Accountant Susan Aghogho Asakpa who drives a cab in Abuja tells her touching story

Susan Aghogho Asakpa went viral yesterday after
her girlfriend shared her pictures on Facebook to
celebrate the International Women's Day and
revealed she was a graduate accountant turned
female cab driver in Abuja.

Here's how this lady wonder got to where she is
today:
It all started when Suzan Asakpa’s employer
revealed the plan to slash her monthly salary
from N80, 000 to N70, 000. ‘That was my wake-
up call,’ she narrated, after all she was already
getting bored with the job.

She had worked for three years as a manager in
a hotel in Abuja and felt she deserved an
upgrade. But it wasn’t coming. To make this
worse, came that revelation of a salary slash. At
that moment Asakpe decided she needed to be
her own boss and prayed for a business idea.

When she got on the phone to her father in
Lagos, they talked about what she wanted to do.

He was
excited when he learnt she wanted to drive a cab
herself. It was not long before he gave her a call
from Cotonou and asked her whether she would
prefer a manual or automatic. He had actually
taken a loan for that.

When the car was sent to Abuja, it was already
serviced and everything had cost N720, 000. ‘But
I am going to pay him back,’ Asakpe revealed,
adding that she had already got N500, 000 so far.
So by October, 2015, Asakpe was already in
business, but not before some preliminaries.

Before the vehicle was sent to Abuja, she had
asked around and knew what she needed to do.
So when the time came she took it for a paint
job. Initially, she had not wanted to paint it in the
traditional taxi colours, but was advised by a taxi
driver to do so because it’s the law. 

Asakpe had
complained to him that painted taxis were not
allowed to enter some places, but he insisted that
at least they still get access into most.
‘I later noticed that the rooftop of my cab was
painted orange, which meant Painted Abuja taxi
(PHC) while others blue, and some green with
white stripes connoting their various companies,’
she revealed, adding that where she registered as
a taxi driver, she was asked by several people
whether she was actually going to drive it herself.

‘They were nice to me and I even got a pass
twice and didn’t have to pay for the monthly
sticker. All I had to do was show the note from
their chairman and the boys on the road let me
go,’ Asakpe said. She understood it was their
way of encouraging her.

So far the experience has been interesting for
Asakpe. Every day she gets to meet new people.
Virtually everyone that enters her cab wants to
engage her in a discussion. How did you come
about this job? Why are you doing this job? And
she enjoys responding to these questions
because how she started-off is a story to tell.

But amidst the excitement sometimes comes
challenges, particularly when her car sits at the
mechanic’s and there’s no way she can work and
it continues to gulp money for a couple of days.

Again, while most of the people around her are
supportive, some discourage Asakpe. ‘I will get
you a job,’ and ‘you shouldn’t be doing this’. But
Asakpe only smiles.

Asakpe is presently studying to be a chartered
accountant and plans to get more cars and
empower women interested in the business.

‘There’s a lady already who is interested and
keeps asking me to get a car for her,’ she
intimated. So Asakpe wants to run a transport
company that is strictly female in the future. She
has realised that there’s no job that’s strictly for
men, after all, there are men who own
restaurants, cook, and make women’s hair.

‘Funny enough, men are supportive and are my
biggest fans,’ she said, adding that she
discovered it’s untrue that men don’t like
independent women as some women claim. ‘I get
more suitors now than i got when i was a hotel
manager.’
Asakpe’s typical day as a hotel manager involved
resuming work at 7:30 in the morning,
particularly when she was studying for a
particular examination. ‘Those days i have to
work for 24 hours, which it means i work from
that time of the morning to 12 midnight and then
i sleep there in the premises and resume the next
day at same time,’ she said.

Now her work schedule has changed and is more
flexible. She drives out at 7:30 am and scouts
around for workers, ‘because that’s the peak
period, till 10am or 11am.’
When Asakpe started, she parks her car and
sleeps off at noon, but soon discovered she could
still make more money after a single experience.

Overtime she has made friends with some of her
customers and takes a break at their place of
work. Ideally, her closing time is 5pm, but when
some of her major customers are in town, she
works late.

‘I had a customer recently and worked till 9pm,’
she revealed, adding that most times such jobs
require her to drive them to a meeting and park
while they are inside. So in this case she charges
by the hour. Most times because they are her
customers it fluctuates between N1,000 and
N1,500. She thinks this is fair because she waits
and her fuel is not used-up. And staying in a
meeting for five hours by any customer
automatically earns her N5000.

So Asakpe makes about N100, 000 in a month,
with 80, 000 being her profit. A graduate of
Accounting from the University of Nigeria, Enugu,
she keeps her records clean and knows what she
earns on a daily basis.