As expected, the city of Abuja has a lot of official markets where people buy and sell. However, the most interesting are those unofficial markets which spring up at the slightest possibility.
In the face of the country's low standard of living, people believe that Abuja can be the next place for greener pastures. So, the city is filled with people who come into it with no serious plan on what to do.
The markets, of course vary, depending on the time and place. Traders of bananas, groundnuts, cashew nuts and other petty things sit by the roadside ready to make a run for it as soon as officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) come along, while others set up shop in places like Berger, AYA, the Kubwa Express road around the First and Second Gates and other areas where markets spring up in the evenings. People who cannot afford the numerous extravagant shops and boutiques can, at least, buy good items that their meagre money can afford.
The most interesting of these markets is one that springs up ones every month. One of the parks in Wuse area comes alive every first Saturday of every month. It is a shopping fair where large number of business owners come together to rent stalls and stands for window shoppers who go about networking and discovering lovely fashion items, video games and refreshments.
Although a bit disappointing that the market is known as the designer's market place (DMP); with little or no display of those lovely pieces of Nigerian or African designs expected to be seen in such places, it is filled with products from foreign countries. A lover of foreign designers will have a lot to pick from the enticing stores that decorate the park on such days.
On those first Saturdays, that section of the park will boast big sky-high canopies with different stalls where business owners display clothes, jewelleries, shoes and bags, ceramics and even video games.
The other part made up of stands where business owners sell barbecued chicken, beef, gizzard and roasted plantain. Some sell rice while there are those that sell shawarma and smoothies.
There is a stand for drinks and temporary tattoo but the most surprising and probably interesting stand at the DMP (designers market place) is a shisha stand Shisha smoking, also called hookah, narghile, waterpipe or hubble-bubble is a way of smoking tobacco through a bowl, hose or tube where the younger generation (both male and female) gather with friends and smoke in turns from different shisha pots.
The two brothers who own the business said that they actually have customers of all ages patronising them and that people prefer to patronise them because of the different flavours they provide which makes them unique.
One of their customers Riman Jerry told Abuja Review that "everybody can make shisha, but I think it's about branding. They packaged their products very well."
"Just loves chilled, smoke shisha; nothing too serious; just to keep my hands busy when hanging out with friends."
Mrs. Olayemi Olotewo is another business owner at the DMP. She buys her clothes and shoes from the United States and sells them off at the DMP at very affordable prices (price ranges from N500 to N5000).
She said: "I think it's a very good thing. I have been coming for the past 12 months and I really think that it has helped me. I don't have a shop and I don't plan to have one. I sell from home. So, here is where I meet people whom I will not want to go to their houses.
"The fact is that by selling things here, you have to mark things down real good. To get a good deal, you shouldn't bring expensive things. You bring things you might have made gains from and then you just believe it is now time to let go.
"That is why I continue to come here. I do not sell anything here for more than N5, 000. If you check most of these designer products, you will notice that some have tags of N12, 000 but I sell them for as low as N1,500 because I believe that, after a while, just like they do abroad, you mark things down and when I go back home, it reverses back to its original price."
Although not everyone sells their products at the market at give-away prices like Mrs. Olotewo, shoppers with insufficient funds can take along their credit cards or ATM cards because the business owners each possess a point of sale device to make carrying cash much easier.
Although Abuja may not be as interesting as some other cities in the country, it at least, has an avenue where people can shop for the latest designs at boutiques that beautify the city at prices that are not too expensive.
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