Lagos State government says it is to begin the fencing of markets in the state as part of the strategies to contain market spill over and discourage street trading.
The state government recently stepped up enforcement against street trading and hawking aimed at checking its associated problems of accidents and traffic congestion.
Following the order by the governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, the ministry of the environment and the local governments would liaise towards fencing the various markets in the state.
Babatunde Adejare, state commissioner for environment, told journalists while monitoring the July monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Alimosho area of the state, on Saturday that the illegal practice of leaving the market stalls to trade on the roads was no longer acceptable.
Adejare said, “It is the governor’s directive that all markets should be fenced. For instance, I have shut Obele-Oniwahala Market in Surulere in the last three days. We will fence the market and protect the infrastructure within the market. We spend millions constructing the infrastructure but residents destroy them.
“Though the establishment of markets is not the state government responsibility but we will continue to supervise them to make the market effective. The aim of fencing the markets is to restrict them to the location earmarked for the market. Anyone who intends to deal with them should go into the market.”
He also said the local government would be assisted to set up mobile courts for an effective enforcement of environmental laws, just as he condemned the entrenched practice of dumping refuse into drainages.
“And part of the solution that we are trying to bring to the councils, though we are still discussing it at the executive council is that they should have mobile courts. We believe that if they have it, they could be able to enforce their bye-laws effectively and charge offenders to court,” he said.
According to Adejare, the state government is carrying out waste management reform at the state levels, adding that the waste management reform will affect them too.
“We have incorporated them into the reform. And I can assure you that by the end of the first quarter next year (March), waste management will change in Lagos,” he said.
