Lagos — They will sell virtually any item that can be moved. Their heads, shoulders and hands serve as showrooms and shelves, displaying their wares. They are found anywhere there is a traffic jam on a major street, and all over towns and cities. Hawkers - boys, girls, men and women - are so prevalent in Nigeria that they have become an integral part of the exchange system. But who are they?
They have no permanent sites. They move with the traffic, making a living thanks to the chaotic driving in Lagos and other towns in Nigeria, and the inexplicable hold-ups it causes. They walk the streets of residential areas, announcing their wares with high-pitched cries for anyone who cares.
The hawkers' wares are varied. They sell electronic gadgets - tacky or expensive -, medicines, food items and clothes. Clothes-pegs, toys, apples, music cassettes - pirated or legitimate - dish cloths, sunglasses, pens, shoes, picture frames - you name it, they've got it, whether locally-made or imported.
On the streets of Lagos, for instance, these fast-moving, fleet-footed traders will sell a brand-new electronic organizer to a driver immobilised in one of Lagos's legendary traffic jams. They meander through the maze of vehicles and humans struggling for space on the crowded streets.
Many of them see hawking as a temporary activity, a phase between leaving school, for instance and getting a good job, or entering into mainstream business life. But how temporary it might be, is difficult to say. Emeka Dike, 33, Rasheeda Bakare, 18, and Uchenna Nwodom, 15, all went into hawking because they could not continue with their educational pursuits.
Emeka, for instance, came to Lagos in 1987 in search of a job. That was after he had completed his secondary education in Anambra State, in the south-east of Nigeria. Since his parents could not afford to send him to a higher institution, he had to search for work. But after searching in vain for four years, he settled for hawking. And for nearly nine years, he has hawked second-hand clothes on the busy streets of Lagos.
"It's not something that I like most," he says. He would prefer to rent a stall in the central Lagos business area, but cannot afford the rent. A six feet square stall at Idumota Market could cost as much as 350,000 naira (about $3,181) per annum, while the owners would demand payment for at least two years in advance.
That amount is completely beyond the reach of Uchenna, who started hawking in 1995 with about 5,000 naira (currently worth about $45). And, although he says his capital has increased to 20,000 naira, this is still nothing compared with what he would need to rent a shop to display the socks that he now carries on his head along the Marina, one of Lagos' busiest streets.
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But hawking is not an aberration in underdeveloped economies, says Kayode Familoni, a professor of economics at the University of Lagos, here. These economies are characterized by "dualism" - the sharp contrast between the small, formal sector and the large, informal sector.
"Hawking is a unique phenomenon found in underdeveloped economies where market structures are not well developed and integrated," he says. In these economies, he says, institutions are "dis-articulated" and it is wrong to look at these markets from a typical European market perspective.
While the formal sector may look developed, with showrooms, shops and supermarkets to display goods, behind the facade, the necessary facilities aren't strong, says Familoni. "People want to exchange goods and services, but the infrastructure is not there. Even the transportation doesn't work: no roads, no vehicles, and where there are roads and vehicles, there is no fuel. And yet exchange must take place."
Hawking cuts the economic "distance" between the seller and consumer of the products. "And when you cut this distance, you lower costs," he says.
Unlike the formal sector where buyers must go to the sellers, in the informal sector, the hawkers are willing to go to the buyers.
