Security man injured, as taskforce storms Onitsha market to relocate traders to new market

Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha

There was tension in Onitsha as officials of the taskforce from the Anambra Ministry of Trade and Commerce stormed Modebe Shopping Plaza, demolished structures and ordered traders to relocate to the new market at Ogbunike in Oyi Local Government Area.

The taskforce supported by a joint security team of Army, Police, Civil Defence and vigilance group and stormed the plaza at about 4am with bulldozers to demolish some of the  structures.

Daily Sun, however, learnt that suspected hoodlums hijacked the exercise and injured a security staff who wanted to stop the looting of shops.

Traders who travelled for the Christmas and New Year and resumed for business yesterday morning were distraught as they met their shops turned to rubble with heavy security personnel shooting indiscriminately to scare away the traders while blocking the entrance of the plaza.

Chairman of the Article Dealers Association Modebe Plaza, Beed Iwunze and Vice Chairman, Joseph Chukwubuike, expressed shock at the invasion.

They also decried the decision to relocate them to a provision and cosmetic market.

“Where do they want us to move to? We don’t sell provisions and cosmetics, we sell articles, how can they force us to move to a market we did not built to become tenant. They should force the union that built the market to move to the place,  not people likes  who have a place acquired to built our own market.

“Look at the way government is treating people, we just came back from festivities. We hope to do business here to pay our children school fees this January, but to our greatest surprise, some of us were still in the village and yet to return and their shops were demolished. Those around were stopped from opening their shops for business, they ordered us to move to the new market” they stated.

Chairman of the Ministry of Commerce Taskforce, Mr. Celestine Anere, said they had informed the traders to relocate to the provision and cosmetics market built at Ogbuinke, but they refused, hence the  decision to enforce the relocation.

“The essence of this to decongest the roads and to ensure that business is being conducted in orderly manner in a market not along the road which constitute nuisance,” he said.