BY OLA AJAYI
IBADAN—Ten persons including five newspaper vendors were, Thursday, arrested by Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State during the weekly environmental sanitation for violating the sanitation exercise.

The names of the vendors were given as Micheal Osu, Felix Osu, Rashidi Olube, Alloy and another yet to be-identified.

The vendors were picked up at Iwo road, Ibadan and at the time of this report, they were still being held by convoy of the governor.

But the government said only one vendor was arrested and was released

Others said to have been arrested included a local snacks seller (‘puff-puff’), a recharge cards seller and a GSM’s SIM cards registration agent.

The Government commenced the weekly sanitation exercise after the outbreak of cholera epidemic which killed no fewer than 11 people and recorded about 947 cases of related diseases.

Speaking on their arrest, the General Secretary, Newspaper Distribution Association of Nigeria, NDAN, Mr. Babatunde Abimbola, said he was surprised by the action of the governor.

According to him, those that initiated the idea of environmental sanitation clearly exempted journalists and vendors because of the peculiarity of their job.

Abimbola said it was a good idea that people’s environment should be clean but that should not hinder the work of his members because people normally buy newspapers in the morning and if vendors remained indoors till 12 noon, many of the papers would be returned as unsold.

He said, “Take for instance, today (yesterday), there will be many unsold papers. And we will not be able to get the money owed us. We have been carrying out our job unhindered by previous governments. We seem to be at loss about the new development now.”

When Vanguard spoke with one of the arrested vendors, he said they were picked up by the governor for displaying newspapers during the clean-up exercise.