SPECIAL REPORT: Inside the enduring, unsafe razor shaving practice in Nigeria (1)
Between October and December 2018, PREMIUM TIMES’ Kemi Busari visited four major Nigerian cities to examine the state of the blade barbering industry. His findings in Abuja, Ibadan, Kaduna and Lagos reveal a barbering method plagued with unsafe practices.
“Are you mad?” the tricycle operator bellows, looking ferocious, at the same time frustrated. The paint on the driver’s side of his Keke NAPEP, as tricycles are fondly called, has been scratched off and a part of the steel dented. He now he wants a ‘settlement.’
“I think you are mad, you didn’t see my pointer?” he questioned again, now more aggressively.
Haggard-looking, the ‘culprit,’ a Hausa tricycle operator who understands no Yoruba, soon broke into his own version of curse and so began the verbal brawl.
As the vulgar exchange heightens, so does the attention of onlookers at the suburb of Ijora Under Bridge in Lagos, arguably Nigeria’s most populated state.
But Abdulkareem Amzat is less interested. He concentrates on shaving frayed hair off Bolaji Raimi’s chin to earn another 100, the third for the day.
He muses a song that seems like a catalyst while carefully depositing nauseating patches of damp hair on the dorsal side of his hand.
Ish! Mr Raimi, popularly called Pa Raimi, suddenly makes a sound — a signal Mr Amzat has to slow down. The sexagenarian has just been cut by the blade. Blood was out of his chin in an instant.
It’s a familiar scene to Mr Amzat. A triple glissade movement of his right hand on the affected area soon brought the flow to a low.
But the blood will not stop Pa Raimi from using blade another time, neither would it ever make him change to the use of clipper.
“I will never use clipper,” he declares. “Even if you visit the barber, they still use blade. The only difference is the way they have decided to shape the modern one (clipper). Everybody use blade.”
The last time he remembers to have used a clipper was during his youthful days when he still fancies ‘shaping.’ That was over 35 years ago.
Throughout these years, such cut as he sustained this Tuesday morning is part of the shaving process. “Are you referring to this one?” he said, smiling to douse the ‘alarm’ on the face of the inquirer. “It will dry up by itself. I got cut because of a little bump around there.”
Pa Raimi is not aware of any infection he could contract through this means of head shaving but is confident he cannot be a victim.
“He doesn’t use one blade for two people and that gives me the confidence,” he says of Mr Amzat when asked the source of his confidence.
To his customers, Mr Amzat’s expertise and experience present themselves as enough shield against the possible contraction of diseases.
Twenty years ago, Mr Amzat started the barbering business he found his father and other grownup males in his family doing.
“The process of starting was very simple. All I needed was blade, the handle, soap and water and this was readily provided by my family,” he started.
He not only enjoys many years of consistent practice, which started from Kano to Taraba and then Lagos where he has been practising since the military regime of General Sani Abacha, but also takes ‘measures’ to ‘protect’ his customers.
