverse incorpora-
tion in the city. Yet, using the context of Lefebvre’s own reading, the right to the
city suggests a political claim and a revolutionary call, in short, a refusal to let one-
self be discharged from the city through forced dispersal to the peripheries, with
attendant dearth of economic opportunities (Lefebvre 1996: 158). More directly:
“The right to the city legitimates the refusal to allow oneself to be removed from
urban reality by a discriminatory and segregative organization. This right of the
citizens… proclaims the inevitable crisis of city centers based on segregation….
which reject towards peripheral spaces all those who do not participate in political
privileges” (Lefevbre 1996: 34). Here, the use of segregation implies both market-
driven processes that deepen social divisions and accentuate the polarization of
cityscapes, as well as the re-location of marginal groups into ghettos by deliberate
enforcement of state policies informed by neoliberal visions. Lefebvre (1996) un-
derstands the proliferation of capitalist forms of accumulation as intensifying the
200 they eat our sweat

disenfranchisement of urban inhabitants. To address this situation, he argues that

the right to the city must necessarily involve an urban spatial approach to political
struggles, with the participation of all those who inhabit the city without discrim-
ination (Dikeç 2001: 1730). In this light, the Traffic Law in Lagos State represents

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a prime example of segregation in its restriction of okada drivers from plying 475
routes, leaving a dent on their daily struggle for survival. During my fieldwork,
many okada drivers complained that the law has “added salt to our injury.” As
Jimoh, a driver in Alimosho, recounted:

Before, I used to run my okada in Apongbon area. It is a busy area, and in a day,
I can make up to N4000. Sometimes, I could earn N200 for just one trip with a
passenger. And if the passengers are two, that will be N350. The trip is quicker
because I pass through tarred express roads. But now, with the government ban
on us, I have been forced to relocate to Ikotun where business is very slow and
I operate mainly in small streets and over short distances. The roads are so bad
and every time I have to take my okada to mechanic for repair because of one
fault or another. Local government has refused to do anything. For them, it is
not important road. For each trip, I get only N30. In a day I am lucky if I make
N1,500. Yet my family bukata [needs] keep increasing. My four children need to
chop [eat] and go to school. My first child, Banke, is starting high school this year.
Where do I go from here? What else can I do?

Jimoh’s concluding questions gives a sense of how the need to maintain a digni-
fied life underlies the poor’s sense of justice (Bayat 1997: 61). For an impecunious
head of a household such as Jimoh, not only would the failure to provide for his
children impinge on the quality of their lives, it would inflict an excruciating blow
to his pride as a complete man. Jimoh’s predicament and fear of “social death”
mirrors that of many drivers who have seen their daily income halved by the en-
actment of the Road Traffic Law. A significant number of okada drivers are now
without identified work after the seizure and destruction of their okadas by law
enforcement agents such as KAI and the police. According to Wamba:

Many of (my okada members) have huge responsibilities. Some have more than
one wife and two to three children in the university. I’m aware of one of my mem-
bers whose first child is currently at 400 level while the younger one is 200 level
at the university. This man uses proceeds generated from his okada business to
pay their school fees, buy books and provide feeding allowance for them. Now,
under this current situation how will the man cope? Government just wakes up
one morning and say to hell with their problems.

Against this backdrop, the dragging of the Lagos State Government to court by
okada drivers and their associations (ANACOWA) may be represented as an effort
 the paradox of urban reform 201

by the latter to reclaim their right to the city which, according to Lefebvre (1996:
158), implies “a cry and a demand… a transformed and renewed right to urban
life.” The demand, on the one hand, derives from “those directly in want, directly
oppressed, those for whom even their most immediate needs are not fulfilled.” The

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cry, on the other hand, comes from “the aspiration of those superficially integrated
into the [capitalist] system and sharing in its material benefits, but constrained in
their opportunities for creative activity, oppressed in their social relationships…
unfulfilled in their lives’ hopes” (Marcuse 2009: 190).
In its Originating Summons against the Lagos State Government and its security
agencies, members of the Autobike Commercial Owners and Workers Association
(ANACOWA) claimed, among other things, that the forcible possession of their
okadas by the police and KAI violates not only their right to free movement but
also their rights not to have their moveable property (their okadas) compulsorily
possessed, as guaranteed by section 44(1) of the Nigerian Constitution. This claim
is not unrelated to the grievances of drivers regarding the corrupt and coercive
manner in which members of the police and KAI have enforced the law. During
my interviews with okada drivers in Lagos, a recurrent source of anger and frus-
tration was the manner in which the Traffic Law and the okada ban has created
more room for egunje (bribery) by law enforcement agents. Drivers accused KAI
officers of “eating” their hard-earned income in the guise of applying the law, even
when they were not plying the restricted routes. Notably, in 2011, the Lagos State
Government sacked ninety officials of the KAI over cases of stealing, extortion,
and obtaining money from commercial drivers under false pretenses (PM News
2011). One commuter in Oshodi complained about how policemen and KAI offi-
cers aggressively pursue okada drivers right into the inner streets without regard
for human life on the okada. Seun, an okada man in Alimosho, bemoaned the
fact that,

The traffic law has created plenty room for police and KAI officers to collect more
money from us with license. Whenever and wherever they see us these days, they
stop us. There is always one fault or the other, always one reason to stop us and
demand kola [bribe] from us. Things have become worse since the law gave them
plenty powers. They threaten us with taking our okadas to Alausa where it would
be grounded. If you fail to give them N5000, tie ti tan [you’re finished].

In the wake of the okada ban, the streets and highways of Lagos degenerated into
a space of negotiated bribery between okada drivers and members of the police-
cum-KAI. The latter often operated in an ambush-like manner,

suddenly emerging from hidden places to pounce on the okada driver who usu-
ally have to stop suddenly, sometimes leading to accidents in which the passenger,
the driver and the policeman would sustain injuries. If no injury is sustained,
202 they eat our sweat

the passenger is allowed to go while the negotiation between the policemen or

LASTMA officials as the case may be, commences. If the okada driver has suf-
ficient money ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 naira, the okada driver is released
immediately. If the okada and/or the driver is taken to the Police Station, the

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driver or owner in some cases will have to pay a bribe as high as 5,000 naira to
ensure release of the motorcycle, or risk permanent confiscation and/or trial and
three years’ imprisonment upon conviction. However, the bribe given to police-
men is considered a milder option by many of the okada driver interviewed. This
is because, according to them, if an okada is seized by a LASTMA official, rather
than a police officer and it is taken to their office the chances of “negotiation” are
close to zero because the official penalty which is “non-negotiable” is 20,000 naira
and/or three years in jail. In instances of arrests where the okada driver feel they
outnumber the policemen, they usually decide to resist the impounding of their
motorcycles which often triggers clashes between them and the law enforcement
agents, which can lead to fatalities and casualties. (Animasawun 2017: 258)

In Alimosho and Oshodi, where my fieldwork was conducted, okada drivers

lamented the fact that the police and KAI men routinely abused the powers af-
forded them by the Traffic Law to confiscate okadas and use them for their own
private purposes. Drivers shared experiences of how their colleagues who refused
to surrender their okadas to KAI were badly beaten, some to death, by the security
operatives. There was a story of how a police officer knocked down an okada driver
while he was trying to escape. In the process, he fell off his bike and dislocated his
left arm. While the driver was still struggling to get up, the policeman impounded
his okada, leaving him lying in his own blood. There were other reported stories
of an okada driver stripped naked and another who was shot in the chest by the
police and died hours later from his wounds. Former okada drivers claimed that
they saw policemen and KAI officials using their seized okadas to run errands and
even driving them on the prohibited routes with impunity. ANACOWA Chairman
Wamba condemned the predatory manner in which law enforcement agencies in
Lagos interpreted the law:

The law states that when you are caught violating the prohibited routes, you will be
charged to court. The minimum fine is N20,000 for first offender. If you commit
the offence a second time, your okada will be impounded. But this is not what they
are doing at the moment. Whether you ply the prohibited routes or not, wherever
they set their eyes on you, your okada will be impounded. Even if you’re fixing
your deflated tire with a vulcanizer, the police or task force members will stop, and
impound your okada. For now, the police are haunting okada drivers. It was in the
newspapers that the Lagos State Government grinds about 3,000 okadas daily. We
have firsthand information that some task force members and police officers were
even selling the impounded okadas and sharing the proceeds among themselves.
 the paradox of urban reform 203

At other times, some of them converted these okadas for personal use. (Vanguard
2012b)

For okada drivers in Lagos, the Road Traffic Law demonstrated the insensitivity of

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the Lagos State Government to the plight of informal workers who get by under
extremely difficult circumstances. As one Lagosian told me, “The Lagos State Gov-
ernment clearly does not know the hard life and stories of these okada drivers. This
is evident in the haste with which they rolled out the traffic law. For many of these
drivers you see, life is a constant war.” Consider the story of Kehinde, an okada
driver in Alimosho who fell victim of the law. A university graduate of Banking
and Finance, and formally account officer with WEMA Bank in Lagos, Kehinde’s
second shot at life ended abruptly with the forcible possession and destruction of
his okada by the KAI:

I was a Cashier with WEMA Bank until I was sacked in 2011 as fallout of the
Central Bank of Nigeria’s tough stand on the bank. I went around in search of
jobs to no avail and I decided to gather what I have to buy okada so that I could
make ends meet. This unfortunate event happened to me immediately after my
wedding so I had to look for an alternative means of making a living pending
when I get a better job. Rather than roaming the streets, I decided to become an
okada driver carrying passengers from here to there. But now, my okada has been
taken from me and destroyed. I am now out of frying pan into the fire.

Toward the Culture of Legality?

This chapter set out to interrogate the legal disputes resulting from the Lagos State
Government’s restriction of okada drivers from plying major routes in Lagos state
as part of its modernizing ambition to make Lagos a world class megacity. We have
seen how the enactment of the Road Traffic Law has had the effect of reproducing
precarious existence for okada drivers, while creating more “legitimate” avenues
for bribery and corruption by law enforcement agents. This perceived oppression
of their poor drivers has inadvertently awakened the rights consciousness of okada
associations, who have appealed to state laws to contest a law that erodes their
livelihoods and renders them invisible in the city they call home, Eko Ile (“Lagos
Home”). By reclaiming their right to the city, okada drivers legitimize their re-
fusal to be relegated from the city’s center to its periphery by a discriminatory and
subjugative system of spatial legislation and restructuring. Beyond the usual narra-
tive of Africa’s urban marginals improvising survival tactics in subcultures outside
hegemonic structures (Honwana 2012), the okada drivers and their associations
in Lagos developed a fluency in the “language of stateness” (Hansen & Stepputat
2001), as exemplified by their frequent reference to the Nigerian Constitution to
204 they eat our sweat

justify their claims for political inclusion, non-discrimination, and equal citizen-
ship under the law. The legal disputes between okada drivers and the Lagos State
Government highlight the need to adapt urban reform policies to the local context.
This will require city planners and policymakers to develop a hybrid framework

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that not only engages African cities as socially and physically constituted spaces
(Rakodi 2006: 312), but also integrates the voices of all those that would be af-
fected by urban reform legislations, especially informal urban workers. As Vanessa
Watson argues, “Unless planning approaches… are closely aligned to the strategies
of survival of poor urban populations, there is little chance that they will make a
positive difference” (2009: 187).
During my fieldwork in Lagos, the Road Traffic Law was frequently criticized
by okada drivers and union leaders as “wuru wuru to the answer” (a sprint to the
answer), meaning that the law was hastily drafted without due consultations with
drivers and their associations, who remain the mainstay of mass transport in La-
gos. As ANACOWA’s Chairman, Wamba, stated in an interview: “We were not
consulted when the bill to ban commercial motorcyclists was in the works… the
okada operators were not carried along… What the government would have done
was to distribute the complete document to all okada drivers’ associations in La-
gos for scrutiny before the eventual endorsement of it into law… Let the okada
drivers make their own input. Perhaps, all these controversies would have been
averted.” Wamba’s words allude to the idea of “adverse incorporation,” which em-
phasizes the terms rather than the fact of urban inclusion. The call here is to move
beyond popular narratives of mere “exclusion,” towards a better understanding
of how poverty often stems from the disadvantageous ways in which people are
incorporated into social and economic life (Hickey & du Toit 2007: 31).
The above explains why okada drivers and their associations have resolutely re-
sisted the Traffic Law to the point of suing the Lagos State Government over what
they perceive to be a wanton violation of their right to the city. This legal action
by informal okada associations indicates their collective refusal to be “imposed
upon and resisting being fixed and bounded in place” (Blair 2019). At the same
time, it adds weight to the argument that urban Africa is becoming saturated with
legality as social conflicts, once articulated by popular means of street protests, in-
creasingly find their way to the judiciary (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006: 143). Far
from the conventional view that Africa is indifferent to constitutionalism, the le-
gal action by okada drivers and their associations indicate that a culture of legality
seems to be pervading everyday life. Africa’s informal workers are increasingly
appealing to the law as a viable way of contesting their exclusion from the city.
By using the language of rights to express their grievances against their marginal-
ization and oppression in the city, okada drivers come to imagine themselves as
“rights-bearing-persons” (Eckert 2012). This suggests that turning to law is not
 the paradox of urban reform 205

simply a weapon of combat (Comaroff & Comaroff 2006), which evokes a winner-
loser binary, but an act of “rightful resistance”⁸ (O’Brien & Li 2006) in which the
urban poor seek active involvement in decision-making processes that affect their
lives. This explains why ordinary people invoke the law even when they have lit-

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tle to no chance of winning (Eckert 2012: 167). Such legalism from below sheds
light on our rather limited understanding of the right that informal urban work-
ers perceive themselves to own toward the state. For their part, city governments
in Africa today find themselves increasingly under pressure to justify their public
actions.

⁸ The concept of rightful resistance describes a form of partially institutionalized popular contention
against the state, whereby aggrieved citizens seek to legitimize their causes by making use of state’s own
laws, policies, or rhetoric in framing their protests (see O’Brien & Li 2006).
 Conclusion
Learning from Corruption

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Corruption is at once everywhere and nowhere. So elusive is the concept of cor-
ruption that some researchers see it as an “empty signifier” (Koechlin 2013). In
spite of this—or perhaps because of it—the concept of corruption is frequently
used throughout the social sciences. In this study, corruption was interrogated
as a multi-faceted phenomenon, located in “gray zones” between the legal and
the illegal, and shaped by the complex and shifting interactions between political,
social, and economic actors and processes (formal and informal). Going beyond
the conventional definition of corruption as “private regarding behavior of pub-
lic officials for money or status gains” (Nye 1967: 420), a normative analysis that
fastens upon self-interested individuals, this grounded, place-based study under-
scored the role of mutuality, that is, the ambivalence, ambiguity, and hybridity of
corrupt discourses and practices (Routley 2016). At its core, mutuality is about
how state (formal) and nonstate (informal) actors and logics overlap and imbri-
cate themselves in each other’s lives (Golomski 2020), with both actors situated
in unequal and ambivalent “social relations that constitute and position desir-
ing subjects” (Hasty 2005b: 365). Such mutualities call attention to the concept
of “incompleteness” (Nyamnjoh 2017) as the main condition of African politics,
of the powerful no less than of those whom they prey upon (Englund 2018: x;
Mbembe 2001a). It also reinforces the observation that formal/informal division
is not a useful distinction in Africa, since “illegal practices are also performed in
the formal sector, while so-called informal economic networks operate with well-
established hierarchies and are fully integrated into social life” (Hibou 1999: 80).
Corruption, therefore, becomes a productive arena for exploring the intersections
of the formal and the informal, the urban and the political, and the spatialization
and materialization of power, exclusion, and inequality in cities.
This study problematized the essentialism, cultural determinism, and function-
alist explanation that characterizes the dominant approaches to corruption in
contemporary Africa, in the form of neopatrimonialism, which tend to obscure
rather than clarify “important differences between many African countries and
neopatrimonial regimes” (deGrassi 2008: 112; see also Pitcher, Moran, & Johnston
2009). One popular conclusion is that in the end “what all African states share is
a generalized system of patrimonialism and an acute degree of apparent disorder”
(Chabal & Daloz 1999: xix). A similar claim is that while neopatrimonial practices

They Eat Our Sweat. Daniel E. Agbiboa, Oxford University Press.

© Daniel E. Agbiboa (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861546.003.0008
 conclusion: learning from corruption 207

exists in all polities; in Africa, it constitutes the core feature of politics (Bratton &
van de Walle 1997: 62). This study took issue with such convenient claims that cor-
ruption in Africa is sui generis and an indigenous pathology. Seeing the state and
political failings in Africa purely through the uncritical and de-historicized lens of

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neopatrimonialism is problematic in many ways:

(1) It has established and naturalized a supposedly characteristic form of leader-

ship and governance to the continent as a whole; (2) it has attributed to this form
of governance both the failure of African states to operate according to the prin-
ciples of liberal democracy and the “passivity” of African citizens in demanding
accountability; and (3) it has located the poor economic performance of post-
colonial Africa in the political chaos caused by “strong men” and “weak states.”
It thus makes historical, political, and economic claims about the continent as
a whole, providing a neat and consistent explanation for violence, state collapse,
petty to extreme corruption, irresponsible resource allocation, and a host of other
ills. (Pitcher, Moran, & Johnston 2009: 141)

Against this backdrop, it becomes apparent that any critical understanding of cor-
ruption in Africa requires an empirically grounded approach that pays attention
to the longue durée of corruption-talk (Pierce 2016) and the political and moral
economies (Olivier de Sardan 1999) of formal and informal and elite and non-elite
relationships in specific sectors, especially their ability to foster agency (Meagher
& Lindell 2013: 62) and double capture (Goodfellow 2017). In so doing, the study
has transcended the conventional idea of the state, inviting us to explore the mul-
tiple forms of governance and the less formal, everyday interactions that animate
corruption. In a sense, then, this book is a response to the pertinent question raised
by Obadare and Adebanwi: “How might street logic (say, the common roadblock-
ing policeman’s requesting query: ‘wetin you carry’?) be linked to state logic (say,
the ‘national cake,’ or the metaphor of ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’) in
understanding the collusion and collision of the powerful and the powerless?”
(2013: 13).
Corrupt practices are extremely difficult to extricate from other social behaviors
because of their embeddedness in wider everyday practices that are not corrupt
sensu stricto but tend to facilitate and legitimize corruption (DFID 2015: 25). In
this light, corruption becomes a constitutive element of daily life, melding state
politics with societal (urban) politics. This melding is most evident in the fluid
and contradictory space of the road, which constitutes a fertile ground for under-
standing how the state and state agents are constructed and contested from below.
Inside the tight spaces of the danfos, I observed that poor passengers were often
more willing to parse their frustrations about government failures and the violent
demands for bribes at countless roadblocks manned by police and/or NURTW
touts. This willingness reflects the level of anonymity that the danfo guarantees:
208 they eat our sweat

passengers enter and exit en route. Like power, corruption is about politics, “not
just in the formal sense, but also more broadly, about the politics of everyday life”
(Clegg 1989: 149). To grasp corruption, therefore, one must attend to the under-
lying narrative and interpretative frames that ordinary people deploy to negotiate

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power relationships and make meaning of life’s events.
Devoting sustained attention to the micro-dynamics of corruption in the road
transport sector of Lagos, this study provides a detailed excursion into the way
that corruption and coercive practices by officials of the NURTW (National Union
of Road Transport Workers) and law enforcement agents impinge on the worka-
day world of transport workers. Going beyond celebratory narratives of Africa’s
informal economy as transformational, the evidence presented here reveals a
predatory union-state alliance that criminalizes the hard work and “eats the sweat”
of drivers, making their driving work a “Living Hell,” as one danfo slogan puts it.
An analysis of petty corruption sheds light onto the exchanges between drivers and
bribe-eating officials at checkpoints, and how the latter “exercise claims to wealth
through violent means” (Roitman 2004: 13).
At least three important points are raised here. First, given the vital role of so-
cial norms in the diffusion of corruption in Nigeria, the intertwining of street-
and state-level corruption must be recognized and emphasized. This falls within
what Mbembe calls the logic of conviviality, that is, “the dynamics of domestic-
ity and familiarity, inscribing the dominant and the dominated within the same
episteme” (2001a: 110). Second, a vital aspect of this book is its analysis of the
language, idioms, and imageries of corruption, particularly the metaphorical con-
nections between corruption and eating, or what Nyamnjoh (2018) calls “eating
and being eaten.” Rumors about greedy elites consuming the state illustrate a “quiet
encroachment of the ordinary,” described by Asef Bayat as “the silent, protracted
but pervasive advancement of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful
in order to survive and improve their lives” (1997: 57). Third, average Nigerians are
not necessarily innocent victims of corruption but often active participants who
are compelled to participate in corruption by an urban spatiality where being an
honest and law-abiding citizen no longer pays (Osoba 1996: 384). As one danfo
slogan in Oshodi puts it: “Naija No De Carry Last,” implying that Nigerians strive
to finish first, even in matters of fraud. Slogans such as this one point to how “state
intuitions and economic precariousness are folded into people’s intimate relations,
commitments, and aspirations” (Han 2012: 17).
By locating corruption within the NURTW-state mutualities—as enacted at
lucrative but contested transit sites such as bus stops, checkpoints, and junctions—
this book demonstrates how and why centers and margins endlessly redefine each
other. At the same time, it underscores the role of the state as a creator and reg-
ulator of inequalities (Mbembe 2001a: 44). State officials who were authorized to
enforce the Lagos State Road Traffic Law became active participants in the ille-
gal. In the wake of the okada ban, police and KAI officers instrumentalized the
 conclusion: learning from corruption 209

Traffic Law to extort more money from marginalized okada drivers, showing how
those in charge of enforcing the law in Africa today often (ab)use their privileged
position to bend and break these rules for private gain (Titeca 2012: 49). Alejan-
dro Portes calls this the “informalization of privilege” (Portes, Castells, & Benton

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1989). Moreover, the government ban on unofficial but legitimate practical occu-
pations such as okada driving, a fundamental source of daily survival for marginal
men in Lagos, points to how the putative line between what is legal and what is il-
legal is increasingly “a political one, established by the dominant to maintain their
power and control” (MacGaffey & Bazenguissa-Ganga 2000: 5).
The predatory way in which the Traffic Law was enforced on the roads of Lagos
reinforces the law as a powerful arena for the exercise of biopower—becoming a
potent weapon to legalize the criminalization of an entire way of life and to deprive
many laboring subjects of the ability to have control over their daily life (Butler &
Athanasiou, 2013: 6). The law in this case constitutes what Mbembe (2003: 38) calls
“necropolitics” (or “letting die”)—that is, contemporary forms of subjugation of
life to the power of death. The Lagos ban on okadas denied many marginalized and
stigmatized men of their only source of livelihood, thereby creating “death-worlds”
that subject these dispossessed workers to the status of “living-dead” (Mbembe
2003: 39). Far from an outside-of-the-law site of economic survival and empow-
erment for disadvantaged sections of the city, informal road transport work is
experienced as “a site of disempowerment, which further entrenches clientelist
practices. In other words, rather than representing a disengagement of the state, the
informal economy signifies an engagement with the state: rather than constituting
an escape route from a corrupt state, it is intrinsically part of the corrupt state”
(Titeca 2012: 49). Yet, by using state law as a weapon of combat, okada drivers and
their close-knit associations demonstrate two things: first, that the informal urban
sector is not only a space of “nonmovements,” but a central site of “social move-
ments” (Bayat 2009). Second, that this mobile sector is not only a site of strictly
economic survival, but a more general political site of resistance and redress: “It is a
reaction against the state and the domination of the political class, and their neglect
of the concerns of the marginalized groups—the ‘powerless”’ (Titeca, 2012: 48).
“Margins are a necessary entailment of the state, much as the exception is a
necessary component of the rule” (Das & Poole 2004:4). This statement is con-
firmed in how grand and petty forms of corruption are routinely intertwined at
the motor parks, bus stops, and junctions of Lagos, particularly how the relation-
ships of collusion and collisions between union leaders and state officials reflect a
shared moral economy, which is as much about profit maximization (Thompson
1971; Scott 1976) as it is about “maintaining and accumulating social relations”
(Newell 2012: 67). The avaricious and immoral politics of the NURTW in cahoots
with the state, party politics, and law enforcement agents, have rendered both
the union and the state “less a public good than a social relation of domination
210 they eat our sweat

founded essentially on coercive exchanges, plunder and consumption” (Mbembe

& Roitman 1995: 335).
Despite its centrality to everyday corruption, there is a dearth of research on
the informal transport sector in Africa. This book foregrounds the road transport

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sector in how people routinely encounter the translocal state and come to think
of and socially navigate its generalized informal functioning (Blundo & de Sardan
2006), which cuts deeply into the very structure of people’s lives. The book’s fo-
cus on the endemic crisis encountered by informal transport workers stresses the
precarity that is involved in the everyday attempt by minibus- and motorbike-taxi
drivers to reclaim economic agency and assert their right to a city they call Eko
Ile (“Lagos home”). For every single driver that I encountered during my field-
work in Lagos, transport infrastructures, in the form of checkpoints, bus stops, and
junctions, constituted a locus for bribery and coercion, giving rise to fear, popular
discontents and disillusionment with the NURTW-state mutuality. The vast bulk
of transport workers in Lagos saw their driving work as a blessing and a curse, as
both a space of agency and a source of limitation. The voices and lived experiences
of commercial drivers in Lagos point to how informal workers in Africa are in-
creasingly exploited and immobilized through infrastructures that “facilitate the
flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space…” (Larkin,
2013: 327–28).
Across African cities, transport infrastructures are key sites of corruption, co-
ercion, and complicity that not only reveal the “negotiated nature of statehood”
(Titeca & de Herdt, 2011), but also the symbiotic relationship between space and
(in)justice. Mustafa Dikeç calls this “the spatiality of injustice and the injustice of
spatiality” (2001: 1792). In Mobility Justice, Mimmi Sheller shows how the gover-
nance and control of movement are inherently shaped by power and inequality,
and gives rise to unequal patterns of mobility (2018: 32). In a similar vein, Hagar
Kotef and Merav Amir argue that “control over movement was always central to
the ways in which subject positions are formed and by which different regimes
establish and shape their particular political orders” (2011: 63). This argument is
confirmed in the study of “roadblock politics” in the Central African Republic
(CAR), which shows how control over roadblocks along strategic transit and trad-
ing routes constituted a fundamental source of “logistical power” and an “object of
struggle” (Schouten 2019). That study found that armed predation at roadblocks
in the CAR is central to the political and financial power of “entrepreneurs of im-
position,” to wit, rebel militia groups and state security operatives. The “politics
of pillage” that governs roadblocks in the CAR makes it difficult for local people
to go to farms and markets, thus eroding their livelihoods (Schouten & Kalessopo
2017: 12). If “a study of automobility is also necessarily an exploration of the com-
plicated ways that consumption, mobility, stasis, scarcity, and excess all intersect
along West Africa’s bumpy and multidirectional roads” (Green-Simms 2017: 4),
 conclusion: learning from corruption 211

then localizing corruption within the “system” of transportation in Lagos, as this

study has done, allows for both specialized and comprehensive analyses of the po-
litical economy of everyday life. Moreover, mobile ethnographers have long argued
that being “on the move” is a powerful way to “venture into” people’s lives and

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“to understand their social and cultural reality” (Neto 2017: 141). Therefore, this
study has treated movement along the fast and slow lanes of Lagos as a privileged
site of research and observation of corruption, complicity, precarity, and social
navigation.
Evidence presented here suggests that it may be more constructive to reroute
corruption as a “collective action-social trap” problem rather than the more con-
ventional “principle-agent” mode of thinking. On the one hand, collective action
argues that if corruption is the social norm in any society, individuals will opt to
behave in corrupt ways, because the costs of acting in a more principled manner
dwarfs the benefits, at least at the individual level. On the other hand, the principle-
agent theory approaches corruption exclusively as an agent problem (Booth &
Commack 2013). In this perspective, corruption is said to occur when principals
are unable to monitor agents effectively, and the agent betrays the principal’s in-
terest in the pursuit of his or her own self-interest (DFID 2015: 15). In Lagos, a
commercial driver who is reluctant to offer water (bribe) to quench a thirsty po-
lice officer when pulled over is commonly derided by his own passengers as oponu
(an ignoramus or a very stupid person), a “Good Samaritan,” or a “JJC,” short for
“Johnny Just Come” (a naïve newcomer to Lagos). As a result, almost every driver
in Lagos has become fluent in the oft-coded “language of corruption” and skilled in
bribe negotiation. These capabilities constitute a precondition of daily survival in
Lagos, as the failure to decode the rules of corruption could result in substantial de-
lays, trumped-up charges, vehicular and bodily harm, or even (social) death. These
rules fall under what Elinor Ostrom (2005) calls “work rules” or “rules in use” and
what Peter Hall (1993: 281) calls “standard operating procedures.” Although these
“work rules” are unwritten, ordinary practitioners of Lagos (e.g. road transport
workers) are generally familiar with them; they know “how the system works and
how to work the system” (Dougherty 2000).1
More than simply the pursuit of private gain, involvement in corruption in
Lagos chimes with broader concerns or benefits that reinforce the struggle for

1 While living in Panama, Elizabeth Dougherty describes her encounter with a policeman who
pulled her over to give her a ticket. As the officer approached her car, she took all the money save
USD5.00 out of her wallet and stuffed the rest under her car seat. After a lengthy interaction with the
policeman during which she pretended not to speak Spanish and to not understand his demand for
bribe. The frustrated policeman got into her car and “He told me to drive down the road to a largely
abandoned parking lot in order to explain to me how to make this exchange. ‘Look, this is how it works.
I stop you and give you a ticket. Then you give me money so you do not have to waste your time going
to the police station to pay a larger fine than the money you are paying me. Understand?’ I told him I
did and handed him the $5.00 in my wallet, saying how sorry I was that this was all the money that I
had, whereupon he got out and walked away” (Dougherty 2002: 198; my emphasis).
212 they eat our sweat

survival. On the one hand, drivers and conductors are compelled to pay bribes
at roadblocks—manned by violent motor park touts and gun-toting, woefully un-
derpaid policemen—not simply to avoid physical harm, which is serious enough,
but to prevent their family from dying of hunger. “I have mouths to feed,” said

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an okada driver who had just paid his onerous N1000 ticket fee. “If I don’t set-
tle them [agberos and police officers], they won’t let me work. My family will go
hungry. Then what kind of a man am I?” So, in Lagos, drivers are not only “dy-
ing of corruption” (Holmberg & Rothstein 2011) but also performing corruption
to avoid “social death.” This equilibrium of mutual expectations—that is, the view
that one disadvantages oneself by not engaging in corruption—supports the ar-
gument that, “Whoever practices corruption auto-legitimates his own behavior,
by presenting himself, for example, as a victim of a system in which he is bound
to this kind of practice to avoid wasting time and/or an insupportable amount of
money, being penalized or condemned to inactivity” (Olivier de Sardan 1999: 29).
So, while road transport workers in Lagos resent corruption and are generally in
favor of stamping it out, the pursuit of survival and the avoidance of shame force
many to partake in the corrupt practices that they denounce.
Some African case studies (for example, the DRC) argue that commercial taxi
drivers do not see corruption as “morally problematic” (Alexandre 2018: 570).
Others (such as Ghana) claim that “many people do not see anything wrong with
[petty corruption] and do not think about it as corruption” (Lindberg 2003: 135).
In Lagos, nothing could be further from the truth. During my interviews, informal
transport operators routinely lamented the “evil” of extortion, with many calling
for a revolution to address this crisis of corruption that they see as endemic rather
than episodic. A distinction, a necessary one, must be made between people’s in-
volvement in corruption as a survival tactic and their personal views about the
system. As Bo Rothstein puts it, “cultural values and actual practices are not always
consistent” (2018: 40). For example:

Respondents in the Afrobarometer survey for eighteen sub-Saharan African

countries were asked their views on scenarios in which an official either “decides
to locate a development project in an area where his friends and supporters live”;
“gives a job to someone from his family who does not have adequate qualifica-
tions”; and “demands a favor or an additional payment for some service that is
part of his job.” Between 60 and 76 percent of the 25,086 respondents consid-
ered all three examples of corruption to be “wrong and punishable,” while only a
small minority view such actions as “not wrong at all.” Furthermore, only about
20 percent deem these actions “wrong but understandable.” (Rothstein 2018: 39)

On the other hand, the cash bribes collected around the clock by the agberos are
distributed along a convoluted financial chain that serves to keep the union-state
coalitions winning. This cash distribution shows how the informal transport sector
 conclusion: learning from corruption 213

in Lagos has become a big business to all those who feed off it. An obvious but over-
looked element of this mutually reinforcing union-state relationship is the fear and
insecurity that compels both sides. Given this “ordered corruption” (Blundo 2006:
260), the issue of who is actually running things is often unclear, as “complicities

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of all kinds between supposed antagonists are often necessary in order to maintain
any semblance of order” (Simone 2016b: 5). This reinforces the idea of the “corrup-
tion complex,” which involves practices that are often connected to corruption but
may or may not be illegal as such. No wonder, then, that an evidence paper on cor-
ruption by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) concluded
that corruption is a collective (rather than purely individualized) challenge: “It in-
volves a variety of interactions, dynamics and linkages between multiple actors,
organizations and institutions at different levels” (DFID 2015: 79).
The Africanist scholar Giorgio Blundo (2006: 260) reached a similar conclu-
sion from his ethnographic inquiry into the social world of public procurement
in Senegal. He found that corruption functioned “across networks and alliances,
which tend to structure themselves and become permanent.” Commonplace cor-
ruption, he notes, derives from a triangular and complicit system composed of
“corrupting contractors, corrupted officers, and intermediaries, giving rise to real
chains of complicities.” In Lagos, we have seen that in return for helping rig elec-
tions, the state government allows the NURTW to control the roads and motor
parks. This suggests that instead of placing corruption in context, we need to see
corruption as a context of action and meaning (Vigh 2009: 5). Unless corruption’s
real but perversely counterintuitive networks, pacts, and coalitions are taken se-
riously, “success stories” will continue to be “depressingly thin on the ground”
(Hough 2017). This study shows that anti-corruption policies have “hardly had
an impact on levels of corruption ‘on the ground”’ (Rothstein 2018: 39), precisely
because “on the ground” realities of corruption have never truly penetrated “top
down” anti-corruption cleanups.
In sum, this book takes an empirically grounded approach—an anthropological
approach if you like—to corruption, which grounds corruption in the daily formal
and informal encounters of mobile subjects with the state and the union, and in
the state-union mutuality. Drawing upon a combination of documentary sources,
ethnographic interviews, and cumulative observations on the bottlenecked and
dangerous roads of Lagos, the study argues that corruption is not embedded in
Nigerian “culture” but is in fact shaped by popular efforts to manage precarious
lives in transit by bending the rules. In place of a culturalist approach to corrup-
tion, this study offers a more pluralist perspective that considers how informal
transport workers have developed normative systems to fit their own needs rather
than following the rules or breaking them. Challenging the conventional distinc-
tion between grand and petty corruption, this study argues that both typologies
are deeply intertwined and continually imbricated in the texture of everyday ur-
ban life. Thus, it offers an approach to corruption “from below” that is not detached
214 they eat our sweat

from but rather inextricably linked to corruption “from above” in the Lagos trans-
port sector. Furthermore, it analyzes precarity and popular agency in the context
of neoliberal urban reforms that reproduce rather than address corruption, inse-
curity, and radical uncertainty. This is not just a book about corruption but also

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about Lagos, its transport system, and the society surrounding it.