 Over 80% of Nigerians live below the poverty line and street hawking has become one of their short routes to survival. But in Lagos, street traders aren't having it easy. They are complaining that the government is taking away their source of livelihood by chasing them off the streets. The government, on the other hand, is convinced it is doing them a favour. Jacinta Obuco takes a dive into the plight of Lagos street hawkers. Street trading is woven into the culture of daily life in Lagos. Cost and traffic jams and conjection provide a ready market for sellers to hawk their goods to commuters. Across Nigeria, the increase in scourge of poverty and worsening economic conditions has led to a further increase in street hawking in major cities such as Lagos. Even along the street has always been a continuous issue in the state for years. So sexist government have always either banded or attempted to minimise it unsuccessfully and the traders complain that they don't have the rest of mind while trying to make a living. The tax force used to come and push us from here. Every time they were always chasing us, they should not say for even me, I'm always complaining about this thing that since they don't want us to sell again, how do they want us to feed? When there is a lot of frustration in the streets, what do they expect the people to do? There are some parts of the overseas that they pay, even people that are not working. Can they do that for us? They don't create one place for us now. Can they do that? No, no any place. Here we see them, we see them carry on. If they carry on, they'll return now. If you want me to carry on, if you want me to jam you, then you don't have to sign there. As today we don't get on summer. If you prefer on summer, you don't get summer. That's how we look up and down. They look here, they look across. At times they can fall for no way. At times they can fall for no way. They say our market doesn't allow us the same market. They stop us, they push us up and down. These kind of people, they collect money for our hand every day. But they don't allow us race for waiting. They allow us, we'll say our market, we'll see where to go chop. For them to tell us that we should be keeping the environment clean, and not to then stop on us to save food, because that is where we are eating. Looking for solutions to feed ourselves. We don't have any other thing to do than to serve this food. In trying to balance the allegations, we decide to hear from Shola Jajeloye, the chairman of the Lagos State Tax Force on Environmental and Special Offences Unit. They are just given the responsibility of reading Lagos of environmental news. The decision of the law is that street hawkers market to men, display their goods on the road, or right of way, you arrest them, you pack their goods, everything to the court. Those people on the road, on the street selling anchovies, selling carrots, selling walnuts, selling chips. In the name of hustling, they have this kind of gullible mind that can make them be layout into crime. Deji Akinbelu is a social psychologist and the founder of Lagos. He believes urban planning of Lagos State should include spaces for small-scale traders. A clear issue here is the issue of design and urban planning. There's a strong collaboration between transportation and commerce and trading. So, by default in a city like Lagos, where you have a bus station that you have a large number of people ending their journey, by default you have a situation whereby you have trading go on around those axes and you have lots of places like that. You understand? But when you now build bus terminals and you don't make provisions for affordable stores or what I can call traditional markets or provisions for petty trading, you are definitely bound to have a situation of street trading. I mean, this is Maryland access. This is the bus station that is about to be built. If you build this bus station now, tomorrow, definitely what you're going to have as a situation, if you don't have stores within that bus station, you're going to have people trade along the corridors of the road. So, there is a strong issue of design. For George Louie Disagrees, he thinks Lagos is too large for the government to meet everybody's needs. Lagos is too big and if you see, even commercial bus drivers want space by government. In our various houses, we want space. We want government to still do something and that is why I have said everybody should look deep and see we must equally help ourselves. It occurs, my advice to them is, in as much as we are all able-bodied, they should be encouraged to channel their lifestyle into another profitable means. Profitable means in the sense that a venture that will start, that will stand the test of time, that can make them to raise their family, that can make them to be more useful to the society, because selling by the roadside does not mean any future for this state, does not mean any future for this country. Rather, those people will be easily manipulated into going into crimes. Akinbe Lou suggests a possible bait for the government to consider an urban planning and development. The reality of the people is such that you have to build small market stores, organize these traders into affordable market structures or developments. It doesn't have to be brick and mortar. We keep impoverishing our people and making them poorer by the day, by going on the streets and saying you're trying to take off street traders of the road. So we have to really rethink our city development, our vexation and interest in ultra-modern. We need to review it. We have to meet up with the realities of the people and begin to build according to the needs of the society. Jeje Lawyer's theme is not only taxed with ensuring Lagos is free of unwanted street trading, it is also responsible for pulling down unwanted structures, like the sclaring of shan'tas along the coastal road of Leki. This isn't the first time this is happening and it doesn't look like it would be the last. The anti-street hawking policy of the Lagos state government may be unfruitful if it's enforced without addressing the root cause of hawking. Just enter Ubuco for plus TV Africa.