Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has ordered the reconstruction of the burnt Abia market located in Aba State.
Otti stated this on Tuesday, when he visited a section of the Ehere Market, along Ikot Ekpene Road, Aba, occupied by timber dealers, which was gutted by fire Monday night.
He regretted that the way the Abia market was built, made it gullible to fire outbreaks and directed the Mayor of Obingwa LGA, Dr Eric Egwuibe, to immediately commence processes towards rebuilding the market.
He said, “What we will do is to assess the level of damage. We will also through the mayor, begin the process of rebuilding this place. I think the way the market is, makes it susceptible to fire incidents.
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“We need to ensure there are fire extinguishers in all the shops around here. I am giving an instruction to the mayor to assess the level of damage and begin the process of rebuilding, bringing down all those ramshackle buildings, and building proper shops for all of you.
“We also want the shops to be properly built because. Even the way the entire place looks, it is not very decent and very inviting. So I would like you to trade in an environment that is conducive.
He assured that fire extinguishers will be placed in the market to enable traders to tackle such outbreaks in the future.
The governor assured that the government will assess the level of damage to support in replacing lost goods.
“The details of how it would be done would be worked out. One thing I can assure you is that if you do have a shop here, you will not lose your shop. We also know that this damage would have caused a lot of loss to the owners; by the time we do the assessment, we will see how we can support them,” he said.
