Pictured is Mrs Josephine Benjamin, a Business Administration graduate of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Benjamin ventured into the business of driving a danfo bus after staying at home unemployed many years after graduation. She said a couple of what could pass for jobs did not pay well.
At home one day, Mrs Benjamin observed a neighbour had put up a bus for sale. Suddenly, a speck of an idea began floating in her mind. Can she purchase the bus and start using it for a commercial purpose, driving it herself? She admitted that even to her, the idea first sounded laughable. But it wouldn’t go away; rather it germinated, and eventually she decided to pluck it.
“I told the owner of the bus I wanted to buy and use it to convey passengers. He agreed and because I didn’t have the money to buy it off him at once, we agreed on instalmental payment. I dropped what you could call a token but with an agreement that I would be paying N5000 every day, which is the amount danfo drivers in Lagos remit to bus owners daily,” she told Daily Trust on Sunday.
Mrs Benjamin spoke of how tough the business was initially as the bus was not yet painted in the yellow and black stripes colours that the state transportation authorities demand, and law enforcement agents were always making a meal of her due to that non-compliance. When she complained to the bus owner how the police, especially, had been harassing her, demanding bribe at every turn, and asked that she paint the bus as required, the owner refused, saying she couldn’t do so until she has completed full payment for the vehicle.
Hopefully, she will soon be achieving that. She started the transportation business last September and has been able to pay almost N900,000, adding she would soon pay the remaining few thousands of naira to enable her assume full ownership and control of the bus.
Mrs Benjamin’s entry into the male-dominated road transport workers union was not without some chauvinism. She recalled how her male colleagues initially rejected her because of her gender. The union chairman had to intervene in her favour, appealing to his colleagues that she should be given a try. “When they discovered that I was not troublesome and can drive very well, they absorbed me fully,” she said.
It has since been a smooth drive for Mrs Benjamin. With her sister in tow as her conductor, the results, she said, have been encouraging.
“Since I have been doing this danfo driving, I have not been having any problem. It is my conductor, Esther, who is my sister, that occasionally has issues with passengers. Some passengers are troublesome, while some are not, but I always advise her not to quarrel with them. She should just collect the fares.
“Many times, settling the passengers on their ‘change’ is a sore point. She will tell the passengers to enter with their ‘change’ but they won’t. If she complains, they will start abusing her, calling her names like ‘a common conductor’, as if being a female bus conductor is a sin. Incidentally, that’s one expletive my sister hates so much, to be called a common conductor,” she said.
On how much she takes home on a daily basis, Mrs Benjamin said that depended on how thick passenger traffic is. “After settling the owner of the bus and paying off the chairman of the union, garage boys, etc., I can still take home between N2000 and N5000, depending on how busy that day is because everyday is not Christmas,” she explained.
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