Mile 12 Market Leaders Pleads With Lagos State Governor

While government and traders engaged in talks on how to find the lasting solutions to the frequent tribe clashes in the mile 12 market, the neigbouring Ogun State government quickly, offered the displaced marketers a portion of land at Ogere area, a Lagos/Ogun border, which is currently being upgraded for their use.

The Mile 12 Market is located in Ikosi-Isheri Local Council Development Area, along Lagos –Ikorodu Road. It is noted for perishable food items such as: pepper, onions, yams, fruits, tomatoes, yam flour, vegetable and palm oils, cash crops and other numerous edible food items. The market is about 30 years old.

The market consists of traders from different ethnic groups in Nigeria. These include: Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, Ibibio, Fulani, Efik, Edo, Igala, Idoma, and Ebira just to mention a few. All these traders warmly interact with themselves. On a daily basis, millions of naira is generated there.

This is so because items from the market are sold to myriads of local buyers as well as some exported beyond the shores of the country at considerable prices too. Ogun State govt, traders move consequently, the traders since the closure of the market had lamented over the attendant economic hardship it has brought upon them and the customers at large. In the wake of the crisis, Ambode announced plans to relocate the market permanently to a site yet to be determined.

The announcement shocked the leadership of the market which made them to embark on serious lobbying on the need for the governor to have a rethink. They assured that such incident will not re-occur.

Though, moves were on by some traders to relocate, majority opposed to the idea due to the long distance and probable loss of advantage of proximity to customers. Alhaja Iyabo Ahmed, the Iyaloja (women market leader) of Mile 12 Market, while speaking with newsmen on the development, expressed reservation about the idea of being relocated from Mile 12 to neighbouring states. According to her, “We regret the unfortunate incident that culminated into this situation and we are promising our amiable governor to pardon us. It will not happen again.

“We don’t want to relocate from Lagos it’s our main market for years past. Lagos is where the consumers are located so any relocation from Lagos will really not measure up to what we are getting in Lagos. “While, we are ready to comply with the relocation plan of the state government, we are pleading that the new site should not be too remote for us in order to have easy access to our customers we are pleading with Governor Ambode.” 

The Iyaloja, who also backed plans by state government to ban okoda operation in the area, urged the government to give adequate time and period for traders to plan relocation movement, “because any hasty movement will negatively affect us the traders and especially, customers.”