Touts More Dangerous than UGM …Ogilisi Igbo

 From GUEST CORRESPONDENT (ONITSHA)
The spiritual leader of the Igbo nation, Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka (Ogilisi Igbo) has urged the residents and visitors of the commercial city of Onitsha to take advantage of the ban placed on touts and touting by Governor Willie Obiano to rise and resist touts who intimidate, harass and forcibly extort money from them in markets, motor parks and bus stops. 

Chief Ezeonwuka who spoke to journalists at Upper Iweka on situation assessment, observed with dismay that touts are intimidating, harassing, and forcibly extorting money from visiting petty traders, resident hawkers and wheelbarrow pushers, commercial and private motorists as tolls and levies with fake tickets, noting that touts are more dangerous than unknown gunmen. 

He said that touts who impose multiple levies and tolls on unsuspecting members of the public working to earn their daily bread have chased traders from neighborhood States of Enugu, Delta, Kogi, Benue, Ebonyi, Imo, and Abia among others away from Onitsha, thereby making sales difficult for the traders in all the markets and reducing the level of government revenue generation to nothing in Onitsha

“Onitsha should be one of the flashpoints of revenue generation by the government but touts who parade fake revenue tickets and impose illegal tolls and levies  on residents and visitors have made it difficult for the government to generate revenue, this is too bad” he added.

He attributed the menace of touts in Onitsha to some highly placed people who are referred to as “cabals” in the system, noting that the cabals use to give government peanut in the name of revenue contract and end up using touts to loot the State treasury to acquire mansions and sports utility vehicles and then build private businesses such as hotels, plazas, petrol filling stations, and housing estates. 

Insisting that residents and visitors have to rise against the menace of touts in Onitsha because the government has placed a ban on it, he advised the Ministry in charge of Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) to publish revenue points for the members of the public to know what to pay for and what not to pay for.