Protest: Food sellers in brisk business as shop owners stay away

Sellers of food items, both cooked and raw, are in brisk business in the Ketu-Ijanikin area of Lagos amid fears of the unknown which kept most shops under lock and key with their owners staying away.

When our reporter visited the small market in this sleepy village in the Lagos suburb, the food sellers were seen happy with the level of patronage from the locals many of whom have stayed away from their offices and business premises because of the on-going protest at the city centre.

“I came out because I reasoned that hunger will push people out of their houses. Whether somebody is at work or in his houses, he must eat. So, I am here because I know people will come to buy,” a middle-aged woman selling Akara balls, told this reporter.

The woman, who identified herself as Iya Toyin, said that she came out around 7.30 this morning and had been busy frying and selling as more and more people were coming out to buy along with bread.

Another woman who called her name ‘Mummy Peace’ said she had not had it as good as she was having it today in terms of patronage. She sells garri, rice, semovita and sundry soup and stew condiments, just by the Lagos Badagry Expressway. Mummy Peace said she was happy people were coming out to buy.

On the flipside, a young man whose business is vulcanizing was seen sitting at his workshop, looking vacantly into the air. When our reporter approached him and asked why he didn’t go to join the protest, he retorted, “Oga, risk full group; that thing na risk, and again this place where we dey na back of Lagos; if to say I dey inside town, I for join them because suffer don dey too much.”

For Bilkisu, a panel beater, whose workshop is just close-by, protest is not food. I left my house very early to get here because I hope to get something for food for my children. “Na protest I go chop?” he asked nobody in particular, raining abuses on the government for the current hardship in the country.

Meanwhile, the ever busy Lagos-Badagry Expressway looks like a ghost town. No vehicular movement on the expressway even though there were a few passengers standing about at bus stops, hoping to see a bus that would take them to their destinations.

For now, everywhere in this area is calm but, as Nelson Okafor, a clearing agent at Tin Can Ports put it, “it is still too early to draw conclusions; what happens here when there are issues like these, is a spontaneous reaction to what happens at the city centre. If it does not turn violent there, nothing will happen here,” he said.