Abstract

Nigerian markets are spaces of economic activity as well as of extensive social interactions, relationships that sometimes transcend the simple exchange of goods and services. Ideas are transacted, and perspectives also get exchanged. The market place offers a meeting point for people of diverse social, religious and ethnic affiliations to interact; it is a place where customers and sellers operate in mutual care practices as their wellbeing are not neglected. Market women cannot be downplayed as they are intermediaries between the market and development of urban space. Their relevance is appreciated when women leaders of various market locations across the city are usually given the title of Iyaloja while their male ounterparts are Baba loja to manage the affairs of markets. The transformations in local market place economics, such as the rise of online markets with the use of computers or the state's preference for ultra-modern shopping malls or the use of robotic machines, continue to threaten the longstanding indigenous markets in urban cities and, by extension, the ecosystem of support, it has offered to women. This paper examines the impact of these transformations for market women who are often not formally educated and hardly savvy with online echnology. It was concluded that the repercussion of these transformations exceed economics; the alienation of buyers and sellers threaten an important domain of social and cultural interactions on daily basis.