…Amid Anguish, Curses
The contractors’ bulldozers that were being resisted by some affected traders whose shops fell within the area that was said to have been sold by their landlords concerned Sunday Nov. 21, 2020 had their way, and demolished all the marked area by force.
The strategy was that as soon as Sunday worshippers had gone to their churches, the security operatives who had blocked the Olu-Obasanjo Road and some community boys who also adorn flexes with the inscription, “volunteer demolition team” gave the desired cover to the contractors to clear the affected buildings and shanties occupying the space of land from the Olu-Obasanjo Road into the Amaigbo Primary School.
The helpless traders who got the bad news rushed to the project site but could not do anything only to lay curses in their suppressed anger against the workers and all those who they say callously deprived them of their shops and putting them into hardship even as Nigerians were recovering from the COVID-19 lock down.
Most of the aggrieved traders believed that the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike is behind their woe.
One of the traders who pleaded anonymity asked to no one in particular, “if the governor is not the buyer as they want us to believe, where did these faceless buyers and contractors got the kind of money and security forces to push us this hard,” they asked.
The next neighbor supplied that the traders union was arm twisted to sign a paper to be of good behavior when the demolition would eventually be carried out before opening the market this time around.
The Ikokwu spare parts dealers executives refused to talk to newsmen on the issue but appears to have accepted their fate and perhaps be looking forward to relocating to the place government had given them somewhere at Aba – Port Harcourt around Eleme Junction.
