Tenants at the Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) Shopping Complex in Ogida Barracks, Benin City, have cried out to Elizabeth Egbetokun, the wife of the Inspector General of Police(IGP), Olukayode Egbetokun, to come to their aid and save them from the pains and sufferings that they have been going through for more than a month now on account of the forceful sealing of their shops which Helen Ada Agbonika, the wife of the Edo State Commissioner of Police, Monday Agbonika, allegedly personally supervised.
“We feed our families from what we get from doing business in the shops. For more than a month now we have been going through lots of pains as our shops have been sealed by Helen on her claim that the environment is dirty.
“Every Thursday morning from 8 to 10 we do environmental sanitation exercise to clean and tidy up our surroundings. We don’t have toilets in the whole place our customers make use of the nearby bushy area when they want to ease themselves. Also our properties are not secure as hoodlums break into our shops on a regular basis to cart away our things. We pay ₦6,800 yearly per shop as land due. As par the extension, we pay ₦500 monthly per shop.
“What we are now experiencing with the coming of Helen Agbonika is alien to us. We have been opportuned to have many Commissioners of Police(CP) whose wives have been very helpful and humane to us. Helen is a different kind of person who has threatened she is in Benin to deal with us,” said one of the affected market women, who preferred anonymity.
“She charges some tenants huge sums of money which she collects through cash payments. She refuse to collect money by transfers for whatever reasons we don’t know,” our source submitted.
Taking up the issue, Esther Oyakhire, another affected tenant, disclosed: “On the 14th of last month (June) I was in my kitchen cooking when I saw a group of people, made up of armed policemen and some women, coming towards my shop. Someone ran ahead of them to tell me I should inform my workers to lock up my shop that it’s Helen that is leading the team. Then I overheard the CP’s wife saying ‘I am going to shut down Ogida for two days.’
“I passed the instruction I was given to my workers immediately. They carried out the instruction. As at that day I just got supply of some perishable foodstuff which cost about half a million naira. Before then I had already prepared goat and fish peppersoup. Believing that the whole scenario will end in two days time.
“I overheard the CP’s wife grumbling that the whole environment is untidy. I was aghast as my own section of the shopping complex was in good condition, no dirt at all was there. A few days later, some of us went to give her a feedback that her instructions that the place should be tidied up has been carried out.
“She responded that we should go and paint our shops and place waste bins at the frontage. We immediately complied with her instructions. When we went back to inform her that we have done what she instructed us to do she told us to go back and remove the extension roof that we constructed in the front of our shops. We pleaded that we did that to protect our customers as they get drenched when it’s raining.
“She has rebuffed all efforts that we made to discuss the issue with her and get a reprieve. On many occasions she has refused to attend to our delegates who stay all day in her office waiting to be attended to.
“Last year I got a loan of ₦6million from LAPO out of which I spent ₦5.8million to do all the job I did to bring my shop, made up of a restaurant and bar, to taste to attract customers. I have not completed the repayment of the loan. My husband is a retiree who is paid ₦30,000(Thirty thousand naira monthly) what will that amount of money be capable of catering for a large household with five of my children who are unemployed graduates?”
Going further, she disclosed that her kitchen which is under the control of the Police Training School(PTS) Commander to whom she pays rent, was also sealed by Helen accompanied by the market leader.
“My husband was ill and was admitted in the hospital. On Friday, 11th July, I went to the hospital to pay his bills and get him discharged. I was taking him back home when I got a call from one of my workers that Helen, accompanied by the market leader, had stormed the place and given an order that my kitchen should be locked up and sealed with my workers(three of them) who were cooking inside. It took the intervention of the DPO of Ogida Police Station and the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) CSP Moses Yamu to rescue them hours after I laid a complain,” she added.Â
In his response, CSP Moses Yamu, in a telephone conversation stated that no one is out to oppress anybody. That the people whose shops were sealed were disobeying the rules governing the use of the facility which bares extension which is making the shops look untidy and which is the bone of contention.
“Tell them to comply with the instructions, remove the extension and see if their shop will not be unsealed. They should stop whipping up sentiments and do the needful.”
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