The National Union of Market Traders Employers of Nigeria (NUMTEN) has pledged to address challenges affecting traders in the markets. The Union president, James Ogu, who disclosed this during a press conference said non-conducive trading environment, unrealistic business profit, unstable market prices, incessant loss of properties in the market from fire outbreaks due to low or bad quality building materials, negligence from the part of market traders and unseen hands are current challenges facing traders in Nigeria. He lamented that traders are being intimidated and extorted by illegal market associations and pledged to move against them.
According to him, this unlawful act perpetrated by the impostors and their enforcement arms always leave grievous bodily harm to traders, sometimes resulting in loss of lives and property.
Ogu stressed that the body was registered to liberate helpless traders from persistent intimidation and extortion in the hands of illegal market associations.
“NUMTEN coming on board at this crucial time of resuscitating the Nigerian economy from the informal sector, has designed a global and holistic solution that is capable of catapulting the Nigeria market into the global arena.”
“There shall be a series of rearrangement and restructuring within Nigerian markets, to make the renewed hope of market traders a reality. “NUMTEN shall defend traders rights and rescue government revenue from saboteurs. The best hand shall be used diplomatically and intellectually to achieve our goals of being part of the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, and also resuscitate the hope of Nigerian market traders.
“In other words, NUTMEN is a beacon of hope that has come to salvage government revenue that has been siphoned by individuals operating illegitimate associations, who are currently operating in Nigerian markets.
“We will get the right revenue into the government’s purse and the labour of our members shall not be in vain anymore,” Ogu said. He added that NUMTEN as a Trade Union will collaborate with other sister unions and government agencies in the country, to ensure that Nigeria does not remain a consumer nation, but an industrialised one that produces finished goods for the consumption of other nations in the world.
