News
How reckless driving wasted 30 lives in Anambra market
Market leaders at Building Materials International Market, Bakery Market and other markets in Ogidi Idemili-North Local Government Area of Anambra State have again drew the attention of Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo to incessant deaths in front of Building Materials Market along Onitsha-Enugu federal highway.
The market leaders while briefing newsmen, said over 30 traders have lost their lives to hit-and-run vehicles at rush hours while many have sustained excruciating injuries from accidents on the express due to lack of pedestrian bridge in the area.
Another very disgusting issue the market leaders raised was the atrocities being perpetrated by the officials of the Anambra Road Traffic Management Agency (ARTMA). They accused ARTMA officials of roaming around the market with POS machines extorting money from customers whom they didn’t give proper directions as to where they should park their vehicles or provided road signs.
The Building Materials International Market (BMIM) President General, Chief Jude Nwankwo, called on both the Federal and State Government to expedite construction of a pedestrian bridge across the Enugu/Onitsha Expressway, saying that over 30 persons which include traders, customers, and passers-by have lost their lives while trying to cross the ever busy highway flanked by several markets.
Chief Nwankwo, Patron, Anambra State Market Amalgamated Traders Association (ASMATA) urged members of the Anambra State House of Assembly who recently entertained a motion on siting pedestrian bridges at Obodoukwu Junction Ogbaru, Regina Celi, Awka and TRACAS Onitsha to consider including the Building materials market axis as one of the places that needs urgent attention to forestall further loss of lives in the area.
“I must commend the robust and proactive State Legislatures we have now in the House of Assembly and also laud His Excellency, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, Solution Governor for the massive infrastructural development going on at various parts of the state including his successes in the area of security.
“There is a serious need for a pedestrian bridge across this market expressway. We have about six major markets here: BMIM, Bakery International market, Synthetic fabrics International market, Importers Zone Building materials market, Provisions & Cosmetics market, and various major plazas around this axis. These result into a surge during morning and closing hours as people try to access or leave these markets.
“Many lives have been lost, no fewer than 30 persons have died without counting those injured or sometimes hospitalized. Let the State Government or Federal government build a pedestrian bridge here; many of those who died were breadwinners and people’s relatives.
“I also want to use this opportunity to remind Gov. Soludo to consider the reconstruction and tarring of these Building Materials to Ogidi High Court road which we created. The reconstruction of the road will decongest the gridlock often experienced at this BMIM/Site expressway junction,” Nwankwo said.
Also, the PG Synthetic Dealers Association, Ogidi market, Chief Sunday Muofunanya said that it high time a pedestrian bridge is constructed in the area to boost the market activities there.
“The economic situation of Nigeria is stressing the people so oftentimes people may be rushing to meet with some things and lose focus, sometimes the brake of a vehicle may fail to result to accident and if such happened during rush hour in the front the markets, the Carnage will be much.
“I also want to plead with the State Government to fulfill their promise by putting a stop to street trading and driving all street markets into their permanent site, especially those markets that had long moved into their permanent site. It will increase the IGR and control of markets in the hands of good leaders,” Muofunanya said.
According to the Chairman of Importers zone Building Materials Market Ogbunike, Oyi LGA, Mr Tobenna Igboanugo, coming from Awka the road is sloppy at this end, and it is always risky to cross the double lane at rush hour because the population is so much.
“I wish they could relocate the pedestrian bridge at Tarzan junction Nkpor to this place because it is underutilized over there but will be more useful here.
“I also plead with His Excellency to direct the Ministry of Works to commence palliative work on this Site to Ugwunwasike road to ease traffic or completely reconstruct it with drainages because any road without drainage is a waste of resources as water will find its levels.
“Governor Soludo should also sanitize the roads from illegal revenue collectors scaring our customers. They wear ATMA uniforms with POS machines to extort money from unsuspecting motorists, charging them for wrong parking without providing alternative space but they collect bribes from vehicles plying one-way against traffic which is very dangerous,” Igboanugo alleged.
Chidi Odinkalu, Nigeria’s fiery lawyer, law teacher and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), is emphatic that President Bola Tinubu is pushing to perpetuate himself in office, beginning with gaming the electoral process in 2027.
Odinkalu, Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School, told his host Naija Unfiltered, a popular Nigerian podcast programme, that he was as sure as death that the President would not exit office in 2031, if he succeeded with his current gambit to remain in power beyond next year.
Hear him: “Yes. But as I said, let me repeat myself. There’ll be a third term. President Tinubu has not done all of this just for another four years. There will be a third term. And anybody who is doing, ‘it is not our portion,’ is not reading the evidence.”
To achieve this aim, the activist, who was also emphatic that the National Assembly, would play a role, added: “The current National Assembly is anything but national or an assembly. And if it’s an assembly, it’s not a parliamentary one. Many people have called it a rubber stamp, but I think that is actually abusive of rubber stamps. I think this National Assembly is a disgrace.
Citing how bizarre and completely compliant the national legislature had become to Tinubu, the ex-NHRC’s boss, stated: “If you can change your national anthem in less than 24 hours with no public hearing, no public consultation, no public involvement, it tells you you don’t have a country because a national anthem is fundamental to the construction of a national identity.”
Also referring to the current move by the President to introduce state police, Odinkalu, wondered how the Nigerian Senate would introduce the bill to that effect and proceed towards the first and second readings, as well as committee stage and passage in less than two hours, questioning how that was possible in normal clime.
Hear him: “Once we finish our elections, we’re going to amend our Constitution, introduce a single six-year presidential term. The current incumbent will be elected until 2031. In 2031, what will happen? The question will be, will he be entitled to run on the six-year term or will he not?
“You will then get the best Senior Advocates in Nigeria telling you the law is not retrospective. That is why the administration is supporting the litigation over President Jonathan’s tenure—not because the Constitution is not clear, but because they will say there is precedent. There will be a third term, and I’m prepared to bet on it.”
“If we continue to pay ransom, we are encouraging these criminals to kidnap more people. The cycle will only continue unless we stop rewarding criminality,” were the words of Dauda Lawal, Governor of Zamfara State, with which he blamed those in the habit of paying ransoms as the major factor fuelling the current wave of kidnapping incidents across the country.
Lawal, on Thursday at the ARISE News/THISDAY Town Hall Conference on State Police and National Security in Abuja, told his audience how he flatly refused to pay a ₦300 million ransom demanded by kidnappers who abducted his brothers in 2019.
Reiterating his opposition to negotiating with bandits and renewed his support for the establishment of state police, Lawal, while recounting the incident, said: “My own brothers were kidnapped in 2019, and the kidnappers demanded about ₦300 million. I told them I was not going to pay a dime. If they wanted to kill them, they could go ahead.”
Stating that his brothers were eventually released without any ransom being paid, he argued that paying ransom usually emboldened criminal groups by providing financial incentives for further kidnappings.
He added: “My position on ransom payments remains unchanged. I will not negotiate, and I will not pay ransom to any criminal, no matter what happens.”
Endorsing the move for the establishment of state police, to enable governors have greater operational authority over security within their states, he regretted that the current constitutional arrangement left governors with responsibility for security without corresponding powers to direct security agencies.
His words: “In as much as I am called the chief security officer of the state, I do not have the command-and-control authority to direct the operations of the security agencies. I’m prepared to support the funding of state police if the proposed policing structure is established. I’m confident that decentralised policing will improve intelligence gathering, response time and the overall fight against insecurity.”
Exactly seven years, two months and four days after he forced Walter Onnoghen, the 16th Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) out of office, Danladi Umar, former Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), on Thursday, found himself in Kuje prison.
Justice Peter Kekemeke, of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), sitting in Maitama, handed the ex-CCT boss the unwelcome package on Thursday, following his arraignment by the Federal Government on a four-count corruption charge.
Umar’s ordeal began after an investigations revealed that he abused his official position by conferring an undue advantage on himself while serving as head of the tribunal, having in 2021, reportedly using his wife’s bank account to collect the sum of N5.5 million from a contractor engaged to paint the headquarters of the CCT in Abuja.
He was also accuse of using the same account to collect another N6million on January 25, 2024, from a contractor who handled the digitisation of the CCT’s records and yet another N2.43 million a contractor paid as tuition fee of his daughter at Baze University, Abuja.
After pleading not guilty to offences, said to be punishable under section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, Christopher Mshelia, lawyer to the FG, prosecuting the matter, applied for his remand in a correctional facility, while urging the court to set a date for the commencement of trial.
His pleas to be freed on bail pending the determination of the case, was opposed by the prosecution, which drew the court’s attention to the fact that it had just been served with the bail application, saying it needed time to respond to it, forcing Kekemeke to adjourn the case till July 15 for hearing while the former CCT boss remained behind bars.
Umar, had as CCT Chairman, on January 23, 2019, issued a controversial ex parte order that led to the removal of a serving Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen.
Following the ex parte order, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, on January 25, swore in the next most senior jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice Tanko Muhammad, to take over the leadership of the judiciary as Acting CJN.
Even though Onnoghen later voluntarily resigned his position as CJN on April 4, Umar went ahead and convicted him on April 18, 2019, on the federal government’s allegation that he had failed to properly declare his assets as required by law.
He gave the federal government the go-ahead to confiscate all monies in five accounts belonging to the former CJN, and also removed him as Chairman of both the NJC and the Federal Judiciary Service Commission (FJSC).
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