Womens Economic Rights> NIGERIAN WOMEN'S ECONOMIC RIGHTS MONITORING GROUP

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Dear Participants,

We commend one of our member organisations NIEDI on 
their recent activity, which was reported in the Punch 
of 27th September 2001.  
Below are excepts of the reports

GROUP DEPLORES VICTIMIZATION OF INFORMAL SECTOR 
OPERATORS, COUNTS LOSSES BY LAYI ADELOYE

STOPPING the pains of losses suffered by traders and 
other informal sector workers in Lagos State owing to  
various demolitions of their social and economic well-
beings has become a major campaign by a non-
governmental organisation (NGO).
In obvious expression of its worry over the spate of 
colossal losses arising therefrom and its consequent 
depletion of the socio-economic well-being of these 
informal sector operators, the Nigeria Informal Economy 
Development Initiative (NIEDI), an NGO committed to the 
transformation of work processes of informal sector 
workers through social, economic and political 
empowerment, has called on the Lagos State Government 
to halt the spate of harassment and outright assault on 
the sector's workers.
NIEDI in a statement signed by its Executive Director 
and Social Advocacy Secretary, Messrs Gbenga Komolafe 
and Folorunso Olabode, respectively, and made available 
to our correspondent last Friday in Lagos, said "it has 
become imperative that the Lagos State Government 
reviews its policy on environmental sanitation and 
urban renewal."
Its opposition to the means of achieving urban renewal 
and environmental sanitation, it said, is based on the 
method rather than the motive of achieving the end.
"While we cannot be opposed to efforts aimed at giving 
our physical environment a face-lift, we are convinced 
that the methods being used are basically counter 
productive," NIEDI said.  According to the group, "when 
people's dwellings are destroyed because they 
are "illegal structures", when street traders have 
their wares seized and destroyed in the name of 
environmental sanitation, the poor and marginalised 
members of the informal sector are forced to operate in 
the less than human environment, where they ultimately 
become victims". Epitomizing the sectoral workers' 
woes, NIEDI situated their losses in the region of 
millions of naira yearly, "which are never compensated 
for". While noting that "these people, who are mostly 
women," often have their family livelihoods destroyed 
without any mitigation, he wondered why things have not 
changed in Lagos State away from the military era.
"It is like nothing has changed for these people who 
bore silently the pains of Koboko and gun-wielding 
soldiers in such rampages during the military era, are 
still being subjected to these losses and degradations 
today" NIEDI lamented.
Citing the Tejuosho market plantain sellers" and Oshodi 
traders" experiences recently, the group denounced the 
clampdown syndrome that has now characterized the 
relationship between the Lagos State agents and these 
members of the informal sector of the economy.  The 
group therefore suggested a programme of re-orientation 
characterized by direct consultation between the two 
sides as an effective way of resolving the pogrom.
Besides, it called for an integrated programme of 
enhanced micro-credit facility, made  available and 
affordable, to the informal sector operators, "as these 
people constitute over 85 per cent of the population".
Thanks
MRS.NOGI IMOUKHUEDE