In May 2025, worrisome news and videos emerged online that understandably caused panic among Lagos State residents. It was about a large group of 89 youths from the Northern region of the country who just arrived in Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos. Following immediate public concerns raised about the security implications of such an unwieldy contingent of youths from a sensitive region, questions were asked, begging for answers.
Ostensibly after investigation, the Lagos State Police Command later clarified that the contingent’s arrival was for legitimate employment, purportedly to work as labourers for the Dangote Refinery. The refinery’s Chief Security Officer also added that the said youths had been cleared for entry as they were recruited from Katsina State by a contractor at the refinery. Calm was restored. But another question followed: what manner of labour was needed at Dangote Refinery that 89 labourers had to be imported from faraway Katsina instead of being sourced from among teeming, unemployed Lagos youths? Well, no answer came and life went on as usual.
Several months after, a lot has happened nationally now that has reset the general public on edge. The security situation across Nigeria has worsened considerably.
Banditry is now common lingo that even a child can understand. Terrorism trends like a routine crime. And kidnapping has become rife, not only in the hot spots of the North, but also in the South. Against this torrid background of palpable public anxiety about insecurity, some Lagosians were recently alarmed on sighting a convoy of about five trailer trucks in traffic at Fagba area of the city. The long trucks that normally ferry cattle were conveying large numbers of Northern youths perched on the cargo-carrying spaces.
The truth is that such a concerning spectacle of trailer trucks from the North carrying more human cargo than cattle into Lagos is not new. Long before the Ibeju-Lekki case of the 89 youths from Katsina, countless, ceaseless trailer-loads of Northern youths perched on trucks have been flowing every day into various parts of Lagos. This migratory trend has been going on for years, especially since the time of the Muhammadu Buhari administration which condoned and emboldened Fulani herders to roam with impunity, including grazing on farmlands, anywhere in the country. Today, the authorities in Lagos probably seem oblivious of the influx trend or assume it is a normal migration of people from one part of the country to another for innocuous reasons.
After all, Lagos continues to be an irresistibly alluring city drawing rural-urban migrants and seekers of greener pasture from everywhere.
And the Nigerian constitution also guarantees freedom of movement for all citizens under Section 41 of the 1999 Constitution, which states that every citizen is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria, and reside in any part of the country. So, what is the fuss about the influx of Northern youths into Lagos? Are youths from other regions of Nigeria not also drifting towards the city? Of course, they are and this discourse is not meant to advocate any untoward segregation or ethnic demonisation policy, even though the Lagos State government and people of Southwest seem to be orchestrating such prejudice against those from another part of the country for political reasons.
What is really at stake in the relentless inflow of Northern youths to Lagos could be beyond routine migration and the right to freedom of movement. Consider, for instance, that the manner of influx is instinctively suspicious and should make the authorities pay more than cursory attention. It appears more like an ‘invasion’.
A keen observer can stand by the roadside at Berger, the main entry point to Lagos, and start counting from dawn till dusk the number of trailer trucks conveying Northern youths into Lagos. The observer will grow tired of counting. The ceaseless influx happens every day, and the incomers don’t look like people just visiting to do business and return. Or visit for leisure and return. Or visit relatives and return. They arrive looking jobless and here to stay. One is curious to ask: where are the jobs these armies of youths are coming to do in Lagos? Or what is lost or scarce in the big cities of Kano, Zaria, Maiduguri, Minna, or Abuja that can only be found in Lagos? People are free to migrate to wherever they are attracted to, but the way the Northern youths stream towards Lagos seems to be as if they are being trafficked for a purpose other than greener pasture. As the youths arrive every day and disperse to different parts of the state, they swell the already bloated population of a Lagos city estimated to be over 22 million people. Settling down is a curious spectacle. They are more seen massing around in dingy places like concentration camps, such as along railway tracks and precincts at Fagba, and co-habiting in uncompleted, abandoned buildings than renting proper accommodation. Where they rent apartments, or are given free abodes as ‘mai guards’, overcrowding is inevitable. Some turn into residents in mosques and any available places.
Their sanitary conditions are better imagined. Swarming all over the place anywhere they are in Lagos, from Mainland to Island, many ride ‘okada’ bikes and ‘keke’ recklessly for a living. Others take to all sorts of menial jobs, including the grubby ubiquitous scavengers noisily soliciting ‘iron condemned’ all over the place.
It is thus generally obvious that these redundant youths are unskilled, uneducated and underemployed. But the trailer trucks keep bringing them every day, as if they were told the streets of Lagos are paved with bundles of naira notes for free pick-up.
Why should the authorities in Lagos be concerned? Well, there is the threat to public health that the burgeoning army of these youths constitutes with their unwholesome sanitary habits. Some of them engage in selling consumables to Lagosians in mobile or stationary wheelbarrows, sometimes near filthy gutters. Who is regulating them? As they are more seen congregating in open spaces and cohabiting in abandoned structures than rented apartments, where are their conveniences? Are we surprised when we see the city littered with faeces in public places? Is the government waiting till there is an epidemic before taking action?
And then there are the security implications involved in all this. More often than not, the trailer trucks ferrying the youths from the North are suspected of also carrying concealed weapons like poisoned knives, daggers and possibly guns.
Indeed, it is urban legend now that every ‘aboki’ seen in this city carries a weapon hidden somewhere on their body or tool of trade. Little wonder that, at the slightest provocation or confrontation with anyone not from their region, fatal stabbing becomes a telltale.
So, the challenge here is for the authorities in Lagos State to take active regulatory actions on the unusual, relentless influx of these youths instead of waving it off as normal. Aside from guarding against the public health risks they pose with their habits and activities, the heightened security menace in the country now calls for extra vigilance on those trailer trucks carrying more than livestock into Lagos.
Who knows if bandits and kidnappers fleeing the North may now be mixing up among the youths perched atop trailer trucks en route Lagos? Who knows what weapons are also being transported in those trucks every day, hidden from view?
With sectarian rhetoric sounding louder across the country, some Lagosians are asking every time, they see the trucks bringing their human cargo: are we safe?
Yes, the Nigerian constitution guarantees the right of every Nigerian to freedom of movement. But the same constitution also asserts that this right is not absolute and movement can be restricted as may be necessary for public health, public safety and public security. Let the authorities in Lagos wake up from their blissful ignorance or tolerance of a potential existential threat hiding in plain sight, and stop being misled into thinking a harmless people from another region is our problem.
• Onifade, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Lagos.
