Bad Times Here Again
By Victor Ugborgu and Kemi Sonaike
Monday, August 28, 2006
For traders under the popular Ikeja overhead bridge, these are times of pains and anguish as the task force on illegal trading comes calling
The Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Agency is poised to rid major towns of illegal trading especially at the roundabout and other strategic places. Last week, the agency destroyed many illegal shops in the Ikeja area of the state. The worst affected area was the Ikeja under bridge which previously harboured shoe sellers, hairdressers, newspaper vendors.
An official of the agency, who spoke to Newswatch on condition of anonymity, said the exercise would be extended to other parts of the state in subsequent weeks. He said the exercise was necessary in view of the strategic location of the Ikeja, overhead bridge. "The government wants to restore the masterplan of the affected areas and possibly make them recreational centres. The traders in those areas are there illegally," he explained.
Gloria Osaze, an owner of a boutique under the Ikeja overhead bridge, said she would never forget August 18 when she watched helplessly as the taskforce destroyed her wares with reckless abandon. According to her, all the traders in the place were charged N500 weekly by the Ikeja Local Government council to enable them sell their wares. "These are bad times for us. Some of my life's savings and belongings were lost in the demolition exercise. We usually pay the sum of N500 weekly to the council to enable us sell our goods. All of a sudden, we heard that the government was coming to take the place. The taskforce descended on us like the locust and carted away our wares. I am still waiting for them to return my clothes, shoes and bags worth N200,000," she claimed.
In all goods worth hundreds of thousands were either destroyed or seized by the taskforce in the raid.
Yetunde Abubakar, one of the market leaders told Newswatch that the taskforce actually gave all the traders a three-day ultimatum to move away from the under bridge which most of them ignored. She said those who had their wares seized by the taskforce were those who ignored the warning. She was optimistic that the problem would be settled in no distant time.
But Adesegun Olusanya, chairman, Newspapers Distributors Association of Nigeria, Ikeja Zone, said the raid on the Ikeja under bridge was not acceptable to him. He told Newswatch that the action had disrupted the sale of newspapers and magazines to the public. Olusanya argued that the vendors had been there since 1986 without constituting themselves into a nuisance. "We have gone to the chairman of Ikeja Local government and to the speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly to help us appeal to the taskforce to let us be. Our role as agents of information dissemination for both government and the citizens has been abridged by the task force," he argued.
From all indications, it is unlikely that government would relent in its effort to sanitise the Ikeja under bridge and turn it to a recreational centre. When Newswatch visited the place last week, iron bars were being erected to prevent further encroachment by the traders. Mobile police men were also stationed at strategic positions to forestall a possible breakdown of law and order by the affected.
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