Lagos State commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, has explained reasons that banning street trading and closure of markets with unhygienic conditions, were in the interest of the public.
 
He noted that the state government was not witch-hunting anybody, nor is it interested in creating more hardship for street traders. Speaking at a reception organised in his honour by his law schoolmates, class 2000 in Ikeja, Lagos, Wahab said the state has built stalls for the street traders, but they refused to take advantage of the opportunity available to them.
 
He said: “There are stalls built for the market by the local government. It’s not ideal for traders to be on the roads, it’s a risk to them and the public. 
 
“We want the traders to move to the stalls purposely built as markets. Take for instance what we saw at Agege when the governor did a tour, people were selling on the rail track, that’s a major risk. Multimillion-dollar investments from taxpayers’ money are now being converted to trading places.
 
“For me, what we have done is that they should sell in the stall. Getting marketplaces to be clean is the least we can do. Close your eyes and imagine if we have a cholera outbreak. Who says we can’t have a cholera outbreak from a very unhygienic market situation. And unfortunately, most of them were served notices to clean up these places, but they adopted the usual don’t worry attitude, we will get away with it. But we are saying no, enough is enough; we must do the right thing.”
  
On his part, Commissioner for Finance, Yomi Oluyomi. described Wahab as a compassionate and empathetic person, who would not want to cause the people pain, noting that the right thing must be done for the good of all.