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Allow us live in Lokpanta cattle market, Northern community begs Gov Otti

The Northern Community in Umuchieze, Umunneochi LGA of Abia State, operating the Lokpanta Cattle market has appealed to the state Governor, Alex Otti, to allow them to continue living in the market.

The elders of the community who are traders in the Lokpanta cattle market, while reacting to conversion of the market to daily by Governor Otti following his statement on discovery of dead bodies within the market, pleaded, “We passionately appeal to His Excellency to allow us live in the cattle market.

“Most of the cattle traders you have seen here today were born and brought up in Umuahia. They have no other state than Abia. The allocation of the land to the Northern Community was not predicated on any condition, save for the Northern Community to maximally utilize it for the purpose of cattle trading and other allied business transactions, residential quarters and a motor park”.

According to the spokesperson of the community, Mallam Buba Abdullahi, “there is a general misconception that the northern community are harbouring criminals, but all the brothel rooms, beer parlour, night clubs and lodging accommodation recently demolished belong to the natives that are members of the host community.

“The Northern Community are law abiding citizens of Nigeria engaged in legitimate business of cattle trade and other allied business. Considering the high rate of crimes in Umunneochi today, it will be a tactical mistake for us to relocate to various communities in Umuchieze”.

The community denied the allegation of decomposed, headless bodies and skeletons found in the area, stating, “Investigation available to us from the security agencies in Umunneochi Local Government Area indicated that the decomposed bodies, headless bodies and many skeletons were not either in the cattle market or around the cattle market.

“The allegation by the Abia State Government is meant to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. In other words, the government wants to chase us away from the land we have occupied since 2005 and create tension across the country”, adding thay “we did not see any corpses”.

“If the government will fence the market, demolish our house and urge us to go and live in the neighbouring villages, it means the government has automatically chased us away from Abia State.

“Parts of the plot is the recent demolition of houses belonging to genuine Cattle Traders living in the market. The Governor has the right to evict/chase us away from the land but the way he has continued to paint our community black is worrisome.

“Considering the high rate of crime in Umunneochi the leadership of the cattle market wrote to the DSS and police in 2021 to come to their aid and rescue them from criminals who took over the area, in a quick response to the letter the commissioner of police Abia State deployed a team of policemen attached to Anti-terrorist unit to the market.

“Let us state categorically at this point that in the past, leaders of our community have supported the security agencies in identifying criminal hideout close to the market and demolition was carried out by the state government under the supervision of the former Commissioner of Police (Mrs Janet Agbede) with the support of the leadership of the cattle market”, they said.

While claiming that a population of about 170,000 live there, Buba said the land is about 80 hectares.

According to them, “If the government wants to fence the area, it should not be only the market, but the entire area,” stating further, “fencing the market is not the solution as the people who live there are much (sic). We are ready to support any measures the governor will take”, adding the governor’s order affected all tribes in the market, noting however that people who live there are mostly northerners.

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