Abuja – February 19, 2024 – Viewpoint Housing News.
Traders operating within the FCTA’s Bwari Area Council’s popular Mpape village market have been notified to vacate a designated section that houses parking lots, a hospital, a fire and police station, all within a week.
The notification was delivered over the weekend by officials of the Bwari Area Council and the FCT Task Force, who were visiting the market.
Numerous vendors at the market had gotten into arguments with their coworkers who were purportedly collaborating with Bwari Area Council officials via a private developer managing the area’s continuous renovation. They prevented the team from trying to reclaim a portion of the market set aside for the building of a parking lot, hospital, fire station, and police station as part of the infrastructure needed to modernise the market.
Conflict erupted as leaders of the groups that would be impacted by the exercise argued with colleagues who were supposedly working with government agents to reclaim the designated area.
It was a tumultuous situation as some dealers expressed their displeasure through speech and others by hurling stones.
In an interview with reporters, Mr. Audu Amos, Head of Logistics at the Bwari Area Council, stated that the concept for the market’s redesign was conceived in 2005.
Amos noted that due to security dangers in Mpape, the location was approved two years ago by a ministerial task group.
The CEO of Shape Ideas Project ltd, the private developer handling the project, Dr Mrs Amunega Ajayi, said when the firm moved to the site to commence construction, the affected traders pleaded that they be allowed to remain pending when the space would be needed.
She said, “When we were given the allocation to come and work here, they came to me that they didn’t have anywhere else to go, that we should just allow them to stay in the market. I said fine, but when we finish building shops they must vacate the car park. Unfortunately, that was a great mistake that we made at that time.
“So, we called that we had finished building the market but we needed to build the police station, a hospital in the market, fire service office in the market and even the civil defence office, but they said no that they were in court.
However, one of the leaders of the aggrieved traders, who took the issue to court, Alhaji Awwal Abdul Dogo, said although at the court they were told that their market allocations had expired, they obtained a court order to carry on their trading activities at the site pending the settlement of the matter.
