By Muhammad Tanko Shittu
Bukuru residents of Jos South local government area in Plateau state have decried plans by the state and local governments to evict them from their 69-year-old market and also to demolish their shops and houses.
Chairman of the Kara Livestock Market, Alhaji Bala Muhammad, said they were not ready to vacate the market “because we have not been provided with conducive alternative.”
Muhammad, at a press conference in Bukuru, said they were confronted with the issue of their eviction when on June 3, this year, they were called to a meeting at the local government council, saying that they were giving them letter to that effect.
He said: “We were told that the governor has directed that we should be evicted from the market that he wanted to construct a stadium.
“We asked the council officials where to relocate to and we were told that a land would be given to us along Gero Road, and Gero was an area where our people were brutally killed in the past crises.”
He added: “We cannot go to that area it is not safe to our lives and property. We rather wait for the government to come and kill us by itself, than go to where someone would just come to loot our properties and even kill us.”
He said the livestock market had been in existence for the past 69 years, stressing that it had been a center where over 5, 000 people from all walks of life belonging to various tribes and religions earned their living.
Also speaking, the chairman, Traders and Marketers Association Jos South branch, Alhaji Yusuf Ibrahim, said the plan by the government to demolish additional 378, besides the former 402 shops that were demolished on the pretext of development was uncalled for.
A house owner in the metropolis, Muhammad Bello, said he and other residents would not allow the government to “unjustly” demolish their homes, “because I inherited my house from my late father who had also inherited it from his late father.”
Efforts made to get comments from the chairman of Jos South local government council, Hon. Peter Dung, were unsuccessful, as calls and text messages to his phone were not responded to.
