Violence Breaks Out In Anambra Communities, Many Feared Dead

Panic As Anambra Traders Set To Protest Arrest Of 2 Market Chairmen By DSS

by Victor Ndubuisi
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The plan is said to have been finalized for a peaceful protest this week by traders in Anambra State, in response to the arrest of two market chairmen by DSS personnel during a meeting with all market chairmen in the State and the State Government Internal Revenue Service, held Tuesday at Training Hall, Revenue House, Awka, State capital.

The meeting was allegedly called at the request of the revenue body’s chairman, Mr. Richard Nworah Madiebo, to deliberate the next steps after traders threatened not to pay an exorbitant tax set by the organization for loading and offloading items in the marketplaces.

While the meeting was in session, DSS officials reportedly stormed the venue and arrested and whisked away two market chairmen, one from Ogidi Building Materials Market and the other from Oguta Road Aluminum Dealers Association, for allegedly opposing the exorbitant levy of #30,000 to #40,000 imposed on traders instead of the normal levy payment of #5,000.

Traders React Over Arrest of Anambra Market Leaders’ During Meeting

As a result, the meeting ended in a shambles as the entire community, in sympathy with their jailed colleagues, marched in rage to the DSS headquarters in Awka, where their two arrested members were brought.

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“We will this week protest the arrest and exorbitant levy imposed on us by the State Government. We formerly paid #5,000 for loading and offloading of wares but now the State Government imposed #30,000 to #40,000, as the case may be. From where do we source the levy imposed on us to pay at this hardship.

“Two market chairmen, from Building Materials market Ogidi, and that of Oguta Road Aluminum Dealers Association, were arrested by DSS in the meeting we were having at the training hall of the Revenue House, in Awka, on the order of the chairman of the revenue body, Mr Richard Nworah Madiebo, for earlier opposing the high levy.

“It is because of this high levy being imposed on traders that different sections of the traders in the State, that include, tomatoes sellers, fish sellers, among others, are leaving for neighboring States like Delta, Imo, Enugu and Abia. You don’t employ those who are not traders to come and pilot the affairs of the traders. Sacked touts were recalled to come and manage our affairs, we can’t take it.

Anambra Market Leadership Tussle Takes Another Turn

“The protest is just to let Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, know that we can’t bear this any longer, Anambra is not the only State where you have traders. Every time leaders are changed and caretaker committees instituted. Government has no business in market leadership, it is just to collect its levy and leave leadership for the traders,” he fumed.

 

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