Get To Know: Aba, South Eastern Nigeria’s Thriving Commercial Hub(pics)

 
The city of Aba appears on maps as a built up space straddling the
intersection of roads from Port Harcourt, Owerri, Umuahia, and Ikot
Ekpene. That patch is, in fact, a bustling urban sprawl, one of
Nigeria’s major commercial hubs, and home to over a million people.

Aba is the economic heartbeat of Abia State in Nigeria’s South
Eastern region. Visitors to the city will find this status well earned,
as there’s more than just a sign of commercial activity on every other
street. Its market teems with traders hawking an impressive variety of
wares; its streets, are swarmed by buses and tricycles carrying
commuters, many of them moving to or from trade posts, and its factories
and workshops ring and roar with the sounds of industry.

In earlier times, Aba was a small market town inhabited by indigenous
Igbo people. The British set up a military post there in 1901, and
later (in 1915) built a railway linking the town to Port Harcourt.
Because the railroad served as a route for the transportation of
agricultural produce, it helped establish Aba as a major trading center
in the region and caused its population to begin to swell. A major
historical event from that time was the Aba women’s riot of 1929, which
saw thousands of women march in protest of the British’s exploitative
tax policies.
 

Today, Aba has the largest population of any city in the South East
and is one of the region’s main centres of commerce. Its industrial
prowess can be seen in its production of textiles, leatherwork,
plastics, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. The city’s Ariaria market is
one of West Africa’s biggest markets and is known for its shoe making
and leatherwork. Aba is also home to Ahia Ohuru (New Market), a major
centre for the textile trade in Nigeria. Trading is however not
restricted to these spaces, as there is an apparent continuity of store
lines throughout much of Aba.

Education is one of Aba’s less spoken of strongpoints. The city has a
number of institutions of higher learning, including the state-run Abia
State Polytechnic and Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH),
and the privately owned Rhema University and Covenant Polytechnic. It
also has a college of health sciences and a college of education, as
well as numerous primary and secondary schools.

Sport in Aba is dominated by the city’s main football team, Enyimba
F.C. The club is considered an integral part of the city’s identity, so
much so that the city has been nicknamed after it.  Enyimba is one of
Nigeria’s biggest sides and has won several trophies within the country
and on the African continent.

Aba is an interesting place to be. It doesn’t have the sort of hype
around it that cities like Lagos and Abuja do, but it does have one
thing going for it- the enterprise of its people. They have overcome the
constraints of resource challenges and inconvenient conditions to make
it one of the country’s most important cities.