Businesses will go downhill fast if attacks on northern traders in the southern part of the country continue.

Export and import traders in Maiduguri said they had had enough of the violence perpetrated against them and they were ready to fight back.

Over the years many traders had been killed in the attacks; others had been injured and wounded.

The traders said doing business in the south was “dangerous” and they described the attacks a “vicious”.

Babagana Zarami, a trader, said northerners would no longer just sit back, watch and let attacks happen.

If the government did not do something soon to stop the attacks, he said, traders had threatened to “take action into our own hands and fight back”.

Zarami said that if the government did not act soon, the Northern Nigerian Traders’ Association would call for a strike. This would mean food would become more expensive and import and export products from the north to the south and vice versa would come to a halt.

Another trader, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “We urge the southerners to respect and protect the northerners who trade in their area, just as we respect and protect southerners who come to the north of the country.”
Mal Umar Muhammed, the chairman of the traders’ association in Borno State, said they had held many meetings with various leaders in the south, but nothing had changed and traders in the north continued to be attacked when they went into the south of the country.

He said their market stalls had been vandalised and some traders had even been killed.

Muhammed called on the government to act soon to stop the attacks.

Northern traders began blocking the supply of perishable food items to southern states on February 25.

In March The Cable quoted an official of the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria as saying it would rather have farm produce go to waste than tolerate “continued attacks” on its members.

Awwalu Aliyu, a union official, said some members were killed, maimed and had lost properties during the #EndSARS protests and in violence at the Shasha market in Ibadan in February.

Aliyu told The Cable that they did not want to starve southerners, they were simply protesting against attacks on their members.

“It would be better to lose the food items than to lose lives. If you are alive, you can plant another thing, you can rear another cattle. But if you’re dead, you can’t do that again. Only the living can go to the farm,” he said.

The traders ended the blockade on March 3.

• #EndSARSwas a social movement protesting against police brutality in Nigeria. It called for the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a notorious unit of the Nigerian police with a long record of abuses. In October 2020 last year more revelations of the unit’s abuses were uncovered and mass demonstrations occurred throughout Nigeria. Within a few days of renewed protests, on October 11, the Nigerian police force announced that it was dissolving the unit with immediate effect.
• Violence broke out in Shasha market in Ibadan, Oyo State, on February 12, leaving several dead, injured and displaced. Properties were destroyed. The fight started the previous day with an altercation between the Yoruba and Hausa peoples at the market. It soon degenerated – market wares, shops and houses were set ablaze. News reports said at least 20 people died in the attack. About 5,000 displaced persons in the community had to take refuge in premises away from the market.