Merchants oppose the proposed demolition of market and ask Sanwo-Olu to step in.

A purported plan by the Police Wives Association to demolish the POWA Plaza in less than a month has drawn opposition from some traders at the Computer Village in the Ikeja neighbourhood of Lagos State.

The traders, who felt wronged, made a plea to the state House of Assembly members, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Inspector General of Police, and Lagos State Governor to step in.

According to Tayo Shittu, the chairman of the Computer Dealer Association, the traders pay between N300,000 and N400,000 a year, and the Police Wives Association has a self-serving agenda to destroy the shops.

“We have a copy of the letter of acknowledgment, but POWA denied the letter and said they do not know anything about it,” Shittu stated. Although it is a lie, they wish to use the excuse that the building has flaws.

Their self-serving goal is to destroy this place. A number of ambitious developers have declined to tear down this property. We found that two POWA women are heavily involved; one of them serves as the organization’s national chairman in Abuja.

There are as many as 1,000 people living in the plaza. We visited LABSCA, and after doing an integrity test on the building, they declared it to be in excellent condition. The most upsetting thing is that some of them have been paying the landladies until 2026 and 2028. Some of them pay N300,000 annually, while others pay N400,000.

Although the dealers had appealed to the Police Wives Association, according to Trust Tobechukwu, the former chairman of the Computer Dealers Association, they had not heard back as of yet.

“The Police Wives Association owns this plaza; some of them are widows and some are the wives of retired police officers,” Tobechukwu stated. The plaza was designated for demolition at some point in 2019, but when we looked into it, we found that the information was inaccurate. We found out it was a developer looking to get in on a little underhanded deal.

We took the matter to POWA Lagos after receiving a letter from the developer, Achieving Greatness Properties, requesting that we vacate the property. They assured us that the demolition would proceed. Through our attorney, we have written to the wife of the Inspector General of Police, but we have not heard back from her yet. We make our living from the shops, so they ought to take that into account.

The Iya Oloja, Computer Village, Abisola Azeez, pointed out that rather than forcing the dealers to give up their main source of income, issues could be resolved between the traders and the shop owners.

“My shop has been here since 1999,” the woman stated. We always have problems here with POWA. Everybody has their own landlady. The plaza’s development and upkeep are entirely the traders’ responsibility. Their goal is to drive us out and replace us with strangers.

“The plaza is a single-story structure free of structural flaws. They should let us know if there are any issues that need to be fixed or if they require a payment increase so that we can take care of everything.

As of the time this report was filed, numerous calls and messages made to POWA Omoh Oziegbe, the liaison officer, had not been answered, so all attempts to get her response had failed.