Harvesting Jos city’s goldmine of waste
For years, the business of waste collection was treated with disdain. But today it has turned to a ‘gold mine’. Jos is regarded as one of the most notable deport of waste materials, including iron scraps, tin cans and condemned flip-flops. Daily Trust on Sunday looks at how young men are taking advantage of the city’s waste materials.
Khalid Muhammad earned the name Baban Bola, years after he hit gold as a scavenger in Jos and environs. He had ventured into the business of waste collection sometime around 1991 and is now worth billions of naira and regarded as one of the country’s most successful solid waste dealers.
For a man who claimed he once moved from community to community in search of scraps and other waste materials, Muhammad has indeed done well for himself. He has several branches of his waste material dealership in Plateau, Nasarawa, Kano, Taraba, Osun, Lagos and other parts of the country with over 500 employees working for him.
But he is not alone, there are many other young men in Jos, who have joined the business of waste collection and are today thriving. Though most of the highly successful ones chose to focus on metal scraps, Daily Trust on Sunday gathered that Jos city’s reputation as having some of the most experienced and artistic mechanics has a lot to do with it. Garages such as the Jos mechanic village around Mile 7, Dilimi, Farin Gada, Gada biyu and Dadin Kowa have earned Jos the reputation of having some of the most scrupulous garages in northern Nigeria.
“There are three states in Nigeria, with the highest production of scraps and they are Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Plateau, then followed by Kano. Many people will be amazed that despite the size of Kano, it comes after Jos. This is because there are a lot of mechanics and transport dealers in Jos. You find that people bring faulty cars from Lagos, Taraba and other parts of the country to the mechanics in Jos, due to their expertise. So invariably, Jos will generate high number of scraps,” said Muhammad.
A scrap is an old, discarded or rejected item that could be used in reprocessing. Old metals mostly from condemned vehicles form the bulk of waste materials often loaded in long trailers weighing up to 30 tons and are seen leaving Jos for various parts of the country, especially Ogun, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Benin, Kano or Katsina, where they will be melted by major steel plants and recycled into iron rods, angle pipes, channels, iron plates etc. Aluminium cans like those of soft drinks are melted to become ingot and later exported to various vehicle manufacturing companies such as Toyota, who use them in the construction of vehicle parts.
Our correspondent gathered that there are presently about 36 companies across the country that specialise in recycling metal scraps while about 14 companies specialise in recycling condemned flipflops. For aluminium, Muhammad said on his last count, 23 companies were known for recycling plastic materials.
The business of waste collection is however not an easy one. Despite the health hazards to the waste collectors, they are perceived by society as repugnant. The sight of young men and women poking into various refuse dumps in search of leftover items to be recycled has always been viewed with disdain. Waste pickers, as they are often called form the lowest cadre in the chain and are mostly men from northern Nigeria often seen holding grain sacks as they move from dump to dump.
“I think the major challenge in this business is the perception of people towards us. A lot of people are disgusted by waste pickers because they move from refuse dump to refuse dump in search of cans, metals, plastics and bottles. That is the major challenge for us in the business,” said Muhammad.
On his part, Muhammad Rabiu Jadda of Kura Scraps said his 12 years in the profession has earned him a successful reputation and he presently has over 40 young men under his tutelage. Jadda and every other scrap dealer in Jos regard Muhammad Baban Bola as their overall boss. But unlike Muhammad, Jadda’s forte is just scraps as he is able to convey a 30 ton truck of scraps to Lagos every two weeks.
“If I were to sell to you now, I would sell a ton at N90, 000 but when we convey it to Lagos, we sell a ton at N110,000 due to cost of transportation and other logistics on the road like revenue and tips,” he said.
For Jadda, who claims to only deal with specific clients, he says the major challenge in the business is when scrap dealers fall into the hands of dubious people who sell them stolen goods such as vehicles. “Some of us work with the police because there is a police station in the garage so when you bring an old vehicle, you must have proper documentation and papers before we can buy the vehicle and then we can write and sign an agreement,” he said.
With hundreds of tonnes of scraps being recycled almost on daily basis, our correspondent gathered that 85% of the scraps in Nigeria are recycled and converted into iron rods and demand for the material is higher between October and December. “No matter who you think you are or how highly placed in the society you are, if you are going to construct a house, then you must know that between 45 to 50 per cent of what you require in construction is found in the refuse dump. We supply them. Also, if you intend to buy a car, then 100 percent of the raw materials are from the refuse,” said Muhammad.
With this, the business man insist that based on his numerous travels, he has come to the conclusion that apart from crude oil, waste collection has become the single most lucrative business globally.
But despite being the biggest scrap collection centre in Northern Nigeria, Plateau State has no viable steel recycling company. The Jos steel rolling mill, said to be in a comatose state is one of Plateau’s greatest lost according to Muhammad.
“In the recent past, I took some Indians there to look at the facility and we got an estimate that with N3b, the Jos steel rolling mill can be revived and the company will be capable of employing about 1,500 staff. I made a decision to inject N1b, I spoke with First bank and they agreed to inject an additional N1b while I spoke with those close to the State government to encourage the governor to inject the last N1b so we can pull the resources to revive the place but up till today, I am yet to get a feed back,” he said.
But all hope is not lost as Muhammad says he intends to open up a moderate recycling plant in the State as he awaits his machines and government release of the certificate of occupancy. “We have purchased the land and we are waiting on government to provide the C of O so we can start. Ours will be a small plant that will likely hire about 200 workers but it is a start,” he said.