A HISTORY OF ITOBE MARKET AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ITOBE, 2000-2015

Market is an authorized public concourse of buyers and sellers of commodities meeting at a place more or less strictly limited or defined at an appointed time1. This excludes those uncountable small places of ad hoc trading for instance, a hand full of women meeting at street corners in front of compounds or a building site2. Generally, it is understood that Market in Nigeria is a demarcated site where traders and consumers meet to exchange their product. However, Abdullahi Zekeri defined market as a place where people come for the purpose of buying and selling everyday but has a day whereby the population of those that come are more than other days. Such days according to him is known as Ojo-Aja (market day)3.Market vary in size, range, geographical scale, location types and varieties of commodities4. examples of markets include rural market held in village squares and urban markets. Markets in the African society could be daily or periodic depending on society. While the daily markets could be found mostly in urban centres, periodic ones are mostly found ranging from 4-9 days depending on conveniences in the rural areas5. The Market in Africa and Igalaland for example does not only serves as a place for buying and selling but also an important social, political and religious meeting place6. The need for market was necessitated by ecological variance in production and specialization and the fact that no human society is self-sufficient. These right from time immemorial have been the major factors that institutionalize market in most African societies and Igala land to be precise. Nevertheless, commenting on the nature of the African economy, Falola states that, all the sections of the economy were capable of generating surpluses. To him, the need to dispose these surpluses with articles of trades outside one’s community thus led to the emergence of markets in traditional African society7.