Yuletide sales: Alaba traders groan over traffic gridlock

Traders in Alaba Interntional Market are lamenting the negative effect the perennial traffic situation along the road leading to the market is having on their sales this Christmas.

According to them, as a result of poor road network their customers are now shunning coming to the market.

The traders said that coming to the market takes their customers a whole day job as it takes them hours to meander from Volkswagen to Ojo Alaba, a distance of less than one kilometer.

Fabian Obiako, a generator dealer, said that they are in for a gloom Christmas as a lot of their customers are now going to other markets as a result of the traffic situation.

He said that accessing the market from Lagos-Badagry Expressway has become a mission impossible.

According to him, because of this, the mention of going to Alaba International Market makes the blood pressure of some people to rise.

He said that the road situation has even made a lot of their traders to be relocating out of the market.

Also speaking, Celestine Etim, a mobile phone operator, called on the Lagos State government to intervene by expanding the road that leads into the market. He pointed out that the road that presently leads into the market is too narrow and as such any breakdown of vehicle leads to traffic
gridlock. He said if the road is dualized, it would ease the situation on the road.

He noted that Alaba is the biggest electronics market in the whole of Africa and as such needs to have a befitting road network. He said that customers that are coming from other African countries to the market most of the time do not have good stories to tell about Nigeria because of the difficult experience they usually encounter as they come to the market to do business.

Another trader, Chibuike Amadi, a fashion dealer, said that traders in the market are surviving in a hard way as a result of the road situation.