New Telegraph

Abia LG boss bans sale of newspapers along Port Harcourt-Aba Highway

The Chairman of Ugwunagbo Local Government Area (LGA) of Abia State, Mrs Joy Nnanta has banned the sale of newspapers along the Aba-Port Harcourt Highway. Saturday Telegraph reports that Nnanta confiscated all the Friday, 27th August publications of national dailies meant for sale at the popular Flyover Junction and took them to the Local Government Secretariat. An affected vendor, Mrs Ngozi Samuel said the situation got to them as a rude shock as she had been in the newspaper distribution business for many years and had never seen where vendors were chased and harassed. Mrs Samuel said that officials of the LGA had been harassing them, and demanding that they pay them N15,000 as permission levy before they could be allowed to stay where people would see them.

“They have been disturbing us. We didn’t obstruct any movement of vehicles or people. The small issue we had initially was with soldiers who asked us to shift a little bit away from their post for security reasons. “The soldiers even told us, where we could stay which we did. We stayed there away from any obstruction to display our newspapers from morning till evening when we normally go home.

“We don’t litter there neither do we create any disturbance. We were just surprised that soon after we went where the soldiers asked us to go, the LGA Chairman came again and asked us to leave the location. “We reported back to the soldiers and they asked us to temporarily stay at the former place. “That was where we were until Friday when they came and took all our newspapers and asked us to call all the publishers and journalists to come to their office and explain why we should be selling newspapers there,” she said. When contacted over the story, Chairperson of the LGA, Mrs Joy Nnanta said that it was the Abia State Government that instructed her to chase everybody away including the vendors.

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