Noah Ebije, Kaduna
At a glance, Kaduna Fruit Market invites one to buy, depicting a set of people engaged in serious economic transactions. Situated around Kaduna Junction Railway Terminus, the market offers just another shot of happy fruit truck drivers, who are happy doing their jobs and excited by its abundant rewards.
But certainly, this is untrue about their fortunes. Behind the curtains, many of them have been enduring a life of pains in the market and would willingly exit this setting, if only wishes were horses.
For these truck drivers, who convey oranges, watermelons, pineapples and other fruits from Benue, Gombe, Bauchi and Edo states to Kaduna State, they are trapped between the proverbial red devil and the deep blue sea. On one hand, they are at the mercy of the no- nonsense officials of the state traffic agency, Kaduna State Traffic Agency (KASTLEA), which have barred them from driving in their big trucks into the capital during the day.
The other option is come into the city by night. But this too has its shortcomings. At night, they are at the risk of being killed or harmed. Investigation by Daily Sun indicated that traveling by night is courting a bigger tragedy. Nights on Kaduna highways are ruled by bandits and armed robbers.
Three years ago, Governor Nasir El-Rufai scrapped the Vehicles Inspection Office (VIO). He replaced it with the Kaduna State Traffic Law Enforcement Agency (KASTLEA). The new agency placed a ban on the movement of trailers, trucks and lorries, during the day.
Chairman, Fruits Sellers Association of Nigeria (FSAN), Alhaji Yusuf Makana, said the situation is unbearable. He appealed to government to relax the ban on daytime movement of trucks to and from Kaduna city in the light of the security challenges on the highways:
“We want the state government to build refuse dumps for us so that we can use for our damaged and useless fruits. And more importantly, we are appealing to Governor Nasir El-Rufai to relax the ban on movement of our drivers. The problem our drivers are faced with in conveying the fruits to Kaduna is that they cannot travel by night because of armed robbers and bad roads.
“And it is more comfortable to drive trucks in the night, but because of armed robbers, the drivers cannot move at night. That is our challenge number one. Number two challenge is that our drivers cannot drive into Kaduna during the daytime because government has embargoed such vehicular movement.
«KASTLEA has banned all lorries and other big vehicles from entering Kaduna at daytime, except at night. Even if it is five kilometers to Kaduna, as long as it is daytime, the driver has to stop and wait for night to fall before moving into the city centre.
“If the driver stays on the highway for two days before entering Kaduna, and by the time he comes to the market, he has to join queue for another two days, so these processes account for a lot of wastage.
«This is the way we sell oranges; a bag of orange, say 100kg, sells for N5,000 to N6,000. If a buyer wants half a bag, we equally sell it. It sells for N2,500. We get supply of oranges mainly from Benue State. We normally throw away the rotten ones. Sometimes, we record losses because of the rotten ones. We also record profit. We know, as traders, there is a time for us to make profit; there is also a time for loss.
“We also transport water melons from other parts of northern states. Before now, it used to be only from Maiduguri, Borno State. Other states like Kano, Bauchi, Katsina, Jigawa, Kaduna and Sokoto have joined the farming of the watermelons. Fortunately, water melons do not get rotten easily like oranges.”