For two months, over 40 business owners at Obehi Plaza in Computer Village, Ikeja, have been barred from their shops after a misplaced assault claim by Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) officials.
Tijani Saliu (not real name), a shop owner in Obehi Plaza, told FIJ that the incident happened on May 24, when a street trader was apprehended by KAI officials for trying to sell pastries to a security guard at a plaza opposite Obehi.
As the officials led the trader into their truck, he threw out his purse of money to the security guard to whom he sold his goods. When KAI officials ordered the security guard to produce the wallet, he refused. That was when the altercation started.
According to witnesses, the KAI officials and the security guard broke out into a fight that escalated in the nearby Obehi Plaza. Not wanting to accommodate the chaos, the Obehi Plaza shop owners who were present attempted to resist the officials and lead them out of the building.
Following this, the KAI officials got angry and a trade of words ensued between them and the business owners. However, witnesses maintain that no physical struggle or fighting happened between the conflicting parties.
The KAI officials eventually left, but reportedly returned a few hours later to arrest everyone at the plaza, including those seeking shelter from the rain who were not shop owners. They were later released from the KAI office.
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Some arrested people claimed they paid between N20,000 and N30,000 as bail before being released. KAI officials have denied these claims.
On Monday, when most shop owners had returned to their offices, the incident had died down and business went on as usual.
On May 29, shop owners arrived at Obehi Plaza to find all their front offices sealed with extra padlocks, and the gate to the back of the plaza sealed with a padlock as well. Warning notices were plastered on the shops.
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Upon seeing this, the plaza chairman reached the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) office but he was told that the sealing was not their doing.
After making enquiries, they found out that it was KAI who had sealed the shops in the plaza. KAI officials reportedly accused them of assaulting its officials, tearing their clothes and stealing one of the official’s phones from which N206,000 was claimed to have been siphoned.
This accusation was not substantiated by any evidence.
“The people who went to KAI’s office were not even present on the day it supposedly happened,” Saliu said. “It was a Saturday, so not everybody was at work.”
KAI instructed the shop owners to present two brand new smart phones, uniforms, the allegedly siphoned N206,000 and medical bills, which amounted to N929,000, for the shops to be unsealed.
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Desperate to resume business, some of the shop owners asked for a bank account number to pay for KAI’s demands, but none was provided.
When they returned to the KAI office, Major Olaniyi Olatunbosun Cole, the head of KAI, told them that the matter was no longer in their hands. According to Cole, Tokunbo Wahab, the commissioner for the environment, had declared that the plaza would remain sealed.
“We asked them why, and they told us it’s because we assaulted their officials. We repeated that we were not the ones, and that the culprits were in the neighbouring plaza. Then they asked us to bring the culprits,” an affected shop owner said.
Saliu told FIJ that they managed to round up the security guards who confronted the KAI officials and had them arrested by the police. KAI officials also confirmed that they were the ones who had confronted them.
They were however released afterwards, and still KAI refused to unseal the shops in Obehi Plaza.
Efforts to reach Commissioner Wahab failed, and when a representative for Obehi Plaza shop owners visited the environment commissioner’s office, they were told that the matter had been escalated to the deputy governor’s office.
When the representative insisted that they were not in the wrong, officials at the commission claimed that when the offices were sealed, some traders tried to pry their shops open.
No intervention has been made since then.
According to Saliu, the over 4o sealed shops had goods locked inside and rotting away.
“All of us in the plaza have lost a lot of money not doing business at all,” Saliu said. “I have an ICT shop, there are laptops, printers, servers and many other things in my office.
“My logistics company partners with an Indian health company that produces brain growth supplements for special needs children. All those goods are in my shop, they have been there for two months but I can’t deliver them. Now I’m being hounded by the company and they even sent officers to track me down. They think I’m a scammer.
“I really hope those goods don’t expire. That would be a huge debt on my hands,” he said.
When FIJ called and emailed the Lagos State Ministry of Environment on Thursday. There had been no response at press time.
The post LASG, KAI Kill Livelihoods by Wrongfully Sealing 40 Shops in Lagos for 2 Months appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.