Just the other day, I happened to join the driver on the front seat in this fourteen-seater danfo bus on my way to Ikeja. Then I got into a conversation with the driver. He is a young man of about 32 years of age. He revealed to me that at the end of every business day that he goes home with at least seven thousand naira after paying his daily contribution to the isusu agent who handles the contributions of him and his colleagues who are twelve in number. Multiply this amount of N5, 000 by thirty days and you’ll have a tidy sum of one hundred and fifty thousand naira. Wow! He also divulged to me that his conductor makes average of N3, 000 on daily basis. Good! The conductor makes 90, 000 naira at the end of every month. And these are people the society looks down on. Good too! I know there are many of us who go about with the toga of working-class who don’t earn up to N90, 000 per month.

Now this brings me to the heart of the matter in this article. The driver shared with me how while he was working as an estate agent in Abuja how much his salary hardly takes him home, but ever since he accepted the offer of a friend who invited him down to Lagos when he lost his job, he humbled himself enough to do this supposedly demeaning job, he has found true meaning in good living and life. He insisted that he will continue with the job of driving a commercial bus until he has saved enough to buy his own bus having seen that returns on his line of business pays his bills and gives him peace of mind whenever he remembers that he has a healthy bank account.

His conductor concurred when I asked him to collaborate what the driver had been saying. I was simply awed over the broke-ass image these bus conductors always cut in our psyche. It has been said that they always remain poor due to their lifestyle and taste for the favours from prostitutes. Only a fool would make such an amount and blow it on a woman even though he stands to make less or more than the amount in the coming month. Bus conductors are rich biko! They might cut the true picture of downtrodden, but they are not poor.