Urban Renewal

Urban Renewal & Street Trading In Lagos

Tochukwu Ezukanma

There is street trading in every major city of the world that I know. There is street trading in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, etc. In Washington, DC, a powerful but modest sized city, street trading did not become a significant phenomenon until the early 1980s. The street traders were mostly university students trying to make some money for the summer before returning to school in the fall and immigrants from Third World countries. They set up their tables on the sidewalks and sold mostly T-shirts, baseball caps, souvenirs, cheap sunglasses and inexpensive watches. Also, there were some, mostly among the immigrants, Iranians, Ethiopians, etc who had mobile kiosks which they set up in the mornings and rolled out in the evenings. From them, they sold soft drinks, snacks and fast food, like hamburger, hot dogs, French fries, etc. The government of Washington DC objected to their activities and planned to put an end to it.

The people, not just those engaged in the trade but many others, protested. They made a case for the street traders. They argued that these are unemployed people who found ways of making money by engaging themselves in legitimate businesses and also providing needed services. The government listened and compromised. It allowed them to stay, but established guidelines that regulated their activities. This is quite understandable in a democracy because the government must be responsive to the needs, wishes and aspirations of the people. Secondly, in democratic politics, government officials have to grapple continually with conflicting interests. Striking an equitable balance between contending interests is the essence of democratic governance.

Due to cultural shocks of colonialism, the Nigerian government is totally estranged from the people. Trapped in the legacy of the psychological ravages of colonialism, the people can not fathom that they should be the subject of the concern, focus and actions of the elected and appointed government officials and every institution of government. The elected and government officials, taking a cue from the colonial masters (our primary source of the knowledge of contemporary governance and the conduct of government officials), are so caught up in their elitism to realize that they are essentially elected and appointed to serve the people. Consequently, they can not understand that as public servants that their only legitimate role is to employ all their energies, knowledge and talents and every organ of government for the wellbeing of Nigerian citizens. So, in Nigeria, the people barely raise a voice in protest, and when they do, the government does not listen and as a result, do not accommodate the legitimate concerns of the people. These problems of people’s passivity and government’s insensitivity become even more acute when those concerned are the weak and the poor.

The government of Lagos state is working on cleaning up and beautifying the streets of Lagos, which is not wrong in itself. Undoubtedly, most parts of Lagos are in desperate need of restoration. But what band of ill-baked, sophomoric, dilettantish town planners would consider ridding the city of street traders and hawkers synonymous with urban renewal? The object of city planning is not to stifle urban activities, but to stimulate and regulate them. What monstrous city revitalization program places more premiums on street decorations than on the financial ability of parents to feed their children and send them to school? What vicious urban renewal rubbish remains insensitive to the fact that the social and economic dislocations wrought by years of corrupt and irresponsible leadership left the country teeming with the unemployed and the poor, some of whom are forced to survive by selling food, oranges, water, soft drinks, etc in the streets?

Unfortunately, the government of Lagos State has refused to recognize that street traders and hawkers are victims, not villains. They are victims of a series of Kleptocracy unrivaled in their thievery and profligacy that thus, consigned a disproportionate percentage of the citizens of this wealthy country to vegetate in hopeless poverty.

This policy of ridding the streets of Lagos of traders and hawkers is totally wrong and the approach has been alarmingly cruel. The Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) officials are treating street traders and hawkers like animals. They are harassing, humiliating and dispossessing them. They arrest them and extort money from them (they call it bail). They destroy and confiscate their wares, some of which they revert to personal use or resell. They attack them and beat some of them up. Their gratuitous brutality conjures up the image of slave drivers subduing recalcitrant slaves. Then, you are forced to wonder if Nigeria is truly a democracy, or something of a medieval tyranny cloaked in democratic trappings

Lamentably, not much has been heard in defense of these hapless victims of the Fashola administration’s city beautification project. Nigeria is an extremely religious country but the teachings of our different religions hardly reflect in our lives and conduct. Although, they enjoin us to be humble and treat others with respect, Nigerians are sickeningly snobbish, repulsively wealth conscious and disgustingly class conscious. Not surprisingly, human relationships are strictly dictated by “levels”. Your “level” is defined by your pedigree (family name), diction (in English) and of course, the quality of your clothes, poshness of your car, elegance of the jewelries around your neck, exclusiveness of your address, etc. Once you measure up to the desired level, you are treated with utmost respect and everything about you is handled with exquisite discretion. But God have mercy on you, if you fall below the expected “level”, because you will be treated as the scum of the earth: disrespected, derided and despised.

Those being mistreated by KAI do not have “levels”. This explains the general indifference to this Apartheid styled degradation of Nigeria citizens in their own country. Sadly, there has even been some support for this callous government policy of stripping the innocent of both their dignity and means of livelihood; the argument being that these traders and hawkers should be forced off the streets because there are miscreants amongst them. But such reasoning is most groundless.

Nobody is questioning the presence of bad elements, even downright criminals amongst them. However, are there not thieves within the Nigerian Police Force; pettifoggers given to lying for a pittance among Nigerian lawyers; coldhearted doctors, whose negligence repeatedly result in avoidable deaths, in our hospitals; electoral fraudsters, murderers and crooks among the politicians? So, going by their distorted logic, what should we do? Disband the Nigerian police force, abolish the practice of law in Nigeria, proscribe the medical profession, and dismantle the entire political process in Nigeria? Of course, their argument is nonsense; staggering, stupendous nonsense.

Street hawkers and traders in Lagos State deserve not punishment but encouragement. The Lagos state government needs to strike an evenhanded balance between the contending needs of urban beautification and the economic survival of many indigent residents of the State. People should be allowed the opportunity to earn a living selling on the street, but with their activities regulated by the government so as to ensure the maintenance of public decorum, environmental sanitation and urban beauty.

Tochukwu Ezukanam writes from Lagos, Nigeria