What I Endure To Feed My Children – Female Lagos Driver Tells Her Story

Remilekun Olaiya

Remilekun Olaiya, a female commercial bus driver in Lagos, shared her experience of how she had to endure several challenges on a daily basis in order to feed her children, The PUNCH reports.

Olaiya, in a conversation with The PUNCH on Friday, said as a woman, she had to endure harassment from hoodlums many times on her way while driving.

“The work is not easy, I’m just managing so that I won’t just be sitting down or engaging in irresponsible things.

“I was selling bags of rice before, but when they seized them, there was no money to do business again.

“In order to survive and feed my family, I had to take the bus on installment,” she said.

Speaking about her children, she said, “My children are at home on holiday.

“My firstborn, 14 years, is in the college. One of them wants to do the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, and the other also wants to do the Junior Secondary School Certificate Examination.

“I am the only one fending for them.”

Speaking on the challenges of the work, Olaiya said she faced some challenges, especially from hoodlums, whom she described as “Agberos”.

“I meet challenges at this work. The ‘agberos’ do disturb me very well.

“The task force workers do not disturb me; when they see that I am a woman trying to hustle, they don’t worry me,” she told The PUNCH.

On whether passengers discriminate to patronise her, she said, “the passengers do not really discriminate. Some of them even enter my bus just by seeing that I am a woman. So I get customers a lot.”

Olaiya noted that she was not the only one doing commercial bus driving in Lagos, saying “There are about four other women that I know that do this too.”

Olaiya, however, said that she did not let the challenges or discrimination at the work get to her, because she needed to feed her family.

“I don’t let those things get to me because of my children, because of their future, I don’t want them to suffer or become jobless.

“I don’t want them to feel like their parent is not serious, so I brazen out every day,” she said.