By Ehi Eweka

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights, CDWR, yesterday condemned the decision by Governor Akinwumi Ambode of Lagos State to ban and criminalize street trading and its patronage.

The group called Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Trade Union Congress of Nigeria,  TUC, and traders associations and pro-masses organsiations to mobilize workers, youths, traders, students to resist this new wave of disguised attacks on the means of livelihood of millions of poor struggling Nigerians.

In a statement, Chinedu Bosah, CDWR’s  Publicity Secretary, called on the street traders/hawkers to organize themselves into associations that could efend their interest as well as resist obnoxious policies without destroying properties

According to group,  this decision  to ban street trading, also negated the rights to life and dignity of the workers, poor traders, unemployed youths etc. and their dependents that lived on the streets of Lagos and survived either through street-trading or patronage.

The statement said: “This reactionary law places a fine of N90, 000, or six months imprisonment on anybody caught in the act of street-trading or patronizing street traders.

”This anti-poor decision by the Ambode-led APC government was hinged on the moribund, reactionary law of the rubber-stamp Lagos state house of Assembly that is ever willing to do the bidding of the executive without giving a thought to the consequences of their actions.”

Governor Ambode, ostensibly angered by the alleged vandalism of some BRT buses by irate youth-traders, who on Wednesday, 29 June 2016 at the Maryland axis of Ikorodu road, protested the loss of their colleague that was killed by a speeding truck belonging to a bottling company, as he was said to be ‘running away from officials of Kick Against Indiscipline, KAI, who were arresting street traders on the highway’.

The Nigerian constitution mandates government at all levels to prioritize the welfare of its citizens but the reverse is the case as both federal and state governments   have over the years, mounted sustained neo-liberal attacks on citizens through privatization and commercialization of our common wealth, mass sack of workers, unpaid salary and pension arrears, devaluation of the Naira, hike in price of petroleum products etc., while neglecting its core responsibilities to citizens such as providing social welfare, upgrading infrastructures, building affordable houses for the majority, providing uninterrupted electricity, proper funding and affordability of education etc.