Street Trading: What is the fate of all these EXHIBITS seized by KAI, Environmental Task Force, Police & other Law Enforcement Officers in Lagos and in other states with similar exhibit seizure law enforcement agencies?
My Worry, Your Worry, Their Worry & should be Our Worry.
Will the exhibits end up as sweet Asaro (porridge), fried yam & fried pepper, cooked yam garnished with pepper, or as Iyan (pounded yam) to whet the appetite of these hardworking "Yam & Pepper" officers? Or will the exhibits rot in their custody or be returned to the poor people struggling to survive through street traders and hawkers?
But if all the exhibits will be returned to the "runaway" traders after "settlement", fine and or detention, how will the respective owners of these foodstuffs be recognized? Will the exhibits match the traders and vice versa? Will the poor traders even have the guts to appear in the well-fortified customer-unfriendly garrison of these officers (in most cases without their lawyers)?
I refer you to one of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's socio-economic awareness-driven albums of the 80s where he was worried about the fate of seized food Exhibits, Exhibits owners - traders & hawkers and those law officers who seized the edible foodstuffs as EXHIBITS.
Fela in his unique radical & lyrical approach of calling attention to the poor people's plight in the midst of excessive affluence of the few sang: "Breadi exhibits, Akara exhibits, Coke exhibits, Gala exhibit, Guguru exhibit, epa exhibits,..". It's a way to partly suggest where those combinations of exhibits could end up. Possibly in the stomach of some unscrupulous gun-carrying wild face law & exhibit enforcement officers.
If Fela, the people's prophet who saw our tomorrow yesterday, sang this song on street trading & hawking about 40 years ago when Nigeria was not home to the highest number of multidimensionally poor people in the world, naira was almost at par with the dollar and youth unemployment was not as terribly bad as it is now and out-of-school children percentage wasn't this scary, and the problem continues to get bigger, then, all discerning people of good social conscience should know that this persistent socio-economic problem can't be resolved with seizure of goods and communities at gun point by government law enforcement officers.
Mass poverty that leads to street trading by struggling people who can't afford high charges of shops rental, can't be decreed out of existence by law enforcement agents of government. When mass poverty and unemployment are concretely addressed, street trading and hawking will gradually phase out. That's a simple principle of causes and effects. Gov. Seyi Makinde once declared with pride that he was once a bread hawker in Ibadan land to help his mother's funding of his education, but today he's the governor of Oyo State. It means street trading and hawking with the attendant risk is more of poverty and economic survival driven not just a fancy.
Adeola Soetan