No fewer than 200 security personnel on Thursday stormed Utako Ultra Modern market in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, destroying goods and properties belonging to road side traders.
DAILY POST reports that the security officials who were drafted from Abuja Environmental Protection Board, AEPB, Task Force, Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Army, Nigerian Immigration Service, Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, and Vehicle Inspection Office, VIO, allegedly claimed that the authorities of the FCT ordered that street traders be dismissed.
The security agents, who came unannounced, got to the market at about 9:45am in a convoy of Hilux vans. Although they didn’t manhandle any trader, they burgled their goods such as Irish potatoes, yam, fresh tomatoes, pepper, cabbage, water melon among others and set them on fire.
The Chairman of Utako Roadside Market Association, Hamza Yusuf who spoke with DAILY POST lamented the situation, saying they have done their worse.
Yusuf said, “ We were formally selling inside the market, but were dismissed. The market management later promised that they wanted to clear a portion for us inside the market and that after clearing it, we would be allowed to come and trade inside the market.
“This is 6 years now and nothing has been done about it, just empty promises.
“We met with the Deputy Director of Security Service, Mr. Gabriel Oyo to complain about a space in the market to be allocated to us, nothing was done. The chief manager of the market asked me to officially put it to writing which I did. They asked us to list all traders under our association, we did, but no response from them.
“Before their invasion today, they did not inform us. They just took us by surprise. They packed our ‘kaya’ (goods), gathered them at a corner and set them on fire. We have lost so much. I don’t even have an account of what I lost today until I am settled to check it out.
“We are calling on the government to help us secure a place inside the market. They say where we are occupying is a walk-way and we know that; so if they want us to stop trading here, let them help us out because we don’t have anywhere else to go.
“We lost tons of Irish potatoes, tomatoes, tubers of yam and live chickens.
“The last time they were here (like three months ago), they made some arrests so we converged and went to their office to plead with them, and our members were released,” Yusuf added.
A marketer, who identified himself only as Malik, told our reporter he lost a lot of money today because of clampdown.
He said, “I can’t eat without this business. It is too early to do this to us, we haven’t even sold anything.
“The last time they came, they went with about 200 chickens from my shade. Up till today, I haven’t recovered them, they didn’t return them, neither did they pay for them,” Malik lamented.
Meanwhile, effort to contact AEPB went unsuccessful as at press time as numbers were switched off.
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