Orba Modern Market leadership crisis: Elected OMMTA executive reinstated, caretaker committee disbanded as govt. brokers peace

From OGBU NWEKE, Nsukka

After nearly two years (one year and seven months, actually) of official missteps, peace has finally returned to the over 3000-shop World Bank/UNDP Orba Modern Market, Udenu, Enugu State, rocked for that long by a leadership crisis spurred by what traders’ association’s executives described as “the illegal dissolution of Orba Modern Market Traders Association (OMMTA), forcible takeover of the affairs of OMMTA, unlawful usurpation of the powers and privileges of OMMTA, and unconstitutional interference with the rights of OMMTA” by the agents of both the local and state governments.

In collective and individual pledges shortly after an open air reconciliation Mass at the Orba World Bank/UNDP Modern Market loading bay, on Saturday, November 15, members of the newly reinstated Brendan Ugwu-led OMMTA Executive and their disbanded Caretaker Committee counterparts, recommitted to providing just, fair and peaceful leadership in the market as well as to according loyalty and respect to constituted authority.

They all vowed to work and confront all future challenges together, noting that henceforth, the lesson from the crisis, namely, that disunited they would fall and everyone lose, would guide their conduct of the affairs of the Association towards a more productive and mutually-benefitting market leadership.

Trouble started in and for the World/UNDP/government/community-owned International Market in September 2023 shortly after the election of Mr. Brendan Ugwu, a dealer in consumables, and his team to lead the association for a four-year tenure.

According to a legal opinion offered to the Enugu State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Hon. Kingsley Udeh, by one of the lawyers to OMMTA, Mr. Ugwu and his executives “were elected…in 2023 for a four-year tenure and their tenure was still subsisting but an issue arose when (some agents of the local and state governments) stepped into the market’s administrative structure by directing that the executives duly elected in 2023 be dissolved and should cease to exist.”

The “legal opinion” further explained that the said government agents “went on to set up a Caretaker Committee to see to the affairs of the market on the 24th of December, 2024”, whereupon “members of the committee were inaugurated and ordered to function.”

“However, the purportedly ousted executives wrote to the authority about the incident, highlighting the apparent abuse of powers and the need to make a restitution by restoring the elected executives whose tenure has not added, and dissolution of the Caretaker Committee,” the OMMTA legal adviser added in the “legal opinion” to Attorney General Udeh. “The appeal was not considered and the purportedly ousted executive went to court and succeeded in obtaining a restraining order and interlocutory injunction stopping the constitution of a Caretaker Committee.”

According to findings, the government agents’ (officials of Udenu Local government and State Ministry of Trade and Investment) refusal to abide by the above ruling of court, and decision to go ahead instead and inaugurate the Caretaker Committee in total defiance of the court order, was to lead to a flurry of lawsuits, counter lawsuits and acts of executive lawlessness that characterized the one-year-and-seven- month stalemated OMMTA market leadership.

However, reason finally prevailed after the government’s party, including the Caretaker Committee and local and state governments’ officials, appeared to have reached a dead end following the court of appeal’s rejection of their quest for an order restraining the implementation of the high court ruling declaring the Caretaker Committee illegal.

Subsequently, according to OMMTA sources, the Chairman of Udenu Local Government Area, Hon. Aka Eze Aka, was said to have summoned the warring parties to a meeting in his office at Obollo-Afor on the 5th of this month (November), seeking a way out of the OMMTA statement.

At the meeting, Hon. Aka Eze was reported to have directed that the OMMTA office hitherto taken over and occupied by the Caretaker Committee be handed back to the Brendan Ugwu-led elected Executive to continue from where they stopped as leaders of traders in the sprawling 3000-shop Orba International Market, an indirect disclosure to the joint meeting that the Caretaker Committee had been dissolved.

When the Ugwu-led elected Executive sought clarification, they were assured by the local government chairman that Udenu had withdrawn its support to the former Caretaker Committee and that its members would from then on be loyal to the elected OMMTA leadership.

Aka Eze was said to have immediately mandated a joint team of the elected Executive and members of the Caretaker Committee to drive back to Orba Modern Market and open the OMMTA office for Ugwu and his team to gain access.

Expressing his gratitude to the traders for their support while the crisis lasted, and to the local and State government governments for brokering peace in the market, OMMTA Chairman Ugwu, who spoke at the Open Air Mass, pledged to lead with the fear of God, and commitment to the welfare of traders and economic prosperity of the Orba community, Udenu LGA and Enugu State through the oft-voluminous commercial activities in the Orba Mordern Market, for the remainder of his tenure.

He urged those who might have been offended, one way or another, by his style of administration and or his decisions prior to or during the crippling crisis, to forgive him, assuring that, going forward, he and his team would take their concerns into consideration in arriving at decisions.