More roadside markets springing up in Aba

By Felix Ogbonna

ABA—DESPITE the efforts of the Abia State government to check roadside trading in Aba, the commercial hub of the state, roadside and street markets are still springing up daily on major roads and streets of the city.

                                  

From Asa road located at the city centre to Ngwa road, School road, Clifford road, Cameroun road, Ehi road, Ikot Ekpene road at Ogbor Hill, Mosque Street among others within the Aba main motor park and General Post Office areas as well as the Osisioma Ngwa, Ariaria and Alaoji flyover junctions on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, the story remains the same on how roadside traders have converted major roads to sprawling markets.

South East Voice observed that most of the traders displayed their wares on top of drainages, road medians, beside the gate of public institutions like the Aba Post Office, Abia State Polytechnic, as well as the front side of filling stations, leading to traffic gridlocks as motorists usually find it difficult to navigate through these areas.

South East Voice visited the area popularly known as ‘Highlife’ spanning Cameroun, Clifford, Ehi and School roads intersection lying along Adazi and York streets, and observed that the booming roadside market had long been developed in the area for dealers in commodities like vegetables, yam, pepper, tomatoes, palm oil, fruits, plantain and clothes.

Even the entrance gate of the Enyimba Stadium along the School Road is not spared the menace of the roadside traders as they have filled every available space with their wares. The roadside traders at Osisioma Ngwa Junction have also converted the newly built pedestrian walkways to a market where they display all items of trade, mostly blocking the way.

While addressing journalists at the end of a routine inspection in Aba few months ago, the Chairman of the Abia State Environmental and Allied Matters Task Force, Capt. Awa Udonsi Agwu rtd, lamented the attitude of traders who had abandoned their shops at government approved markets to display their wares on the roads without considering the glaring risks to their lives and businesses as well as the effects on the environment.

According to the Task Force Chairman, “Most of these traders who displayed their wares on the roads had shops at government designated markets but refused to stay there. Go to Orie Ohabiam Electronics, Ekeoha Shopping Centre, Ariaria, Ehere and other markets in the city; shops are lying empty. They come to the main road for quicker sales and now used their shops as a packing stores. They should go back to their shops and leave the roads.

“We are not in Aba to victimize anybody, we have been civil in our approach so let us understand why the task force was set up. We want to ensure sanity. Roadside trading constitutes environmental nuisance and also exposes traders to greater danger. Cars can fail break and ram into them. Many of them use their wares to obstruct free flow of traffic. Others display theirs on drainages, using their improvised stands to block passage of water in the drainages.”

“What we are doing is to open up spaces to ease off traffic on the roads to enable people walk freely and for private vehicle owners to use the open spaces to park their cars while they are in Aba to do their shoppings, instead of parking them along the roads to cause gridlocks or get damaged by other road users because the vehicles were wrongly parked.

South East Voice’s visits to some markets in the city such as Ehere Modern Market, Orie Ohabiam Electronics Market, Ekeoha Shopping centre, among other markets in the city revealed the existence of fully built up shops yet to be rented by traders. At the Ehere Modern Market in Obingwa Local Government Area, there were more than 500 open spaces unoccupied by traders.

One of the roadside traders along Asa road, Johnson Kelechi who deals on shoes and clothes, said that they preferred trading on the roads because of lack of finances to rent shops at designated markets as some of them were yet to find their feet financially. Kelechi added that the cost of shops at the markets were too expensive for beginners like him, adding that they were willing to leave the roads if the state and local governments could reduce the cost of the shops.

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