Onitsha, the commercial hub of Anambra State, has been important to every regime in the state and will continue to be, because of the huge revenue window it represents. The story has not changed with the current regime in the state led by Gov Chukwuma Soludo. Like others in the past, the present regime is trying to maximize its profits in the commercial city which boasts of the biggest market in West Africa. While the government is well within its rights to do so, it is however some of the ways it goes about it that is proving to be a major problem.
Touting activities have long been associated, not just with the various markets in Onitsha, but with many others across the federation. Such activities, if left unchecked, makes the difference between states which manage them well and those which don’t. Anambra, unfortunately, is among the states which not only do not manage the situation well, but have been overwhelmed by it.
Anyone making a trip to the various markets in Onitsha will be confronted by utter chaos unleashed by many touts, some of who claim to be working for the state government as revenue collectors and, or enforcers. They have contrived to instil fear in many people at those markets, to the extent that they fear no one, complaints to concerned government agencies not yielding the expected fruit. Thus, those touts are lords unto themselves, unleashing brutality on the citizenry in a most repugnant and shameful manner.
A particular group, Anambra State Anti-Touting Agency, popularly called SASA, appears to be the most notorious. They have been reported to beat people deemed as defaulters with pestles, breaking their legs and limbs in the process. The most celebrated case was that of a man called Mgbilimbga, who was beaten black and blue with a pestle and was almost giving up the ghost when he was taken to the hospital. While the beating went on, someone among the assailants was filming it after which it flooded the social media space.
It was an incident that thoroughly smeared the image of the state as many wondered why and how such could be happening in this age, no matter what the man’s crime might have been.
Despite the uproar generated by that incident, violent touting activities are still going on in Onitsha. There are those who apprehend people who fail to use the pedestrian bridge at Onitsha but convert the fines paid to their personal pockets, rather than in the government’s coffers.
There is also the OCHA Brigade which operates like cowboys as they descend and cart away the items of those they call roadside traders; just as the activities of another agency, Anambra Road Transport Management Agency (ARTMA).
While we are not standing in the way of the state government from making money, we urge them to curb the activities of these hoodlums in uniform which are bringing bad image to the people and government of the state.
At a time when many are believing that the state government is tolerating these touts, it will be in the best interest of the government to nip the activities of these touts in the bud. There surely must be better ways of using them to achieve whatever aim the state government desires, than what we are seeing at the moment.
