by Alkasim Abdulkadir

Yan cirani, the colloquial name for migratory workers in Hausa is a known class in Northern Nigeria. Some have even logged in generations in some communities that their descendants hardly know anywhere else than there resident communities. 

Obalende in Lagos is tucked away from the Post-card luxury of its other cousins like Victoria Island and Ikoyi. Its streets meander into dark alleys where commerce and the night blend into each other. This is two years ago, suddenly I come across a scene that leaves me a bit befuddled. Its rows and rows of men who have stacked the motorcycles together and were sleeping atop them; I looked again and refused to believe what I had just seen. I asked myself mentally: How can a man sleep on a motorcycle. I asked later and I was told those were Yan Cirani –migrant workers working as Okada riders that were their spot where they rested for the night. This was before Gov. Raji Fashola outlawed their services.

Migrant workers from Northern Nigeria have become beasts of no nation in their own land, denied opportunities by their state government and the vagaries of nature; they are now being pilloried from moving across the country. A travelling convoy of 486 people was stopped and questioned, indeed the appropriate thing to do in this season of insurgency –by soldiers from the Army’144 Battalion in Abia State. Perhaps the incidence would have gone unnoticed but for the number of the alleged suspects involved. The much needed connection of the arrest to Boko Haram insurgents at best has been not only ambiguous but forced. There has been no mention of RPGs, materials for IED explosives or the ubiquitous AK47. The only scoop from the Defense Head quarters is the mention of kingpin amongst the travelling party. The valid question remains could they be the migratory workers they claimed to be? The probability of them being a travelling party in search of menial jobs as a prelude to raining season proper or just in search of a new lease of life is looking more plausible by the day.

Yan cirani, the colloquial name for migratory workers in Hausa is a known class in Northern Nigeria. Some have even logged in generations in some communities that their descendants hardly know anywhere else than there resident communities. As such this migratory trend did not start today, internal migration has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years by people who traditionally had businesses to do in other parts of the country. However in recent times this became compounded with the closure of industries in manufacturing clusters in Kano and Kaduna. One of the biggest factors for this has also been the daily shrinking of arable lands and the takeover of lands and communities by the Sahara desert. The latter has ensured that farming the major occupation of rural communities was no longer a viable option to stay behind. It is for this reason that becoming Mai guard, or petty traders and Okada riders became the most viable survival options for hundreds and thousands of people –included Nigeriens and Chadians who were escaping the same emasculating seasons of their individual countries.

Agricultural policies that clearly addresses all year round raining and dry season will no doubt effectively reduce seasonal migration. Currently, in states like Kano the dry season rice harvest has been very encouraging as promoted by Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshina the current Minister of Agriculture. It is sad that in places like Ikara local government area of Kaduna, an area of huge clusters of tomato farmers, they have been left with high stacks of tomato baskets waiting for another season to plant their tomatoes. Skills acquisitions have been limited to tailoring, soap making, with no proactive vision to discover new fields of skills enhance and creation.

Once more one of the ways out of this morass of decay and hopelessness is industrialization; we must create jobs or perish. The North must create jobs or perish for its teeming population. This subsistence goro economy will not take us very far. Kola nuts cannot ensure the employment of the majority, neither will shoe shining, street begging, car wash cater to the army of unskilled youth prowling the streets of Northern capitals. It is time we realized that the lack of opportunities in this region and Nigeria at large is a clear and present danger to all of us. Our state governments are already over bloated to hire those leaving universities; this is further compounded by ghost workers who keep drawing multiple salaries for none-existent tasks. How many Northern governments have gone out of their way to take advantage of the Cabotage law?  Do we lack vision to understand that we can train sea farers and develop indigenous tonnage?  How many are taking cognizance of the incessant calls for local content in the oil and gas industry? Not even policies such as the -American Growth and Opportunity Act AGOA has enjoyed full optimization.

In the end the point being stated here, is that we must begin to look for practical ways to get it right and give hope to the millions of people living in the vicious cycle of poverty not only in Northern Nigeria, but in Nigeria, lest we all become beasts of no nation like the characters in Fela’s 1989 album of the same title.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.