JUSTICE FOR OGIGE-NSUKKA MARKET TRADERS, IFESINACHI TRANSPORT LTD, AND OTHER VICTIMS OF DEMOLITIONS OF MARKETS AND OTHER MEANS OF LIVELIHOOD EXECUTED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF ENUGU STATE
Being the text of an address delivered by CHIJIOKE EDEOGA, Enugu State governorship candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, at a press briefing on the demolitions of properties by the Enugu state government, held at the Labour Party National Secretariat, Abuja
In the month of June 2024, agents of the government of Enugu state, amidst wailings of anguish and despair of traumatized citizens, supervised the simultaneous demolitions of markets and built-up places in many parts of Enugu state. With regards to the immediate impacts on the overall well-being of the directly affected persons, their dependants, and their sources of income and sustenance, the devastation was clearly reminiscent of the horrors of the 1967 to 1970 Nigerian civil war and its immediate aftermath.
Vast settlements at Okpara Avenue containing iconic buildings, banks, schools, SMEs, an orphanage run by the Red Cross, transport terminals, etc. were all crushed in a destructive rage that was fuelled by motives that are still unfolding.
These destructions were executed in other centres of commerce and human habitation in Enugu metropolis, including Gariki and Abakpa, and then Ogige market in Nsukka local government area.
The devastations, the horrors of which are beyond normal human contemplation, were executed with little or no notice. They attracted widespread condemnations and even demonstrations and marches by aggrieved people in parts of the state.
The Enugu state government countered the points raised against its action with ready-made rebuttals and defences, lamely arguing that destruction must necessarily precede development; that the state government acted to restore the state’s masterplan; that compensations had been paid to the affected persons; that modern bus terminals would serve better; and, in the case of Ogige market in Nsukka, when the outcry became quite loud and ominous, that the state government had provided an alternative location for the displaced traders.
Attention had been focused substantially on the devastation wrought by agents of the state government at the establishments adjacent Okpara Avenue in Enugu metropolis. It was the subject of a viral BBC video broadcast. The matter was also the subject of a motion brought before the House of Representatives. The state chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Barr. Ugo Agballah, also addressed a world press conference during which he stated that “land grab” was the main driver of the destruction that occurred.
These destructions, directed by the Enugu state government on a vast and unprecedented scale, as I pointed out earlier, were executed also at Gariki in Enugu South LGA, Abakpa in Enugu East LGA, and at Ogige-Nsukka market in Nsukka LGA. Ogige-Nsukka market is equally a huge market but stands apart from the other three major centres of trade and commerce that were destroyed by agents of the Enugu state government.
Ogige-Nsukka market is at once an emporium, a cultural centre, and a daily market that serves both the interest of the locals of the immediate Nsukka environment and other buyers and sellers from Kogi, Benue, and other parts of northern Nigeria. The Ogige-Nsukka market predates by decades the independence of Nigeria and has grown and attracted other satellite markets. Ogige-Nsukka market is the second biggest market in Enugu state and, like Onitsha Market, is both the host and the destination of choice for buyers and sellers from its immediate constituency, particularly but not limited to students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and people from other parts of Nigeria and beyond.
It is through happenings after the unfortunate demolition of that market that the contradictions and conflations in the statements and actions of the Enugu state government are painfully and disgracefully unfolding with rapidity.
The Enugu state government claimed that it had resettled the traders of the Ogige-Nsukka market. The falsehood in this statement is laid bare by the presence, every day, of hundreds of traders whose shops were destroyed as they mill around the grounds of the destroyed market, daily, hawking goods that, a few weeks ago, they dispensed from their own shops securely and with dignity. If really the state government allocated shops to them, why would they prefer to mill around the destroyed market, in the circumstances of utter degradation and humiliation?
Second, matters have now been complicated further by pictures that are available worldwide of the deployment on the ground of the demolished Ogige-Nsukka market of giant-sized fuel tanks and several pipes and other related facilities hinting at a sinister possibility that part of the reason for the near-complete destruction of a communal market and therefore a public facility is to make way for a petrol filling station. So, the question in the hearts of many who wait patiently for an answer is this: Were more than 1,000 shops serving the direct and indirect interest of more than 100,000 people destroyed to make way for a petrol filling station?
Third, in destroying the national headquarters of Ifesinachi Transport Ltd and Peace Plaza (opposite the national headquarters of Peace Mass Transit Ltd), the state government claimed that it acted to restore the masterplan of the Ogige-Nsukka market. This claim seriously discredits the state government in the eyes of most adults in the Nsukka area because everyone knows that in destroying the plazas belonging to Ifesinachi Transport Ltd and Peace Mass Transit, the state government is, by so doing, laying claims to the very ground that accommodated Premier Hotel, Nsukka, which was adjacent but substantially separated from the motor park that has now been destroyed to make way for the construction of what the state government claims to be a terminal, some sort of a glorified motor park, you daresay.
Premier Hotel indeed existed adjacent to the motor park which the state government has taken over after destroying everything standing there, but it is not possible at all that the state government has any basis to lay claims to the plot of Premier Hotel which was built by the late Chief Charles Abangwu immediately after the Nigerian civil war. Chief Charles Abangwu, a1954 graduate of Law from the University of Hull and a contemporary of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and who was elected into the Eastern Region House of Assembly to represent Nsukka Division from April 1955 to February 1962, could not have built Premier Hotels Ltd on the land meant for Ogige-Nsukka market.
In the year 2000 or thereabouts, Chief Charles Abangwu on the point of retiring to his country home sold the Premier Hotel premises to two reputable businessmen of Nsukka extraction: Igwe James Mamah, proprietor and founder of Ifesinachi Motors, and Chief Sam Onyishi, proprietor of Peace Mass Transit.
The Enugu state government destroyed the vast establishments of those two businessmen without notice, without prior discussion, without compensation, without providing alternative places, and, in the case of Ifesinachi Transport Ltd, despite a subsisting injunction of an Enugu State High Court.
Also treated with the same disdain and contempt are the displaced traders of Ogige market. Notwithstanding the claims by agents of the Enugu state government, I insist that no alternate arrangement was made for the traders before they were violently dislodged and displaced; I also insist that contrary to the statements credited to the government, most, if not all, of the traders have not received a dime from the state government as compensation for the losses that have been inflicted upon them. In forcefully evicting and taking over the properties of the people, the procedure and legal steps envisioned for the takeover of people’s property by the Land Use Act were flagrantly disobeyed.
Up to this moment, no visible action has been taken to ameliorate the hardship that the actions of the state government have visited on the traders and their dependants, even as significant fatalities are being recorded every day among the victims of Ogige-Nsukka market demolition, as must be the case with other traders and other business persons and their dependants whose sources of livelihood were destroyed in Abakpa, Gariki, and Okpara Avenue.
My stand on the matter is this:
1. Enugu state governor Mr. Peter Mbah should admit that his clearly unconstitutional actions have occasioned monumental harm on several households, possibly outstripping whatever benefits that may possibly accrue from the transport terminals, the purported purpose of which he has wreaked the unfolding havoc on the means of livelihood of persons in Enugu state. In these times of unprecedented economic stress, the governor should take immediate remedial actions as the occasion warrants.
2. The first step is for relief markets to be expeditiously provided at strategic points in parts of the state for the immediate use of the displaced traders.
3. Similarly, persons and institutions like Ifesinachi Transport Ltd, Peace Mass Transit, and others whose establishments were destroyed in evident error should be restituted.
4. It is important for just and reasonable compensations to be paid to those whose shops, chattels, and other valuables were destroyed.
5. Mr. Peter Mbah should make a public broadcast to the people of Enugu State asking for forgiveness and appeal for healing for the pains caused by his peremptory and excessive use of the power of the office of the governor of Enugu State.
HON. CHIJIOKE JONATHAN EDEOGA
(Enugu State governorship candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections)
July 29, 2024
