PRESS RELEASE: FCT

ABUJA REGIONAL MARKET TAKES OFF DECEMBER

Determined to address the menace of street hawking in the Federal Capital City, the FCT Administration will commission and make the Abuja Regional market, Dei Dei operational in December 2016.

The FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello dropped this hint when he undertook an inspection tour of the on-going work at the over 6,100 shops market situated in Tudun Fulani along Gwagwa-Suleja old road.

The Minister who was represented at the inspection tour by the FCT Permanent Secretary, Dr. Babatope Ajakaiye revealed that the Dei-Dei Regional Market is sitting on about 86 hectares of land with over 6,100 shops to cater for the needs of Abuja traders. 

Malam Bello reiterated that the Regional Market would be provided with high quality facilities that depict its name, thereby encouraging high-level patronage from the traders and the shoppers alike.

According to him, the traders from the roadside are also expected to be evacuated and relocated into the market, as there is enough space to accommodate them.

His words: “The structures inside the market had been abandoned for a very long time to illegal occupants who use the facility as hideout for criminal activities and that, this situation must be reversed because the illegal occupants had already been evicted.” 

He lauded the enthusiasm shown by the traders to the efforts of the Administration as traders on the roadside have since been complying by relocating into the temporary space provided inside the market, pending revalidation of their papers.

The Minister emphasized that when commissioned, the market has the potential to reduce pressure on existing markets within the Federal Capital City because it would be a hub where major commodity brokers can warehouse their goods and further distribute to other nooks and crannies of the FCT.

In order to take care of petty traders, Malam Bello disclosed that the FCT Administration has earmarked informal section of the market for such hawkers to carry out their businesses in an organized manner, as well as neighbourhood and formal sections to cater for different interests.

He thus, called on shop owners to ensure speedy rehabilitation of their shops for full take off of the market in earnest; adding, “it is totally unacceptable for people to be hawking in unapproved places”. 

The shops in the market are being developed by the beneficiaries while the government is already taking care of the provision of infrastructure as well as other facilities like parks, gift shops, toilets, storm water drainage, electricity, Police Post, banks and clinic.

It would be recalled that the Regional Market took off when in 1993, the FCT Administration granted a Five-Star temporary allocation of plots to traders to build their shops in line with an approved prototype design.

Signed.

Muhammad Hazat Sule, FCAI

Deputy Director / Chief Press Secretary,

Wednesday, November 16, 2016.