It is no lie that Governor Ayade has created confusion in our State by giving people undeserving titles in the name of appointments and they are all hussling to create revenue points where they can survive. Tony Adinye, the so called DG of a non existent pollution control agency is one of such appointees.

Since that orange seller was assaulted and beaten up last week, their silly defense has been that the woman attacked and stabbed the security people who went to her sale point which is why they destroyed her wares and took her and the daughter to the Akim Police Station. But let’s look at some of the issues.

1. In 2016, Governor Ayade signed the Hawkers Rights Bill into law and that law legalized hawking in Cross River State. The law was sponsored by Regina Anyogo, representing Yala 1 State Constituency in the State House of Assembly. So the woman was doing what is legal, hawking her oranges.
2. It is against the provisions of the Hawkers Rights Law 2016, for any official of government to produce sign posts saying “No Hawking” in Calabar or any part of the State for that matter, as Tony Adinye has been doing. He or his kangaroo agency do not have the powers to over ride an extant law. Even the governor himself cannot unless the law is repealed. Tony is a lawyer and should know that.
3. Tony Adinye, in a spurious reply claimed that the brutalized orange seller stabbed him on his lip and another person in the chest while they were seizing her wares. But facts will easily prove the lie. Multiple eyewitnesses told CrossRiverWatch on record that, seven men, including three armed policemen along with men from the Green Sheriff Corps, came for the operation. It is unthinkable that a lone woman and her 17 year old minor could have stabbed and injured seven trained uniformed men with three carrying rifles without serious physical consequences to the woman and her daughter who was locked up in a police cell. Then the picture of the knife that was purportedly used to stab the victims, which Tony claimed to have seized and has been sending out, was so clean without a single blood stain like someone just pulled it off a drawer. Who cleaned the blood from the knife? Was Tony, a lawyer not aware that cleaning the knife is tantamount to tampering with evidence?
4. What is the business of a pollution control agency with organic refuse disposal? Orange pills are not pollutants and do not fall within the purview of Tony’s job if he has any. The Hawking Commission created by law is the body that is responsible for regulating the activities of hawkers in the State and not pollution control agency. Tony and his band of enforcers were just Interlopers who simply went to look for the trouble of an already troubled woman.
5. They have also been pushing the narrative that the orange seller has a long history of being unruly and that a similar thing happened with her some years ago where she used it to raise sympathy funds from the public. I didn’t not know of any law that says that if someone has a history of being troublesome, that person can be cheated without justice. She did not ask those Interlopers to come to her sale point that day. They came to interfere with her business and she had to create a scene to defend her daily bread and she was cheated in the process. Should she be denied justice because someone feels she has a history of trouble? I don’t think so.
6. We also confirmed that she collected N250k from a cooperative society she belongs to. Met the surety who stood for her and saw details of the transaction. The money which was still with her at the point she was attacked and brutalized got missing and Tony and his gang of invaders have not said where the money is till now.
7. Tony has been lying up and down that he got the nod of the governor to evacuate hawkers from the street. We have also confirmed that he is only lying and never got any nod from the governor. He is acting impromptu after sending out an unsigned warning memo on a very strange letterhead paper that is not even a Cross River State government letter headed paper. Only God knows the business center he printed the letter.
8. In the main time, some money has been raised from public donations for the brutalized orange seller to ensure she continues with her business while efforts are ongoing to retrieve the N250k stolen from her by Tony and his gang of illegal enforcers.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.

StreetReporters.ng

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