Tension has been brewery at the popular Ika Ika Oqua Market also known as Marian Market in Calabar after ticket collectors allegedly killed a scavenger known as Iron Condemn.
CONVERSEER learned that the incident happened on Wednesday when the ticket collectors hit the scavenger, of Hausa ethnicity, who fell and died.
According to Daily Post, the ticket agents had asked the victim and his friends, who were returning from excavating rusted irons that were inside their wheelbarrow, to pay N100.
The boys refused to pay the N100 ticket paid by other hawkers, saying they were not hawking any wares but merely passing through the market.
The disagreement later led to a fight, some eyewitnesses said.
“A fight ensued between the ticket agents and the Hausa boys in the market. One of the agents brutally hit the Hausa boy and he died instantly. There was pandemonium all over the market as a result. The agents took to their heels,” a trader, Mrs Angelina Effiong, who sells second-hand clothes, told Daily Post.
Another trader said, “The angry Hausa boys later evacuated the body of their kinsman to their settlement for burial yesterday (Wednesday).”
The report further stated the uproar persisted till the next day being Thursday, as a large number of the deceased kinsmen, armed with local weapons, invaded the market, looking for any of the ticket collectors.
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SP Irene Ugbo, Police spokesperson in the state told this newspaper that her office was not aware of the situation.
“We have security meetings every morning, but the issue was not mentioned. Seriously, I am not aware. However, I will find out and revert,” Ugbo said.
CONVERSEER reports that former Governor Ben Ayade suspended the collection of tax (ticket and levy) for low-income earners in the state, leading to the establishment of an Anti-Tax Agency.
Since the inauguration of the new government led by Governor Bassey Otu, tax collection of every kind has returned fully to the state.
