Typical of Nigerian leaders, ashamed of the poverty they created, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State Government said on Friday that, from today, it would commence a total enforcement against street trading and street hawkers, hinting that the law banning hawking in Lagos metropolis would take its full course.
Speaking live on Television Continental, Ambode said that the renewed zeal is in line with Section One of the Lagos State Street Trading and Illegal Market Prohibition Law 2003 which prohibits street trading and hawking
What the governor failed to tell his audience was what he has in stock for the thousands of Lagos families who depend on that street trading to survive. It is absurd that people who do their best to stay alive, after being abandoned by the Nigerian State, still have their yokes made heavier by the same people who served them a gutter-life.
With Ambode’s resolve, millions of Lagosians are now threatened by starvation and homelessness. Ambode, like all the crooked Nigerian leaders, would love to turn Nigerian overnight into a developed country, but will adamantly refuse to take care of their citizens, like the case in such developed countries. In fact, they will do all to frustrate the citizens from eking out a decent life. If for example, the money allocated to Lagos State since 1999 had been used to uplift the people, no one in Lagos would have found hawking attractive.
Ambode, while showing fake sympathy for the family of a street hawker who was knocked down by a truck while trying to evade arrest from officials of Kick Against Indiscipline along Maryland Bus stop on Wednesday, regretted that the situation led to the destruction of public assets. He put more value on that over the poor dead hawker, driven to his early grave by an irresponsible country.
“It is not in our DNA to allow someone to just die by road accident or the way it happened in respect of the incident. But beyond the fact that we lost one person while crossing the road as a result of evading arrest by KAI officials, I need to tell Lagosians that over 49 buses were actually destroyed and it is costing us like almost N139m to put those buses back on the road,” he said.
I had expected him to show the human face of governance by giving the family of the deceased some money. This he did not do. 10% of what Ambode uses to entertain his guest at Lagos State Government House would have done the family of the deceased tremendous good.
Rather an insensitive Governor Ambode had the audacity to say that because of that incident, the State Executive Council has resolved to enforce the Law, which according to him makes both the hawker and the buyer liable of the offence.
“The issue is we need to enforce our laws because we already have a law in respect of that and then there is a clause in it which says the buyer and the seller are both liable and that we are going to fine them either N90, 000 or a six month jail term.
“What we are doing on traffic is that we are introducing new strategies to eliminate traffic, but Lagos being a cosmopolitan city, you cannot totally eliminate it but now this is the case, in the next few days, you will see on the street of Lagos signs that will be warning you that buyers and hawkers should be aware that there are consequences,” a Governor Ambode, detached from reality said.
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