Perturbed by the outrageous high cost of food items in Ile-ife, in Osun, Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi at the weekend banned all market groups in the community for their alleged involvement in hiking the prices of commodities and dictation to market women, a uniform prices that their products must be sold to the consumers.
The monarch who frowned at ordering fixing prices for their members, maintained, “We don’t want that in this community, we want traders to be free to sell at cheap rates to their consumers.
“It is unfortunate that group of traders dealing in various food items have been involving in fixing cost of goods, even when they have bought the items cheaply from farms”.
The leader of market heads in the town, Akinwande Olajire who made the announcement while addressing market traders, quoted the royal father to have given out the instruction.
According to him, Oba Ogunwusi had suspended market groups, as their activities have been fingered as the cause of high cost of food items.
“We also received several complaints from these traders about how motorists and others are extorting them. We will act on their complaint but they can’t sell at prices we consider too high in our markets.
“Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, sent me to the markets across Ife. You must have seen one of videos that we recorded during the visits. I am the Babaloja of Ejigbomekun market also known as Oja tuntun. I am the leader of Babalojas in Ife.”
“Baba Ooni and his Chiefs have been told of unjustifiable amount traders are selling food items in markets in the town and one of the measures to check this is the ban he placed on market groups. These groups are fixing prices for their members and we don’t want that.”
“Traders should be free to sell at a cheap rate if they can buy at a cheap rate from farms. The groups have been banned.
“We have locked all the identified places these markets groups are using for their meetings and we will keeping monitoring them. If anyone is caught acting to intimidate traders for selling at cheap prices, such a person will face consequences,” he concluded.
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