The Abia State Government has described the Northerners living and conducting businesses at Lokpanta, in Abia North as second and third generation of Igbos.
This position was given by the Special Adviser to the Abia State Governor on Security, Navy Commander Macdonald Ubah (retd), while briefing Journalists at the Government House, Umuahia, on Monday, according to a press release by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Kazie Uko.
The Special Adviser also stated that it was false the news making the rounds that the State Government has directed Northerners, who live and conduct businesses at Lokpanta Cattle Market to leave the State.
Ubah noted that the Lokpanta-Uturu axis of the State has been under siege by criminal elements in the last couple of years, prompting the major steps recently taken by the State Government to eliminate the spate of kidnappings and other criminal activities in the area.
He said preliminary investigation points to the Lokpanta Cattle Market as a major hide out for all kinds of individuals involved in different criminal activities, including kidnappings, organ harvesting, armed robbery and other violent crimes.
The Special Adviser said ransom for kidnap victims around the Uturu-Umunneochi axis were paid in the market, a situation which prompted the government to, among other measures, carry out deliberate actions including demolition of brothels and shanties in the market.
According to the release, Ubah, who described Governor Alex Otti, OFR, as a detribalised Nigerian, having appointed non-Abians into his cabinet, noted that most of the cattle dealers in the state are second and third generations of Igbos, and therefore the Governor Otti-led government could not have given such directive.
He said that the stand of government is that the market would no longer be residential, but a daily market, stressing that government’s decision to make the Lokpanta Cattle Market a daily market is in the interest of the citizens and the cattle dealers.
