Abia Has No Plan To Send Northerners Packing, Insists Cattle Market Non-Residential

Lokpanta Cattle Market before the demolition

The Abia State Government has denied spreading false information that it has ordered Northerners who live and conduct business in the Lokpanta Cattle Market, located near the Enugu-Umuahia-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway via Umunneochi, to leave the state.

The government maintained that the fake news included no truth because the Northerners “are the second and third generations of Igbos” who live in Lokpanta.

This clarification was provided by Navy Commander Macdonald Ubah (rtd), Special Adviser to the Governor on Security, during a press conference at Government House in Umuahia on Monday.

Ubah stated that the state’s Lokpanta-Uturu axis has been under siege by criminal elements in recent years, forcing the State Government to take considerable steps to remove the surge of kidnappings and other criminal activities in the area.

According to him, preliminary investigations indicate the Lokpanta Cattle Market as a main hideout for various criminal activities including kidnappings, organ harvesting, armed robbery, and other violent crimes.

According to the retired Naval Commander, a ransom for abduction victims in the Uturu-Umunneochi axis was paid at the market, prompting the government to take purposeful acts such as the demolition of brothels and shanties in the market, among other things.

Ubah, who branded Governor Alex Otti, as a detribalised Nigerian for appointing non-Abians to his cabinet, pointed out that the majority of cattle merchants in the state are second and third-generation Igbos, and hence the Governor Otti-led government could not have issued such an order.

He stated that the government’s position is that the market would no longer be residential, but rather a daily market. He reiterated that the government’s decision to establish the Lokpanta Cattle Market as a daily market is in the best interests of citizens and cattle merchants and that the decision will not be reversed.

He told the media that he had met with the leaders of the market unions on two occasions to advise them of the government’s decision to make the market daily for security concerns.