Ladipo Auto Spare Part Market, the biggest market for fairly used automobile spare parts in the West Coast of Africa, over the years, has not only grown too big for its current location, it has also become a urban blight in Lagos State, with its numerous activities constituting a huge obstruction to vehicular and human traffic.
In addition to the traffic menace, some activities carried out there are a grave threat to human lives and property of residents of the area.
For most dwellers of the host council, and passersby, the market epitomises mindless lawlessness, as most of the traders operate with brazen disregard for traffic and environmental law, which they brazenly breach.
For instance, more often than not, large parts of the road is lined up with large trucks bearing dozens of containers waiting to be offloaded by their importers.
While all these happen, motorists and pedestrians remain at the mercy of the articulated vehicles. Consequently, a distance that should be covered in five minutes, could take as much as two hours on the highly crowded street.
Ordinarily, with the sight of policemen, especially at the Toyota Bus stop (Oshodi/Apapa Expressway) end of the road, one should be assured that these law enforcement officers would readily switch into action and cut the erring traders to size when necessary. That is never the case. In fact, if they are not pre-occupied with allocating, for a fee, parking spaces to motorists who come to the market to shop, they are collecting bribes from them after they have made their purchases.
Needless to say that these illegal parkings, perpetrated by policemen, help in turning large swaths of the expressway into a garage.
Outraged at the chaos in the market, the state government has, on several occasions made feeble attempts to restore sanity in the area by adopting several measures including shutting it down, and compelling the traders to clean it up. It has also made efforts to ease the traffic situation there, with the deployment of security personnel. But such redemptive measures have often failed.
Driving down from Charity Bus Stop, in Oshodi, down to the Rutam House, and about three hundred metres away from Five Star Bus Stop, through the service lane, has become a driver’s nightmare.
Motorists plying this axis of the road usually have to endure torrid times, while the short trip lasts. According to one of them, Mr. Idris Yusuf, who lives in Isolo, the unpredictable nature of traffic on this stretch of the road has caused him to miss a lot of appointments.
“I am driving down from Charity Bus Stop in Oshodi hoping to connect Isolo through the flyover. On this service lane, I have spent over 30 minutes, yet I have not reached Iyana Isolo. I am disappointed because I have missed some appointments that I scheduled.”
For Bode Duru, a resident of the area, “The service lane, from Ladipo Junction towards Five Star, has become a nightmare for residents of the neigbourhood because of traffic snarl and the craters that trap several cars and trucks each day. The traffic is mostly caused by the activities of the traders in the market, which prevent other road users from carrying on their business with ease.
President Ladipo Market Central Committee, Mr. Kinsley Ogunor, in a telephone interview lamented that the major challenge they have in the market is that of a good road network, which he said affects the transportation of their goods.
Ogunor said: “The most important thing we need now is a good road network. If we can have that here, it would help in facilitating free movement for humans and goods.
“Another issue is that of security. If government can provide security for us so, that after market hours the security operatives would secure our goods when we are not around, so that no body would steal our goods.”
Ogunor, who said that his members always clean up the market added, “Normally, we observe our weekly environmental sanitation on Thursdays, and another on first Fridays of the month. While this takes place, all shops remain locked to ensure proper clean-up of the market”.
“We spend money to evacuate refuse dumps here because most times, officials of the Lagos Waste Management Agency (LAWMA), do not come around to do their jobs, and we are always the ones to pay for the evacuation of the refuse. This is so because even when we call the LAWMA officials on phone, they don’t respond our phone calls.
