Onitsha

The town of Onitsha, located in modern-day Anambra State, is home to the largest market in West Africa. The Onitsha Main market boasts tens of thousands of stalls and an equally large number of daily visitors. Home to nearly a million people, Onitsha, which is in essence a large, sprawling market complex, boasts a wide variety of goods ranging from domestically produced literary material to imported electronics, clothing, and food items. A fairly popular saying is that the Onitsha Main Market is so comprehensive in the nature of goods it carries that one could purchase a human being in it.

In addition to its role as a major commercial hub and riverport, Onitsha is also renown as a center for patrons of native literature. Dotted around the town are book shops that carry everything from Igbo romance novels to plays , lesson books, and works of fiction.

Despite being looted and burned by Nigerian soldiers in the Nigerian-Biafran War, the market has surged back in its glory as an ever-growing entity which threatens to expand into neighboring towns such as Asaba, Obosi, and Nkpor.

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