DAYS after videos showing uniformed
Lagos State Kick Against Indiscipline
officers seizing goods of street traders
selling on the walkway went viral, the
next was that of Governor Babajide
Sanwo-Olu warning street traders along
the proposed train line to pack their
wares off the road. The KAI men were
seen putting tubers of yam, buckets
of tomatoes and other perishables
into their truck. Those that owned the
wares were not seen trying to beg the
officers to save their goods as typical
of Nigerians that sometimes strip
themselves naked to prevent an arrest
for traffic violation. One can only guess
what might have transpired before
the KAI officers were seen seizing the
goods for the sellers themselves to be
absent even if it was to trail where their
seized items would end.
No one is defending street trading;
however, one should not blame them.
KAI and Lagos State government should
be ready for another raid. The actions
of KAI officers are no different from
Governor Sanwo-Olu’s threat to the
street traders along the proposed rail track.
What Lagos State and governments
at all levels in Nigeria should ask
themselves is why enacted laws are
repeatedly violated. Making laws more
draconian or having different task
forces with diverse appellations and
colours everywhere changes nothing in
a society that has been pushed to the wall of suicides.
The first question our leaders should
ask themselves is why everybody seems
to be selling one thing or the other.
The naira continues to lose ground
uncontrollably that exchanging it for
goods that can be sold in future for a
profit seems to be the easiest way to
save. So instead of banking it where
inflation will overtake any form of
interest, the teacher trades in chin
chin and other snacks that she can
easily carry to school and sell to her
students. The banker trades in shirts,
ties, and other office clothing that he
can easily put in his car boot to sell to
his colleagues, to make more gain than
the investment packages the bank he
works for advertises. While citizens
of other parts of the world are making
money from their intellectual property,
Nigerians are selling property, land and
used cars. Our leaders need to wear
their thinking caps, if they have heads,
to save the economy.
It is amid these austere times that
there is competition for market spaces
even if it is standing one’s umbrellaor cart somewhere. Ironically, it
is this same period that the Lagos
State government is shutting down
markets for “environmental” reasons.
Bombata and Jankara are the next to
be hammered. The environment needs
to be taken care of, especially for food
markets. Neither are we saying the
trains shouldn’t be functional but must
it be at the cost of pushing subsistent
traders more into economic agony?
The reason they are petty traders is
because they survive day to day on
the little margins they make. Has the
government linked all these actions to
the increasing crime rates?
One is even suspicious of the
environmental abuse excuse given
for demolishing these markets when
one remembers the December 2020
flattening of Festac Market. Whether
they are markets or shanties, it is
a repeated script of erecting new
structures in their stead beyond the
purses of the poor that were expelled.
What happened to building low-cost
markets? All traders need is simple
and decent wooden constructions with
basic infrastructure where the security
of their wares can be guaranteed.
Everything must not become “ultra-
modern.” If anything, it is our schools
and hospitals that should be ultra-
modern.
By the way, do the traders not pay
taxes and levies for using those shops?
Is it by destroying their shops that
you prove their taxes are working?
Why not rejig the Thursday-Thursday
market sanitation exercises if market
environment means so much to you?
More iniquitous is that hawkers pay
dubious levies to the different local
councils just to stand on the road.
Lagos continues to pretend as if all
these touts, agberoes and omoniles
that issue “receipts” in the name of the
government don’t exist only for them to
now use KAI, another Lagos agency, to
chase them away.
Has the government considered how
these actions would lead to increase
in the prices of staple commodities
because for anybody to remain in
business, you will have to sell at
replacement cost. So that man whose
yam was seized on the pavement
of Magodo or the vegetable seller
whose market was brought down for
renovation, will have to sell at the cost
of the days he stayed without selling
plus the cost of getting another item
with one of the same or higher value.
At the end, everybody is punished.
Inflation is not only dollar nor food
insecurity only about Boko Haram.
Nigeria’s economic woes are more
fiscal than monetary.
Lagos and other governments
in Nigeria will continue to battle all
these resistance from the people to
their intentions because the people
can’t connect with all these so-called
projects. Didn’t they tell us that we
would be electrocuted if we cross the
rail tracks? Why then is Sanwo-Olu
shouting at illiterate street traders? He
should just let technology do the job
for him when the project is done. They
told us Lagos is full of CCTV cameras
to catch traffic offenders, yet LASTMA
is still struggling with drivers over the
steering wheels, killing people on Ago
Palace Eay and going about spiked
metals in 2023.