‘I Engaged in every known vice!’
By Titi Aladei
Oluwadare Olatunji David, alias Pastore, is a 29-year-old former street hooligan – or, as they are called in Lagos, ‘Area Boy’. Until three years ago, he was neck deep in the trade of hooliganism – rough living, extortion, burglary, etc.
Unlike most Area Boys, Pastore lives with a medical condition most unsuited for that kind of life. He has sickle cell anaemia, diagnosed after a severe bout of malaria when he was one year old.
His parents were both deaf and dumb – and lacked the educational or financial muscle to give him and his siblings a good push in life. Thus, as a teenager, his life gravitated towards that of the jetsam and flotsam of society. He barely finished secondary school before he became a bus conductor, that class of disenchanted ruffians who work by day and steal by night.