The bulldozing of Ibadan

Some residents of Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, have accused the state government of malicious intent in its effort to clean up the city.

“The demolition exercise and road side activities are just a make-up affair,” said Femi Shodipo, an Ibadan resident and environmental scientist. “If he truly wants to work, then he should be dedicated to it, and stop playing politics with it.”

Bulldoze and demolish

The state government had, in October, rolled out its bulldozers demolishing structures in places like, Iwo road, Academy, Bodija, and the Bola Ige International Market.

Jide Oladokun, another resident and a medical doctor, said, if he had his way, he would tell the Adebayo Alao-Akala government to engage itself in people oriented projects rather than what he termed a ‘demolition to destroy exercise.’

“Whenever some of the people come to the hospital for treatment, you cannot but be amazed at what their problems are - just simple things that you can prevent from happening,” he said. “They live in houses without toilets, sometimes very close to huge refuse dumps. I am afraid at the level of our environmental consciousness and at times I ask myself, do we even have a government in this state?”

In disregard of the demolition exercise that commenced on October 15, the road side traders have merely shifted base, sometimes to places riskier than where they left. Asimi Abeeb, a meat seller at bridhe under Iwo road, said he has spent almost 15 years trading there.

“I cannot believe that this is governance,” Mr. Abeeb said. “See, that road that leads to Iwo, he spent many years to do it and just come and check it in few years time; it will be bad again, that is Alao-Akala for you.

“I don’t know where to go and pitch my tent again. I feed my family from the proceeds of this little trade; I have my customers at this road side. Some of them, whenever they are travelling from Lagos, they just pack and say, ‘Baba give us meat we want to buy’, but all that is gone.”

The case for the government

Contacted, the chairman of the state’s urban and regional planning board, Mobolaji Adewoyin, said there are plans to relocate the displaced traders, but the state government has been struggling with undue interference from politicians. “The problem is not that they don’t have the alternative place to do their businesses; we have encouraged the local governments to do their part,” Mr. Adewoyin said.

“The government has the plans to relocate these people to other areas, but here we are today, some local government areas are encouraging them and we have told the local government that are encouraging them to build and plan standard markets for them.

“If you are familiar with Ibadan, I will ask you to go and check the New Garage and other motor parks, but most of these people refused to move into these garages. When you get to Sango, you get to Mokola now; you will see people going to Lagos, going to Abeokuta from the place; whereas we have Abeokuta and Lagos garages. All these are in place but our people have refused to move into the facilities. They want to stay on the roadside and that is what the government is against,” Mr. Adewoyin said.

The planning board chairman added that the state government is set to move against all the defaulters to implement its full legal position: “We are trying to put an enforcement task force in place and anybody caught at the wrong place will have to be sanctioned.”

He also said the state government is making plans to partner with private refuse collectors and managers to put an end to the indiscriminate dumping of refuse in the state capital.v