Posted by By PAUL ORUDE, Bauchi on
Monday, September 11, 2006 was a bad day for Bola Joe and many traders at Wunti market, Bauchi who run hair dressing salons. That day, task force officers descended on their shops.
Monday, September 11, 2006 was a bad day for Bola Joe and many traders at Wunti market, Bauchi who run hair dressing salons. That day, task force officers descended on their shops.
'They make this place lively and busy. Now they have been sent packing, why? We have been together for years as a family and now they are gone," she lamented.
Bauchi State government, which sent them packing, seemed to have woken up one morning and decided that the shops would go. Thre was no notice to the traders before the bulldozers came.
'Nobody told me that they would come and demolish my shop. I just came out this morning and I saw a group of policemen, some government officials and some youths looking like thugs. The youths started pulling down our shops and destroyed everything," Musa who sells fruits told Daily Sun.
Yusuf Mohammed, whose shop was also destroyed rained curses on the government, saying, 'they don't want the poor man to survive. Where do they want us to go now?" Yusuf said he came back from Abuja when the FCT Development Authority demolished his shop at Kubwa.
Mallam Danladi was almost moved to tears as he explained his plight. The shoe dealer said he was taken aback by what the government did. 'How can they destroy our things? This is very, very unfair. Where do they want us to go now?"
Nuhu Ibrahim, who used to be a dealer of children's clothes, was unhappy with the way the government went about it. 'This government wants to spoil its good name. Why should people who have been doing business for long, you now make things difficult for us? This administration has only few months to go, but it is spoiling its good name with this.They said they want to beautify the place. The poor people would suffer because you want to beautify the place."
When confronted, chairman of the task force, Alhaji Yhaya Yelwa Mohammed, told Daily Sun that government took the action because the place was becoming congested as many accidents are recorded around the Wunti roundabout where the affected shops are located. He said that the landscape was distorted by the makeshift shops, adding that government wants the place to be beautified.
'There is no way we can do that if we don't send them packing. Government wants to sanitise the area, to beautify the area, to give the city a beautiful look and they constitute hazards. They were given three weeks notice and they are all aware of the quit notice. After that, we came back to inform them of government's intention, but nothing has happened," he said.