Agony of Onitsha traders who watched while bulldozers demolished their shops

…In our very eyes, our shops were reduced to rubble within a twinkle of eye
…The so called illegal shops were built and sold to traders by the Government
By Nwabueze Okonkwo

OWNERS of 25 Shop Lines at Onitsha Main Market, about 10,000 traders, watched in agony and disbelief as bulldozers sent by the state government moved in and reduced their shops to rubble.

They just watched helplessly and counted their losses amidst hopelessness, and were not sure of the next line of battle for survival.

Caterpillars of various models and shapes, including bulldozers, were unleashed on that section of the market by the Anambra State Government at about 1 a.m. on Sunday, March 1, 2026, and by 7 a.m., some parts of the market marked for demolition, including Bright Street, were brought down without allowing the shop owners access to remove their goods.

According to the Chairman of Onitsha Main Market Stakeholders Forum, Chief Martin Omereonye, who claimed to have lost three shops with goods worth over N100 million, “I have not even bothered to visit the scene since after the demolition exercise for fear of collapsing on sighting my shops now reduced to rubble.”

According to Omereonye, the shops that the state government tagged as illegal structures and demolished were built by the state and local governments over 35 years ago and sold to traders with approval and allocation papers by the same governments.

He expressed disappointment that Soludo’s administration had to turn round and declare what their predecessors built as illegal structures, without minding the fact that government is a continuum.

SEV learned that in an effort to sway the government from carrying out the demolition, the traders, under the aegis of Onitsha Main Market Stakeholders, had reached out to prominent personalities from Anambra State, including the Ukpo-born billionaire businessman, Prince Arthur Eze; Catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, His Lordship, Most Rev. Paulinus Ezeokafor; the Onitsha North Local Government Authority, and even Governor Soludo himself. But the Onitsha Main Market Stakeholders lamented that Soludo did not even bother to read their letter to him, not to talk of considering their suggestions.

In the letter, the stakeholders had suggested that since the shops were not built by their owners and occupiers but by previous state administrations and local governments and sold to the occupiers after verifying their authenticity and legality from the appropriate government offices, the best option would be for the state government to facilitate the relocation of Onitsha Bridgehead Drug market to its new site at Oba and relocation of Bridgehead Iron Rod/Building materials market to its new site at Nteje to create space for the Main Market traders at the Bridgehead before embarking on the demolition and modernization of the Onitsha Main Market.

According to them, “if the Soludo administration had accepted the suggestion, the state government would have benefited economically and politically more than the curses they are now getting from the masses since after what they termed as ungodly demolition of the main market.

“I think it is high time we traders stopped voting for the so-called highly educated individuals as governor. It is better that we vote for our fellow traders who understand our predicament and who can protect us.

“My annoyance is that Soludo knows those who built the shops. Some of them are even working in his government today. I won’t die. My God liveth. He must give us back the space to rebuild our shops,” a distraught trader lamented.

Also speaking, Chief Innocent Ezeoha, the immediate past Chairman of the Onitsha Main Market Traders Association, said that his own six shops were demolished and goods worth N150 million were lost. He said that Governor Soludo brought up this modernization issue during his tenure as Chairman of the market, but he vehemently objected to it and told him that it would put traders into serious hardship at this period of economic depression.

Ezeoha said that after advising Soludo against such a move, he dropped the idea and waited till his three-year tenure expired and he appointed the present caretaker chairman of the market, who is dancing to his tune.

“My family and I are now stranded. My children have stopped going to school. Those shops he labeled illegal structures were rebuilt after the 1984 and 1997 first and second main market fire disasters, and the market was designed to accommodate more shops so that our apprentices would have their own portion to start trading at the end of their apprenticeship period.”

“My fear is that this ugly development would surely spur the bad boys to take to armed robbery, kidnappings, and diversion of our customers for duping”, Ezeoha noted.

Nwabufo Ikenna Okeke-Oguno, a member of the Main Market/Bright Street Traders Association, lamented that he lost the only shop he had at the Bright Street with about ¦ 70 to ¦ 80 million worth of goods, saying that with this development, thousands of traders and their families have been rendered stranded as a lot of people may likely die out of frustration.

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