- We’ll continue to raid area, NDLEA vows
Apart from the dust raised due to the untarred nature of the street, a first time visitor to the popular Pepple Street, Ikeja, Lagos, will also have to contend with the discomfort caused by the whiff of thick smoke, escaping from the mouths and nostrils of the consumers of some banned psychotropic substances in a nearby joint.
Electronic shop-owners and other traders around the area, though pretending to be oblivious of the thick blanket of smoke enveloping the area, carry on their daily business as if nothing is amiss!
Welcome to the area where the enfant terrible maestro of the Afrobeat genre and political maverick, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, once held sway, until his death on August 2, 1997.
Of course, Pepple Street has a big story to tell to the uninitiated, who risks being unwittingly seized by the familiar but unseen spirits left behind by the music sage, Fela.
At the entrance to the street stand the “big boys,” with their intimidating bloodshot eyeballs threatening to fall off their sockets.
Their pockets bulge as each of them clutches a stick of what looks like a wellstuffed lighted cigarette draped in white paper and intermittently fed into their smoke-stained teeth.
They watch you as you saunter into the street through the popular Ola Ayeni Street. They immediately ‘scan’ you to determine whether you are a security agent, trying to carry out a surveillance of the entire environment, which has a history of drug dealings, or to make an arrest.
As visitors in their droves wade through a sea of heads that usually mill around the street, a signal is simply made by one of the boys to the other points man, who is a member of a gang that specialises in the sale and consumption of outlawed weeds, popularly known as Indian hemp, alerting him to be conscious and ready to bolt at the slightest suspicion.
The Point gathered that those “big boys,” bold enough to puff the stuff and peddle it in the open, regard themselves as the real masters of the game. They know almost all the law enforcement agents as a good sailor knows the depth of the sea.
With a raucous voice, reminiscence of a torn loud speaker forcibly switched on, they bark around to show the hard stuff they are made of, with their unbuttoned shirts flying sideways and their usually battered faces covered with fez caps that have become part of their identity.
The big boys, more often than not, direct smokers or buyers to an uncompleted story building serving as their rendezvous. Obviously, the grey uncompleted building has a legal issue that has prevented its owner from finishing its construction.
“The building has been like that for over 15 years,” disclosed a man, simply identified as Adewale, who sells dead phones known as “palasa” along Otigba Street. Adewale further revealed that the uncompleted building had unwittingly served as an extension of the late Afro-beat king’s “empire,” when the music icon ran the area by ‘fiat’ with his brand of rebel music.
He said, “The unlimited freedom created in the area by the late Anikulapo -Kuti cannot just go away like that. Fela was like a prophet with thousands of followers, who believe in his philosophy as encapsulated in his songs and lifestyle. But the conspiracy that led to his vacation of the place left behind unsurpassed vestiges as typified in the boys you see daily converging on the street.
“Majority of the boys you see here are professional street fighters. Some are trained boxers; they engage in the game for self-defence.”
For the uninitiated, gaining entry into the uncompleted building that today serves as a “free zone” in the heart of Ikeja is not an easy task. With a row of shops that serve as a shield on the frontage, the only visible entrance into the uncompleted building is a narrow black gate, which does not allow two persons to walk in side-byside.
The smokers there are well organised, except for occasional infighting over the sharing of money or other items of commercial value
“The entrance gate is measured. We have our own informants, who tip us off whenever a danger signal is sent; you know, we have a way of alerting others. If I clap my hands once or twice, it has its own coded meaning.
But the meaning is only known to the initiated; so, you are not one of us,” an insider disclosed to Point after being offered a bottle of beer.
A 60-minute interaction with some of the ‘visitors’ to the ‘free zone’ was quite revealing.
It was learnt that the joint also served as market place for shady businesses, where stolen goods were quickly sold-off at rock-bottom prices.
“Once you are trusted, the boys can get for you any brand of mobile phone for a low price. But you just need to be patient. Market could come any time, any day,” he said.
The Point also observed some unmarked escape routes within the uncompleted building. “The routes are the safety valves for sellers of the stuff. Here, we do not allow callers to make trouble. Just enjoy yourself as you come in quietly and leave quietly.
All we are trying to do here in our own little way is to keep Fela’s legacy alive,” an automobile mechanic, who claimed to be a regular ‘visitor’ to the building, said.
According to him, ”Fela has become a spirit and there is the need to deify him.” Aside from the hush-hush business, the joint also has a barber’s shop, a make-shift restaurant and other conveniences that assist life on the fast lane. Asked how many times the enclave had been stormed by law enforcement agents in the last two years, Adewale said, “Oh, maybe four times.
In most cases, we have a way of cooperating with them. If they are looking for a suspect, for instance, we try to get the description of such a fugitive. We do not harbour them, especially if they are not one of our own.”
A shop-owner in the area, Mr. Callistus Ndubuisi, told The Point that, “the smokers there are well organised, except for occasional in-fighting over the sharing of money or other items of commercial value. But the smoke from the building could pose hazard to shop owners.”
The spokesperson of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Mr. Mitchel Ofoyeju, told The Point that NDLEA officers would “continue to raid the enclave because no part of the country is a free zone for hemp consumption.”
