As the subtitle of Daniel Agbiboa’s book suggests, the author combines three themes into one comprehensive narrative. Throughout the book, Agbiboa masterfully demonstrates how commuter transport workers (taxi, minibus and motor-taxi drivers and conductors) engage in bribing to carry out their daily activities, secure protection from harassment and avoid arrest. Corruption, while widely condemned across Africa, is nevertheless a widespread social practice in many countries. Between colonialism, neopatrimonialism, dazzling corruption scandals and internet scamming (or ‘419’ scams), the ordinary Nigerian has learned that ‘being an honest and law-abiding citizen does not pay’ (p. 61). Rather than remaining as passive victims, however, Nigerians ‘appropriate [corruption] in a variety of ways to minimize risk, maximize profit, and impose order on their workaday world’ (p. 17).
For many transport workers, bribing constitutes a survival strategy, as their livelihoods are precarious and can easily be disrupted, not least by the state. Agbiboa demonstrates this point using the 2012 Lagos Traffic Law, which banned motor-taxis (okadas) from most main roads, thereby marginalizing them and robbing the drivers of their only source of income. Without an alternative, many drivers continued working on the forbidden roads, which exposed them to paying ever higher bribes. This illustrates ‘the role of the state as a creator and regulator of inequalities’ (p. 208). Yet, okada drivers reacted by taking the Lagos State government to court for violating their right to the city, once more showing the agency of these underprivileged actors.
Being able to speak the local language and blend in, Agbiboa collected his data through a participatory observation approach, even working as a conductor in one of the danfos (minibus taxis) himself. Getting around using commuter transport and hanging out with workers at urban transport nodes clearly gave him a deep understanding of daily practices in urban commuter transport, including bribery. This allows Agbiboa to present the perspectives of transport workers. He also spoke to some agberos, touts who collect all kinds of ‘fees’ in the name of the transport union and who do not hesitate to use violence if drivers refuse to pay. These agberos are protected by ‘big men’ all the way up to the highest level of the transport union and beyond, and can therefore carry out their work unhindered. Due to the mafia-style characteristics of this system, it was unfortunately not possible for Agbiboa to conduct a more thorough analysis of corruption from the ‘demand’ perspective, a limitation that he readily admits.
Throughout the book, Agbiboa uses original methods to present his research. In Chapter 2, he makes use of discourse analysis to explore the language of corruption, demonstrating the numerous references related to eating and drinking when talking about corruption. In Chapter 4, he uses an interpretative approach to the slogans written on danfos to explain the daily challenges of danfo workers. On the one hand, these slogans served as a starting point for unstructured interviews and informal interactions with transport workers; on the other hand, he uses them to weave a narrative and to structure the chapter. Agbiboa is conversant with a wide variety of theories, which he skilfully integrates into his analysis. In Chapter 5, on Nigeria’s transport mafia, he builds on Erik Bähre’s analysis of ‘violent and shifting mutualities’, which he combines with insights from Tom Goodfellow’s concept of ‘double capture’.Footnote 1 My only quibbles were with Chapter 6, which presents a legal case filed by okada drivers to demonstrate ‘how the urban poor use state laws to negotiate their rights’ (p. 170). I felt that the analysis focused too much on the okada drivers’ daily challenges (a repetition of Chapter 4) rather than on the agency exercised by the drivers claiming their right to the city.
The book is very well written and easy to read. Agbiboa frequently lets transport workers speak for themselves by including interview quotations, even in local languages or in pidgin. By delineating each chapter clearly by topic and method of analysis, the book kept my attention throughout. While thoroughly rooted in theory, They Eat Our Sweat presents an analysis embedded in the rich context of Lagos. This deeply grounded analysis nevertheless offers insights that can be extended to other contexts, especially other African cities. As a regular user of commuter transport in Douala myself, I could recognize many of the issues raised by the author, even if the situation in Lagos seemed more extreme. I have also found myself remarking on certain aspects of the book to colleagues and friends on various occasions. Overall, I strongly recommend They Eat Our Sweat to anyone who is interested in better understanding corruption, commuter transport, or urban Africa in general.
