The Concourse
By Soney Antai, serial award-winning columnist
Wrong trading spots: Win-win situation possible
It’s not for nothing that the ancients told us that a hungry man is an angry man. Such a man is not interested in the niceties of sanitation and hygiene when he sees food. He’s not also interested in its taste, or have you forgotten that in the mouth of a hungry man every food is tasty?If you belong to the family of the Thomasites and don’t agree to this, then ask Uncle Esau Isaac what happened to his birthright when he asked his self-centred brother, Jacob, to share some food with him.
All that a famished man does on sighting food or being presented with some, is to get at it and gulp it down until his hunger is not just assuaged, but pacified. In exam hall lingo, he would not just attempt to, but would answer all the questions, and that,before the time alloted the exam is up.
No human business has endured all-season flourishing as much as food business has. Even those, who for spiritual reasons, embark on long fasts end up on the dining table. It doesn’t matter whatever calling or profession we individually belong to, we are involuntarily customers to food business people. This explains Etubom Rex William’s song, Se owo ananam ubok aka inua (Whatever people do takes their fingers to their mouths). That is what accounts for the scores of hundreds of road side trading shades, containers, carts, sheds, hovels and stands that dot and clog many of our major town streets and roads.
The ubiquity of these trading ‘stands’ has posed challenges to the beauty, smooth traffic flow, sanitation and even security of urban centres. This column has in the past voiced concerns over the situation. Somehow, government’s response has often been to pull down the structures, only to have them resurface after sometime.
As has happened in years gone by, a few weeks ago, the Akwa Ibom State Government embarked on removal of the largely ramshackle trading structures around the Uyo metropolis. Not spared, unlike at other times,was Ibom Plaza.The action expectedly sent shock waves down the spines of small business holdings who lost their business points and were left with their hands on their heads and laps, wailing and gnashing their teeth over what would become of their economic lives.
For government, the beauty of the city should be kept and orderliness upheld.On the other hand, virtually all the traders affected by the development have expressed disapproval of government’s action. They point to their economic condition that has become worsened by the fact that government has provided them no alternative place to operate from. Beyond this, the traders complain that government can’t honestly characterise them as having been operating from illegal places when they were paying levies, rates and sundry taxes to the same government. So, there we have a situation where everyone is trying to be a judge in their own case.
Incidentally, as in past episodes, the traders are returning to where they were displaced from.This may not be an act of resistance to government, but a case of where else do we go? They have to feed themselves and their families. There are bills to pay: school fees, electricity tariffs, rent, among others. If while trading and earning some bucks things were awfully rough and tough, what would happen if they have nowhere from to fend for themselves?
Government should find a way of setting up shops around some of the intersections of the towns without compromising the city aesthetics. The rents of the shops should be fixed with a human face. The traders fully profiled, should be assisted to form themselves into product-specific collectives. In some locations, for security reasons, booths with conveniences should be constructed where the traders could operate from.There should be product-specific markets in such hugely populated towns like the state capital. To check indiscriminate disposal of wastes, especially plastic items, the state government should seek partnership with concerns that can turn the plastic items found all over our sewers into electricity power. Furthermore, government should find a way of ensuring that traders curtail excessive of disposal of wastes into sewers. A polluter-pays waste evacuation policy may be needed to take care of this.These measures if implemented should emplace a-win-win situation for the parties.