If the residents at many of Lagos bridges were to pay rents, their collective rents would perhaps have run into millions of naira, according to Saturday PUNCH findings.
In fact, many of the bridge dwellers have not only turned these bridges to their apartments, a number of them have also created shopping spaces where they sell their petty wares.
For instance, when Ibrahim Abubakar left his hometown of Kano State for Lagos in 1998, he had nowhere specifically in mind to reside.
Before he left Kano State, he had thought that heading to Lagos would make his life better. At least, that was where ‘everyone’ was going, he thought.
Having no one he could stay with and 16 years later, he has become one of the oldest occupants at the pedestrian bridge located in the Mile 12 area of the metropolis.
And he is not planning to leave the bridge anytime soon – except by way of compulsion, because according to him, that is where his fellow traders as well as kinsmen reside.
Saturday PUNCH’s findings show that Abubakar is not the only person who has lived on the bridge for such a long time.
His ‘neighbour’, Jimoh Mustapha, has lived for up to 11 years on the same bridge. When asked by our correspondent what he does for a living, he said he is a wheelbarrow pusher.
“I help traders move goods around,” Mustapha told our correspondent. Even though Mustapha has made enough money to rent an accommodation, he said doing so would amount to taking a foolish decision.
He said, “I have two wives and seven children in Kano who I send money to regularly. If you say I should leave the bridge, how would I survive? I only sleep here in the night and go out in the day to work.”
