Governor Fashola’s apology to Ndi Igbo By Tochukwu Ezukanma

In a restaurant in my neighborhood, a man walked up to me. He sat down and started talking to me. At first, he sounded normal, but then, drifted, disconcertingly, off course. He told me that if I need him to, he can wash my car, in lieu of some money. I was taken aback by that proposition because he did not fit the profile of a man that will be washing cars for a little money. Finally, he asked me for some money; and hesitantly, I gave him some money. As he walked away, I was told his story. He is an Igbo man. He was a considerably successful auto part seller. But after KAI officials broke down his shop and carted away (stole) his auto part wares, he, impoverished and distraught, lost his mind. So, now, somewhat unhinged, he oscillates erratically between normalcy and lunacy.
In another case, an Igbo man, a roadside boutique owner, was weeping uncontrollably in the church because he was a victim of KAI officials; they destroyed his shop and seized all his goods. So, he totally lost all he laborious built up over many years. The list of street hawkers and roadside traders ruined, frustrated and traumatized by the brutality and avarice of KAI officials is endless.
In his ill-conceived urban renewal policy and its wicked implementation methods, Governor Fashola wants to rid the streets of Lagos of street hawkers and street traders. Undoubtedly, Lagos needs an urban renewal policy, as most parts of the city are in desperate need of urban restoration. But what band of vicious town planners and their fiendish concept of town planning consider beating up the poor and stripping them of their means of livelihood synonymous with urban revitalization? What wicked urban renewal  rubbish refuses to realize that the economic dislocations wrought by years of corrupt and irresponsible leadership in Nigeria left the country teeming with the unemployed and poor, some of whom are forced to survive by selling food, oranges, water, soft drinks, etc in the streets?
KAI officials are exhibiting alarming cruelty and greed in carrying out this assignment to rid the city of street hawkers. They treat street traders and hawkers like animals. They hound, attack and brutalize them, and then, seize their money, destroy their stalls and confiscate their wares (some of which they revert to personal use or resell). With sources of livelihood destroyed, lives are automatically ruined: hopes are dashed, dreams shattered, and people are frustrated and traumatized, even to the point of delirium and insanity.
The Igbo culture extols hard work and thrift and loathes mendicancy. Not surprisingly, the Igbo have a global renown for industry, resourcefulness and enterprise. In Lagos State, the Igbo are known for their barging industriousness not street begging. The impecunious and struggling Igbo dominate the ranks of street hawkers and roadside traders in Lagos. Therefore, the Igbo are bearing the greatest brunt of KAI officials’ brutal and grasping excesses.
The Fashola administration is xenophobic. KAI officials’ excessive brutality and inconceivable mercilessness in dealing with street hawkers, to a good extent, is inspired by this xenophobia (tribal hatred). Not surprisingly, the KAI Marshal General, Danjuma Maigeri, talks openly about his disgust for “those people –dirty people, looking like animals – from Abakaliki eager to come into Lagos instead of going to other states”, and his ruthless in dealing with them. “Dirty people, looking like animals from Abakaliki”, was his derogatory reference to the Igbo, especially, the underprivileged and downtrodden, but energetic, motivated and enterprising Igbo that make up the bulk of the street traders and hawkers in Lagos State.
Surprisingly, the demonstrated anti-Igbo policies of the Fashola government have not troubled the Igbo leaders (the Eze Igbos, Onunaekwulu Igbo, etc) of Lagos State, the Igbo state governors and Igbo organizations, like Aka Ikenga. I am yet to know of an Eze Igbo, Onunaekwulu Igbo, etc that spoke out against the sufferings of these struggling, budding Igbo entrepreneurs in the hands of KAI officials. When the governor of Anambara State, Peter Obi, reacted to anti-Igbo activities of the Lagos State government, it was in response to the deportation of Igbo destitute and beggars, and when Fashola apologized to Aka Ikenga, and by extension, Ngi Igbo, it was, also, in respect to the same deportation issue.
Why did Peter Obi and Aka Ikenga ignore the pains, sorrows and trauma that the agents of Governor Fashola (KAI Marshal General and his men) are meting out on innumerable Igbo endeavoring to earn a living from legitimate endeavors and trumpeted the deportation of destitute and beggars – a group that represents an infinitesimal percentage of the Igbo in Lagos State and whose way of live is antithetical to Igbo culture and values?
Aka Ikenga should have considered Fashola’s apology most irrelevant. It should have reminded Governor Fashola that the Igbo, including those that KAI Marshal General, Danjuma Maigeri, in his ignorance and bigotry, scornfully referred to as “those people –dirty people, looking like animals – from Abakaliki” do not owe anyone an apology for being in Lagos because they are Nigerian citizens, and therefore, reserve the legal right to live and work in any part of the country of their choice.
In addition, they should have demanded an apology from him for the herding around, beating up, dispossessing, and destroying of the sources of livelihood, of indigent, but law abiding Igbo men and women surviving on selling in the streets of Lagos, and extracted a commitment from him that henceforth, his administration will stop the stripping of these up-and-coming Igbo entrepreneurs of their self-worth and means of livelihood.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
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