Unemployed youths sell voting queue spaces for N100

Unemployed youths in Damaturu, Yobe State, have found a new business: selling queue spaces to prospective registrants in the ongoing voter registration.


Each space, according to one of the youths, who gave his name as Habu Shuaibu, sells for between N100 and N200.

Shuaibu, who described the ‘business’ as ‘lucrative’ said he makes between N500 and N600 before noon every day.

“I make an average of N500 before 12noon everyday. Sometimes it is usually N600. The business was good before but now people are protesting against it,” he said.

A resident of Ali Marami Housing Estate in Damaturu, Malam Maikarfi Usman, told the News Agency of Nigeria on Saturday that some of the youths arrived at the centres in Damaturu as early as 3.30am daily to acquire spaces on the queue and sell them (spaces) to willing buyers.

Maikarfi said, “I was at the Ali Marami Primary School with my family at about 4.15 a.m. and met three people already in the queue. They told me I was number eight but I did not see others except the three of them.