By Kangmwa Gofwen
I have been embarrassed several times; people look down on me and even go as far as insulting me. There’s an experience I’ll never forget, I think it was 2009 or so, a man bought N200 airtime from me but couldn’t load because there was a service timeout, he started arguing with me because his friend said that is what we do, and that we sell fake recharge cards to people.
“Before I knew what was going on, he just punched me in the eye with his fist. My eyes were swollen and my mother reported him to the police, he was arrested and was about to be charged to court but I pleaded with my mother to let him go. That incident led me to stay at home for a couple of days before I could come out for business again. It was quite an embarrassing experience for me.” For Julius Orogun who said the above, it all started in 2005 when his mother asked him to join her to sell recharge cards while she sold bread at the popular Mobil Junction at Ring Road, Ibadan, Oyo State.
His mother was a staff of the Nigerian Railway Corporation but used to come to the junction after work and during weekends to sell bread alongside her three other daughters in the late 80s.
“It was not my choice but my mother’s, she was working with the Nigerian Railway Corporation back then, after work and during weekends in the 80’s, she would bring bread to sell at Mobil, my second sister sold bread there too, my immediate and the third sister, after her marriage failed in Lagos in 2004, came back and joined us to sell recharge cards. Because I couldn’t get a job, my mother asked me to join her to sell these recharge cards too,” he told Saturday Tribune in an interview on Wednesday.
After selling for some years, Orogun said he decided to go back to school. He enrolled for a pre-ND in 2008 and by 2013, he was through with both his National Diploma (ND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) from the Ibadan Polytechnic. He proceeded for the mandatory National Youth Service (NYSC) in Ondo State in 2015. However, Orogun still found himself coming back to where he started.
“When I returned from my Youth Service in 2015, I went to learn fashion designing for two years but had no money to set up the business so I came back here and I have been here since then.”
The recharge card business is not as buoyant as it used to be.
“The business was good back then but the past eight years have been nothing to write home about. It is getting worse by the day. People no longer buy physical recharge cards. Those that buy are mostly the uneducated ones and those that don’t trust their banks and they buy the lower denominations like N100 and N200.
“I barely make up to N700 sales a day now, before now I could make at least N1,500 in a day but it went down gradually. The fuel scarcity further compounded the issue because the fuel station where I stay to sell is always locked and the new naira notes policy has affected the business too.
“But my stay here has taught me that people are suffering everywhere, we are many. I learned to serve people especially the downtrodden. Ultimately, my stay here has made me to be selfless, he said.
Life happened and the business that used to be like a family business has shrunk to a one man’s business. Orogun lost his mother in 2019 while his sister met her husband through the business at the junction.
“Unfortunately our mother died in March 2019 while my elder sister is married and now in the USA with her family. She met her husband here in the course of our business and they moved to the USA in 2013 and she is now a US citizen,” Orogun said.
He said he has not left the junction because that is his only source of livelihood though he is hoping to return to fashion designing.
