A medical doctor and a popular music video director have separately recounted how they were extorted and terrorised by street touts, popularly called area boys, while carrying out their professional activities in Lagos.
The doctor, Olusina Ajidahun, popularly known on social media as The Bearded Sina, an internal medicine specialist and health influencer, disclosed via his page on X, formerly Twitter, that a free medical outreach his team organised in Mushin last year was besieged by touts who demanded money and threatened to cause pandemonium if they were not settled.
Ajidahun said the outreach, which had been in planning for months, was designed to offer health awareness talks, free medical tests, cooked and raw food packs, sanitary pads and other items to residents, and was carried out alongside security operatives.
He said, “When we got there and started our activities, you need to see how these boys swarmed us. They kept asking for money. Some of them even threatened that they could scatter the outreach and cause a whole pandemonium despite the security presence.
He said he was approached by a particular tout with blue-stained lips and tongue, unkempt and tattooed, demanding money.
“One particular one, if I recall well, he had blue lips and blue tongue stained from substances ( maybe Rohypnol), he looked unkempt, had tattoos all over him. He was smelling of tobacco mixed with heavy cannabis. His bloodshot red eyes stared at me. He asked again with his heavy, hoarse voice… Oga Doctor, drop something for boys.”
Ajidahun said he replied that he had no money on him, in line with instructions that outreach members should not carry cash or valuables into the area.
According to him, the man simply waved his fingers, and moments later, a younger boy produced a slip of paper with an account number, which Ajidahun said he transferred money to.
Ajidahun said he later noticed the man had painted fingernails, waist beads, and what appeared to be panty lines beneath his clothing, with his trousers held up by a rope rather than a belt.
He said the man grew friendlier afterwards, boasting that he was popular on TikTok and worked as a publicist for musicians and celebrities.
Ajidahun described the boys as people making tons of money being in those slums and being instruments to perpetrate violence, agendas and personal vendetta.
In a separate account, the filmmaker ThankGod Omori, known professionally as TG Omori, said a night shoot in Ikoyi was disrupted at about 3am by a crowd of touts who gathered outside the location screaming, “TG Omori you go show us love before you comot for here.”
He said he left the set in the hands of his assistant directors and security, with one scene still unshot, and was told the next morning that the touts had broken the gate and injured a security guard who had refused them entry.
TG Omori said such encounters have made it increasingly difficult for filmmakers to shoot on location anywhere in Lagos, including Lekki, Ikoyi and the mainland, forcing many productions indoors despite the higher cost of building sets and paying visual effects artists to recreate scenes that could ordinarily be shot on the street.
“Mind you, we pay for locations and settle every necessary people. Still bring in heavy security personnel, but it’s still always total chaos,” adding that crews under pressure from thugs “chanting your name” often rush through shoots and go home “with almost nothing after wasting millions on rentals, crew and cast.”
The accounts add to a growing list of complaints by professionals, entertainers and businesses over extortion by area boys in Lagos.
PUNCH had reported that the Nollywood actress and producer, Bimbo Ademoye, was similarly confronted by touts demanding a settlement while shooting on a Lagos street, an incident that drew renewed calls on the state government to curb the menace.
Reacting to a trending video of street urchins harassing residents on Sunday, the Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, said the state government had continued to arrest and dislodge street urchins across the state, but that cash handouts from celebrities, influencers and members of the public were undermining those efforts by encouraging the touts to view the streets as a lucrative source of livelihood and breeding a sense of entitlement among them. He called for collective responsibility and cooperation from the public to build a safer and more orderly Lagos.
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