Clutching a shovel, Yunusa Umar, 30, joins a group of young men at the ever-expanding bank of Tumburawa river in Tassa, a village in Dawakin Kudu Local Government Area (LGA) of Kano State.
There, they collect sand extracted from the river into waiting tipper trucks.
“I earn between N5,000 and N10,000 or more daily,” he says of his daily job with a smile.
“When we started working here, there were only wheelbarrows and small trucks,” his colleague, Bashir Ahmad, chips in.