Urban Renewal & Street Trading In
Lagos
By
Tochukwu Ezukanma
maciln18@yahoo.com
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
|