In the name of touting

Buoyed by some Nigerians’ penchant to circumvent due processes in public dealings, many Lagosians have taken to touting; in the courts, airports, passport offices, etc. Rebecca Israel (not real name) is a regular face within the premises of the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja. Though Rebecca is neither a lawyer nor a civil servant working […]

Buoyed by some Nigerians’ penchant to circumvent due processes in public dealings, many Lagosians have taken to touting; in the courts, airports, passport offices, etc.

Rebecca Israel (not real name) is a regular face within the premises of the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja. Though Rebecca is neither a lawyer nor a civil servant working in any of the offices or courtrooms, she nonetheless enjoys a popularity that surpasses those who run legitimate businesses within the premises.
Known for her problem-solving disposition, Rebecca makes herself readily accessible to any individual who seems to be lost on what he or she wants to do within the court premises.  Without prodding, she often approaches her would-be clients, enquires what they want done, and offers her hand of fellowship. This she does for a living.
“Affidavit? Loss of document? Birth certificate? Declaration of age? Police report? Whatever you will like to do, I will help you with it,” Rebecca will say, anytime she approaches her would-be clients. If the response is positive, she will swiftly guide her customer to a section in the premises, and after explanations and negotiations, she will move into action. For every of such services she renders, she gets paid.
A single mother of one, Rebecca said she has been earning her living through touting in the last five years. Saddled with the responsibility of catering for herself and five other dependants made up of her seven-year-old daughter, aged parents and two siblings, Rebecca said she has found succour in “assisting” people and such gestures have so far been helping her to pay her bills.
She told Eko Trust that she does not see anything wrong in touting, adding that it is only those that do not understand that see it in the negative. She argued that as long as she provides her clients with genuine documents, she is engaged in good work.
“Touting may not be recognised by government, but how many works are recognised anyway? Touting helps a lot of us. I go to the right offices, do the right processing and get the right results. This is what matters to those that we service,” Rebecca said.
Like scores of other women who, every working day of the week, besiege the road leading to the Lagos State High Court at Ikeja GRA, Rebecca resumes very early to ply her ‘trade’ and closes by 5.00p.m. an hour after most civil servants working in the courts would have closed for the day and left their offices.
Though there are a handful of men who also engage in ‘documents touting’ as a means of livelihood, the ‘business’ is mainly dominated by the female folk. At the turn of the road leading to the High Court from the Lagos State University Teaching (LASUTH) end, a significant number of the touts are usually heard, shouting: “affidavit! affidavit!” to attract the attention of passersby. Some of the desperate ones will even accost the passersby, persuading and cajoling them with cheap cost of services.
Many of the touts have their ‘offices’ situated within the expansive garden in front of LASUTH’s fence while some often crowd themselves under the tree at the entrance of the Area F Police Command and the High Court’s entrance. Armed with typewriting machines, whenever a client comes, they look through their retinue of document prototypes to check the one that fits into the client’s demand, type it out, collect their charge fee, then race into the court premises where they will pay the official fees (usually less than what they collect from the client), then proceed to meet court officials who will get the document signed and stamped.
Abidemi Ayoola also touts for a living. Just like Rebecca, she does not see anything wrong with the services she renders even though she acknowledges that she and her colleagues in the ‘business’ are always being treated with indignity by members of the public and security officials who always act at the prompting of court officials to conduct periodic raids on them.
“Everybody looks down on us. They treat us like common criminals. Of course, we are not. We are service providers. I learnt this trade for five years and I also have two apprentices working under me who can only stand on their own after undergoing the same five years of training.
“Though, there may be some people who by their acts, denigrade the trade, But some of us are organised. We have an association and membership certificates are often issued. You can’t practise where we are without our certificates. We do that to guide against quacks. Yet, from time to time, you find court officials colluding with security operatives to chase us from here on periodic basis,” Ayoola said.
That they have been chased away on several occasions but are still allowed into the court premises to ‘practice’ is a contradiction that has no direct answer. However, Eko Trust investigation revealed that the touts still find their ways around the court premises because they work in collaboration with some of the administrative officers in the court who make speedy processing of the documents fast enough after being “settled” for the services.
Apart from the High Court at Ikeja GRA, the documents touts are also present at the Lagos State High Court in Igbosere, the Magistrate Courts as well as at the Federal High Court in Lagos Island.
However, touting is not restricted to processing of legal documents. Its practice has been extended to virtually all public institutions where individuals are required to pass through a number of processes to get results. One of such places is the Immigration Office where many Nigerians often visit for the processing of their International Passports. The Nigerian Immigration’s Passport Office, Ikoyi enjoys notoriety in this regard. Many of the touts are always found a few meters away from the premises, looking for ‘customers’. The touts make money from helping people hasten the process of procuring the International Passports.
Our correspondent who was at the Passport Office in the course of investigating this story was approached by two men who asked if he wanted to procure an International Passport. After answering in the affirmative, one of them said: “We can assist you with the processing of your passport but if you choose to do it on your own, it may take you more than two weeks before it is ready.”
Eko Trust gathered that with as low as N2,000 or N3,000 paid as “consultancy fees,” the touts can readily assist with the processing of an International Passport within as they work in connivance with some immigration officials at the Passport Office.
The situation is the same at the Immigration Passport office in Alausa, Ikeja where touts often roam about in anticipation of getting money from people who come to procure International Passports. One of the touts who simply identified himself as Sola confided in our correspondent that he makes between N5,000 and N10,000 on a day the ‘business’ is good.
At the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Ikeja, touting is also a booming trade, especially for those who ‘help’ to buy airline tickets for intending travelers. Recently, however, security operatives and airport authorities began to clamp down on the touts’ activities. That notwithstanding, there are still a large number of touts, doing their ‘business’ at the local and international wings of the airport. These touts also work with both airport and airline officials in getting cheap flight tickets for passengers or even transfer tickets already allotted to someone else to another person. All of these come with different price tags.
“The fact is that some of these touts make a lot of money from helping people to buy tickets and book flights,” Kehinde Adeolu, a regular passenger with one of the local airlines, said. “I can only advise people to be careful while dealing with them. Some are genuine while there are some who are fraudulent. So, passengers should ‘shine’ their eyes when patronising them.”
But the Police Public Relations Officer of the Airport Command of Nigeria Police, Alabi Joseph, told our correspondent that touting remains prohibited within the vicinity of the airport, insisting that those who engage in it constitute a threat to the security of the airport.
He added that all the divisional police units in the airport already have a standing order to arrest and prosecute anyone caught engaging in touting.
“The instruction given to DPOs around the airport is that any tout seen should be arrested and charged to court,” he said.
The airport authority is not the only one resisting touting. The management of the State High Courts said it does not condone it.
“I have lost count of the number of times we have had to chase the touts away from the court premises,” Grace Alo, Press and Public Relations Officer of the Lagos High Court, said. “This we do on periodic basis in collaboration with security operatives. But when you chase them, they
will still return. That is why on our part we have been sensitising members of the public that rather than patronising touts, they should come into the court premises and follow the normal process, complete the process and collect their documents.”
According to Alo, it is far cheaper to deal directly with the court than coming through the touts. She said the normal court charge for affidavit is N350 whereas some people, on their own volition, pay as much as N2,500 to get the documents through touts.
On the allegation that the touts connive with court officials, Alo denied, saying: “Court officers attend to anyone who approaches them for the processing of his or her documents. especially when the person has paid the required sum and has provided the necessary details.”
Sumonu Ajibola, a lawyer, said it might be hard to stop touting within the court premises and other places. He said with the reality of unemployment in the country, people are forced to explore any available opportunity to earn their living.
“If we are to stop touting, then we must be ready to provide the so-called touts with alternate jobs or better still, stop our people from wanting to beat the system. An average Nigerian is always in a hurry to get things done. So, except we stop the tendency of an average person wanting to beat the system or provide these people with new jobs, we may as well accept that the battle against touting is lost from the beginning,” he said.