Hard times hit motorcycle boys.
3 min read
Things may not be as rosy as they used to be for the young motorcycle cruisers in Umuaka as hard times have hit a big number of them with full force. In football, this is a period called injury time as December is just about 60 days away. Investigations and observations by Umuaka Times showed that some of the young motorcyclists do not even have cash to fuel their bikes.
At a particular Point of Sale POS centre visited by an Umuaka Times reporter about two weeks ago, a young motorcyclist suspected to be a yahoo boy came to the POS centre to transact business. On getting there, he told the POS agent that he (the young motorcyclist) had transferred some money to the account of the POS agent and he had come to collect the cash. The PO agent checked his system and saw no funds transfer. The young boy insisted that the cash indeed had arrived but the POS guy did not want to hand over the cash to him. As this was about to lead into an argument, the Umuaka Times reporter who was present at the POS centre intervened to make peace between them. At the end of it, it was indeed true that the cash transfer was not successful and the suspected yahoo boy was totally devastated. The boy was speechless and motionless and never knew what to do next. Then the Umuaka Times reporter asked him how much was the transfer he made. The boy looked at the reporter and said, “Brother, it is N500.”
“Is that what you came to collect?” the reporter asked him. He said yes. The reporter took pity on him and handed him over N500 from his own pocket and the boy thanked him and left.
In another development somewhere, one of the young cyclists was complaining of how he could raise N5000 to effect repairs on his motorcycle. According to him, he did not have that amount of money and none of his friends could help him out. He then put up his standing fan up for sale in order to raise the money and fix the motorcycle. The bad news for him was that nobody would give him up to that amount of money for the standing fan.
When Umuaka Times engaged some POS agents, they confirmed that the suspected yahoo guys are really running out of cash in double quick time. Some agents claimed that there were some times the yahoo boys would come to use POS to collect some cash as low as 3 to 5 hundred naira only.
What happened to their money, one may ask. A POS agent Nnamdi (not his real name) has a clue. Hear him. “These boys make money and spend it in a careless manner no millionaire or a businessman of note would spend. They buy their motorcycles between N300, 000 and N510, 000 and more. Some may have made like a million naira. They use half of it to buy a bike and spend the rest in drinking, clothing and on their girl friends as well.”
From the look of things, if money does not come the way of the yahoo boys this period, there is a reasonable likelihood that crime waves in the community will rise because the yahoo boys must celebrate Christmas.
