By Olubunmi Adeniyi
Lagos. October 6, 2012: Computers and Allied Products Dealers Association (CAPDAN), pressure group of business operating in Ikeja Computer Village has called on the Babatunde Fashola, the Governor of Lagos State for his administration to complement efforts at creating a conducive business environment in the nation’s largest market’s for technology products and services because of its strategic importance to Nigeria’s ICT development.
CAPDAN is seeking the administration’s support in dealing with security and sanitation issues within the market environment, the industry says.
Vice-President, CAPDAN, Mac Eze told Technology Times in an exclusive interview that the Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) squad under the command of the Lagos State Special Task Force (Environmental Unit) and men of the Nigeria Police recently waded in by demolishing the road side shops at the Computer Village.
‘We want to see more of this, in order to encourage greater patronage in the market”, Eze says noting that the government’s efforts towards sustained business creates employment and contributes to overall national economic growth.
“This kind of cleaning up exercise was done sometimes back when the government evacuated all the road-side shops and the people affected went to form GSM Village in Ikeja. This one too if they can push them to Mangoro side, there is a market there that is underutilized, these people can go there also to form another GSM Village. If these things keep on going constantly, the whole place will be neat and the environment will be smooth for running of businesses,” he adds.
Ezeh, who condemns the influx of grey and substandard products in the market, blames miscreants and landlords who choose to take advantage of roadside traders seeking to get a business space on the streets and by so doing exploit them.
The CAPDAN number two man discloses that the traders pay as low as N50, 000 to only mount a display glass on the streets around the Ikeja Computer market.
According to him, “they charged one man having his shop as a kiosk on the roadside N100,000; another person here paid about N50,000 for putting show glass here and that’s the way they go round everyday to collect money from them,” he adds.
Meanwhile, some of the affected roadside traders who spoke on condition of anonymity appealed to the government to provide a place for them noting that displacing them without rehabilitating them would do more harm than good.
On the relocation of Computer Village to Katangua market, the CAPDAN executive urged the government to increase the involvement of the association in the relocation of the market to an alternative location in the state.
According to him, “there is no way they will force you to go without completing the place but what government can do is to involve us more in the building of the new market.”
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