Meat Sellers Cause Unrest in Garki Model Market

allafrica.com

2 September 2010

Normalcy returned yesterday to Garki Model Market Abuja after about eight hours of closure.

According to LEADERSHIP findings, trouble started early yesterday when some meat sellers came to the market to find that their tables had been removed by officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB). Irked by the development, the meat sellers went on rampage, destroying every property in sight, which caused other traders to panic and run for their lives.

The re-opening came on the heels of a stern warning issued by the FCT Commissioner of Police, John Haruna who was at the market to see things for himself. The Commissioner while addressing a mammoth gathering of traders, warned that any trader who had participated in the destruction or who will do anything to undermine the peace and security in the market will surely be fished out and made to face the music.

Our reporter gathered that about six of the key actors in yesterday’s riot have been arrested, but their identities could not be obtained as at press time. The Meat sellers were protesting an exercise carried out by AEPB in pursuant to an earlier abatement notice issued to the traders to stop the use of an unhygienic section of the market for the sale of meat.

Trouble started recently when Abuja Markets Management Limited(AMML), owners and managers of the market, completed a meat and live bird selling facility in the market and requested the traders to relocate from their temporal place which has been certified by the relevant agencies of the FCTA as unfit for the sale of such food items,

Our reporter gathered that rather than comply with this directive, a few of them insisted on doing business in the old filthy place, ostensibly prompting the AEPB to issue an abatement notice to the market and going further to enforce it.

The traders it was also gathered are clamouring for a reduced charge from AMML. But the market managers said that it was only a ploy they used to perpetrate their evil plans.

According to Innocent Amaechina, Head, Corporate Affairs, AMML, the same group of people had attacked the officials of the market management and vandalized their office last week Thursday, without provocation.

His words: « we received an abatement notice from AEPB with regards to that section of the market and in order to avert the wrath of the law, we encouraged the meat sellers to relocate to the new facility provided for them, about 80% of them complied leaving the 20% who complained that the time was short to make up the required payment.

We even offered to let them in and sort out the payment later, then they said they were coming back to bring their list for that purpose. They only came back the next morning but with weapons which they used freely on our staff and in vandalizing our office ».

Continuing Amaechina said, « Today also, in their usual manner, when they came to the market and noticed that their tables had been removed by the AEPB task force, they went on rampage destroying everything in sight until the police came and arrested the situation ».

A cross section of the meat sellers interviewed confirmed that the violent group who are predominantly Igbos are gradually turning themselves into a government in the market, even as they warned that they (the other tribes) can no longer sit down and watch the excesses of these few persons deny them of their daily bread.

According to the traders interviewed, the market now boasts of the best beef-selling facility in the city, but rather than allow them to enjoy this kind gesture from government, ‘these deviants’ would want to be a clog in the wheel of progress.

Efforts to speak with the allegedly recalcitrant group yielded no result as they were said to have fled the market for fear of being arrested.

~ par Alain Bertho sur 3 septembre 2010.

Publié dans émeutes, riots