Anambra: Market Chairman Stops Conversion Of Public Toilets To Private Use

By Julie Sylvia, Onitsha

The Market Chairman of Ogbaru Main Market, Chief Ndubuisi Ochiogu said that if not for his intervention, 13 public toilets and bathrooms he built for traders and customers in Ogbaru Relief (Main) market, Anambra State, would have been converted to private use.

Making this insertion while fielding questions from newsmen in his office, the chairman of the market, Chief Ndubisi Ochiogu, stated that what prompted him to build the facilities was because there was no toilet in the market for traders who may be pressed to ease themselves.

Giving a graphic account of how he started to build the toilets and bathrooms, he recalled that it all started when a portion of the market fence was destroyed by fire outbreak and it fell, thereby exposing the market to danger.

“On 28th January, 2023, a tanker laden with petrol fell in front of Zenith bank along the Onitsha/Owerri road and it caught fire that extended to a portion of the Ogbaru market fence and it fell, thereby exposing the market to danger.

“I immediately contacted the Commissioner for Trade, Commerce, and Wealth Creation then, Hon. Uchenna Okafor, who told me that government had no money to embark on such repair.

“I later went back to him and told him that since we did not have convenience place in the market that we will replace the fallen fence portion with toilet construction and that I will fund it for the interest of the traders and he endorsed it, as it will be funded by me and not government.

“I then built 13 toilets and bathrooms for the traders and it was at the stage of installing the toilet seaters for it to be functional, when suddenly, I was replaced by a caretaker commitee chairman, Hon. Ogbogu Nwanodi.

“On my reinstatement later, a man who said he is a Pastor, came with an authorisation paper, from a new Commissioner for Trade and Commerce then, Hon. Obinna Ngonadi, through the removed caretaker commitee chairman, Nwanodi, saying he has been given authority, to complete, manage and privatise the facilities, and no longer owned by the market.

“To buttress his claim, he presented to me a paper on how he spent money so far on the project claiming it cost about #3.5million and I told him that the facility remains market facility and that there is nothing like privatization”.

Ochiogu told the Pastor that the only assistance he could render to him is for him to produce the receipts of what he claimed he procured for the construction of the facility for cross examination and possible reimbursement, insisting that he did not spend up to the huge sum he claimed he spent.

“If he claimed to have spent about #3.5million for tiles and other minor things, that means myself that started the work and finished it, may have spent #100million,” he querried.

Pic shows Ndubisi Ochiogu in front of the controversial toilet facility