There is an ongoing controversy over the status of the Lokpanta Cattle Market in Umunneochi Local Government Area of Abia State. It is situated along the Enugu – Port Harcourt Expressway, just after Okigwe, inbound Umuahia.
The controversy arose when Governor Alex Otti of Abia State, ordered the demolition of some structures in the market. These included permanent human habitations, brothels and other buildings which did not conform to the Abia State Government, ABSG’s, plan for the area, which is strictly a cattle market.
In recent years, the Lokpanta Cattle Market, which had been turned into a budding Northern people’s settlement, had become a hotbed of violent crimes. According to government officials, the market had become a place where ransom payments for the kidnappings which have been happening in that axis were warehoused.
It was also discovered by a government investigative panel that dead bodies, probably those of people who could not pay ransoms, littered the surrounding forests.
Apart from the crimes, the settlement had been renamed a “Ruga”, which is alien to the culture of the indigenes of the state. The squatters claimed it was given to them by former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu. The settlers had gone beyond the precinct allocated to them for cattle trade and extended at will without government approval or the consent of the land owners.
Senator Kalu, in a recent social media post, made it clear that when he transferred the Umuahia Cattle Market to Lokpanta in 2000, the area was never meant to be a separate town for Northerners but strictly a cattle market. It was the impunity that later developed, especially during the last eight years, that turned the market into something else which has increasingly become a threat to the people.
The Abia State Government has made it clear that the action it took was not meant to chase Northerners away from Abia. That would definitely be unconstitutional and unacceptable. Since it was meant to tackle crime, foster the safety of lives and property and restore law and order, we applaud it. The state government should not bow to the antics of political blackmailers who have now capitalised on it to sow the seeds of confusion and ethnic disharmony.
The primary duty of government is to protect the lives and property of every person within its jurisdiction. This includes the lives and property of law abiding non-indigenes and even non-Nigerians.
We commend the state government for its plan to fence the market and shut it down after close of business everyday.
It should also dismantle the dens of kidnappers throughout the area and implement the state’s law on open grazing. The market must be upgraded with modern facilities and kept open for legitimate business transactions.
All illegal squatters must go.
