After 20-year feud, Alade Market traders quit

Traders in Alade Market, on Monday finally agreed to relocate to a newly-built alternative market, after a 20-year sustained resistance. This, followed the intervention of the Lagos State government, Ikeja Local Government (LG), now headed by Honourable Abiodun Taiwo and the Iyaloja of Alade Market, Chief Aina Adenuga, who disclosed that all legal allotees in the old market had started moving into the alternative market to pave way for its redevelopment to an ultra-modern shopping mall at a cost of N6.9billion.  Consequently, the parties agreed to set up a relocation committee, to be chaired by the immediate past Executive Secretary of the council, Hon. Adekunle Dally-Adeokun, with other members, including the Managing Director of Masters Reality Int’l Concept and concessionaire of the Alade Shopping Mall, Mr Lai Omotola and the Iyaloja of the market.

The stakeholders, directed the concessionaire to erect a billboard, indicating that the old market had been relocated to the new one.

This is just as the parties agreed, that the relocation committee should ensure that all traders “relocate from the old market on or before July 18, the date set aside for the inauguration of the alternative market.”

They warned that  illegal occupants under the aegis of “Concerned Traders in Alade Market” should desist from disrupting the relocation of the old market to the alternative place. Speaking on the relocation exercise, Honourable Taiwo, disclosed that out of the 299 allotees in the old market, 260 had collected their allocation papers after paying the allocation fee of N150, 000.

Taiwo said the new Alade Market, which is located about 150 metres away from the old market, off Obafemi Awolowo Way, Ikeja, sits on 3 hectares of  land, adding that, “It  has 504 lock-up shops, 200 units of open stalls, 20 toilets, 350kva and 150kva generators, 3 boreholes as well as an ample car park that can take up to 350 cars at a time among others.It would be recalled that the proposed Alade Shopping Market, a project valued at N6.9billion, had been in the pipeline since 2010, while the concessionaire was said to have secured a foreign loan in 2014 for the project.