Fashola Commissions Newly Built Oyingbo Market, 24 Years After It Was Gutted By Fire

Twenty four years after it was demolished following a fire disaster, Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State fulfilled yet another campaign promise he made in 2007 as he inaugurated and handed over the new ultra-modern Oyingbo Market, built at a cost of over N1bn.

It was learnt that the contract for rebuilding the market, which had been in existence since the 1920s, was awarded in 2009 with a completion period of 60 weeks with the Lagos Ministry of Works supervising the project.

Addressing a gathering comprising of market men and women, government functionaries and business stakeholders, as well as APC party supporters, at the site of the new edifice on Sunday, Governor Fashola recalled that the new market was a promise he made in 2007 when he was campaigning in the area as the governorship candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

According to him, “I made a promise to rebuild the market in 2007 during my campaign for governorship. By the event of today, I have fulfilled my promise.

“Out of the 633 open shops in the new market, 618 of them will be allocated to the original owners displaced when the market got burnt and had to be rebuilt.

“With this development, the state government expects that roadside trading will come to an end in Oyingbo as you can now use the market for business”.

The Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Dr. Kadri Hamzat, said, “The effort to rebuild Oyingbo Market commenced with the Lagos Mainland Local Government Area’s plan of a N100m reconstruction”.

He added that the project was not successful as the money could not deliver a first class market, adding that the Fashola administration later stepped in and delivered a structure that had all the trappings of an international market.

Hamzat said, “The market comprises four floor, a car park that can take 150 cars, 622 lock up shops type one and 102 lock up shops type two; industrial borehole, water treatment plant, 48 open office, generator house, six gate houses, three cold rooms, sewage treatment plant, 1,000KVA transformers, closed-circuit monitor and 134 toilets”.