The intervention of two prominent Northern politicians in the planned relocation of the famous Mile 12 Market by the Lagos State Government underlines how Nigerian public officials subsume serious development issues to ethnic, religious or sectional sentiments. When Abdullahi Ganduje, Governor of Kano State, and his predecessor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, separately visited Lagos to canvass a rethink of the relocation plan, they failed to connect with the imperatives of a fast developing mega city, but were, instead, blinded by narrow sectional instincts. They should be roundly ignored while the relocation should be resolutely pursued.
A diverse polity where those occupying leadership positions perpetually pander to retrogressive primordial sentiments instead of moving with the tide of progress will always struggle to keep pace with a globalising world. This, say many observers, is the Nigerian story and Ganduje, Kwankwaso and other ethnic champions are playing it out in Lagos.
The excuse for their reactionary intervention was the firm announcement last month by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode that the state was finally set to relocate the market from its present site on the Lagos-Ikorodu Expressway in Ikosi-Isheri Local Council Development Area to a better, more conducive place. Relocating the market has been on the drawing board since the early 1980s when the administration of Lateef Jakande (1979-1983) laid the foundation for a new market near Ikorodu. His vision called for the redevelopment of the current Mile 12/Agiliti area as a modern residential suburb and road and rail hub off the ever busy Lagos-Ikorodu highway. This plan has been taken up with variations by his successors, but has suffered many delays, precisely from opposition from interest groups and lack of strong political will by the governors.
In between, bloody ethnic clashes have broken out while the sprawling market has become a den of miscreants and a crime-prone area. Worse, for over three decades, the spillover from the market has been creating traffic bottlenecks on the commercially important highway, crippling business and resulting in tremendous loss in man-hours every day, even at weekends. It was the most recent bout of clashes that galvanised Ambode into action. In March, a minor quarrel snowballed into days of violent battles among Yoruba residents and traders and their Hausa-Fulani counterparts. Mile 12 and the neighbouring Agiliti were engulfed in mayhem as lawless bands of thugs set upon the innocent, leaving at least 10 persons dead, with many homes, shops, churches and vehicles torched. Between 1999 and today, at least three such clashes have occurred with the worst being the 1999 ethnic clashes that spread from Mile 12/Agiliti to other parts of Lagos, with over 100 persons killed, according to unofficial estimates.
This market should be relocated and very fast too. A notable foodstuffs market, it is the favoured destination for yam, pepper, onion, fruits, tomato, yam flour (elubo), vegetables, palm oil and smoked fish. The nature and variety of the goods have drawn traders from diverse ethnic nationalities from whose areas in the vast Nigerian hinterland the goods are transported to Mile 12. Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, Ebira, Tiv, Igbo, Igala, Idoma, Edo and others make up the market. It is not planned, having expanded far beyond its original size to intrude into the high density residential suburbs. It does not fit into the Lagos master plan and this informs its inevitable relocation.
How this plan conflates with a Northern interest as Ganduje and Kwankwaso imply is difficult to unravel. It is only in Lagos that anytime the government moves to knock order into chaos in line with the move towards the mega city dream that rabid ethnic blackmail is deployed to truncate it. This was in evidence when the government recently demolished the Oshodi bridge loop market, despite the obvious nuisance it had become and recurs anytime an attempt is made to remake the Ladipo spare parts market.
Ambode should forge speedily ahead. Lagosians, for long deluged by riotous markets and their disruptive impact on highways and business, have been supportive of the clearing of Oshodi, Ijora, Mushin, Oyingbo, Tejuoso, Yaba, Mile 2, Obalende and other hitherto notorious metropolitan eyesores that once gave the city its reputation as the most rowdy and dirty.
Confronted with 1.4 million people, representing 22 per cent of Rio de Janeiro’s population living in slums – favelas – by the 1980s, Brazil’s government launched a programme to urbanise the city that, according to Mercer Consulting, by 2011, reduced drug-related deaths of 50,000 persons between 1979 and 2000 to a trickle and redeveloped 28 favelas. Ghana’s President Jerry Rawlings doggedly overcame all opposition to clear Accra, the capital city, of its dirty, overgrown, crime-infested markets in the 1980s to re-create the nation’s capital city. Despite making Dubai an international marketplace, the United Arab Emirates ensures orderly, well-regulated markets visited by 13.2 million tourists in 2014. The year-long throngs of shoppers and visitors have also not turned Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s downtown markets into rowdy suburbs and that should not be the case with Lagos either.
Markets are places of commerce and should be kept as such. The local councils should complement the market redevelopment efforts of the Lagos State Government by building well-planned local markets with stalls that lower income earners can afford. There should be a robust security system in all markets as well as adequate sanitation, maintenance and car parks. Never again should Lagosians have to suffer traffic congestion, crimes and inter-ethnic violence simply because a market is located in the neighbourhood.
Ambode should purposefully pursue such goals to silence the ethnic champions.
