‘How wiping vehicle windshields helped dad pay my fees’

The boy patiently wipes the windshield of a thirtyish man’s posh car. He does the left side, and then runs quickly to do the right because the newly fixed traffic lights at that part of Utako may soon blink green. Done, he looks hopefully at the driver who ignores him, his windows firmly closed. Umar moves away from the vehicle and looks on for another cleaning opportunity. He is used to it, he says, after all that is what helped him get into Junior Secondary School, Wuse Zone Three. His story is intriguing.
Barely a year ago, Umar’s father was unable to afford money for the furtherance of his (Umar) education after primary school. “At that time my parents didn’t have money,” he reveals. So Umar and his friends set out to find a source of income. An idea came to them and they got metal pipes and some plastic and fashioned a vehicle windshield cleaner. With this and a bottle of soapy water they knew they were in business. At Wuse, Umar could hardly believe his luck when he made N1, 000 that same day.          
The service Umar and his friends rendered made them move from place to place. Where there was traffic became their market. “We sometimes use public transport to get to other parts of Abuja,” he explains. Soon he was in possession of about N3, 000. His school fees totaled N11, 000. So, with the money he made and what his father already had, it paved way for his enrolment into secondary school. Now, after school sometimes, he joins his friends and they clean windshields of vehicles at different locations.
Umar’s father is a retired soldier who is now a businessman and his mother a full-time housewife. He (Umar) has seven siblings, so his hard work comes in handy.
“Sometimes we get paid and sometimes we don’t. But again, a single person can reward one with either N1, 000 or N500. So, the time wasted rendering service to one who doesn’t give the token we need is rewarded by another,” Umar intimates, adding that once he spots a dirty windscreen he makes for the car and begins to wipe it clean for the owner.
He says: “Sometimes we ask the owner, other times we just do the job and hope we get paid. A driver may just ignore us and let us do the work. When you are done they may tell you they don’t have money to pay you. Most times we get N10 to N20 for our effort. I have been doing this for almost a year now.”
The after-school hustle is not something Umar wants to drop in a hurry. “The highest I have made in a day is N2, 000,” he offers.