Tears, sorrow, anguish as Ariaria Market traders in Abia rue loss to flood

Traders at Ariaria International Market, Aba, Abia State, have continued to count their losses, three days after flood washed away their goods, following a downpour.

A visit on Tuesday by RELIABLESOURCENG.COM to the popular market, a major source of internal revenue generation for the government of Abia State, showed the market still submerged in flood as sellers and buyers alike wade through the murky, stagnant waters.

Some of the traders, who barely managed to put their emotion in check, recounted the agony of watching their business and source of livelihood destroyed, as a result of the flood which took over the market on Saturday and drowning goods-filled shops, especially those on the ground floor of the one storey shop buildings.

“This is what we go through every year, during the rainy season. The government is aware of this but can’t seem to do anything about it. We pay all kinds of levies and taxes in this market to the state government, local government, ASEPA and this is what we get in return.

“It has been raining for the past three days, but it was the rain of last Saturday that caused all this (flood),” one of the traders, who preferred not to give his name for fear of victimisation, narrated.

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We gathered that though the flooding of Ariaria Market, Abia State’s trading hub, is regarded as an annual ritual, this year’s has been made worse by a reconstruction work embarked by the state government and which has not made any significant progress in execution.

Traders complained that some of the channels that storm water usually followed to go out of the market had been blocked with construction materials such as sands and granites as well as other sands dug out from the ground.

In some of the shops on A-Line we visited, water trapped inside the shops were still above the ankle level (See VIDEO), while the owners struggled to scoop it out to the water-logged path way leading to the shops.

A few of the traders, who deal in footwears, we spoke to said they had lost tens of millions of Naira, as a result of the damage by the flood water to their goods.

One of the heart-rending cases was that of a female trader, Lady Kate Uchelo, who fought back tears, while showing our reporter the damage the flood had done to her shop and goods. She had just stocked up before the rain came pouring.

“Over N25 million,” was all she could mutter when asked to assess the damage.

Other traders we spoke to in the market gave estimates of damages they had suffered in the range of between N18 million to N60 million.

Some of them said the only option available to them now was to evacuate their goods home, to forestall further damage.

Meanwhile, the state government has commiserated with traders affected by the flood, saying it has no way to prevent heavy rains from falling.

“While we obviously have no way of preventing heavy rains from falling in any of our markets, the administration undertook the ongoing re-modelling of the market, starting with A-line, with new drains, road and shops elevated and aligned properly to conclusively deal with the perennial flooding challenges experienced by traders since inception of the market,” Commissioner for Trade and Investment, John Okiyi Kalu, said during a meeting with the traders in Aba.