Abuja is besieged again

You might be among the most sceptical who would not want to believe that Abuja is under siege by kidnappers. Nevertheless, the telltale signs are aloft for all to see and prepare for eventualities. A few years ago, Abuja was entangled in a similar dilemma when Boko Haram elements infiltrated the city throwing bombs anyhow […]

You might be among the most sceptical who would not want to believe that Abuja is under siege by kidnappers. Nevertheless, the telltale signs are aloft for all to see and prepare for eventualities.

A few years ago, Abuja was entangled in a similar dilemma when Boko Haram elements infiltrated the city throwing bombs anyhow and anywhere their murderous and fanatical leaders led them to. There were bomb blasts in many parts of the city with many deaths. The last straw was the brazen daylight attack on the Inspector-General of Police’s convoy returning to the Police Headquarters. The suicide bomber nearly got the trophy he wanted by taking the life of the nation’s Inspector-General of Police.

As fate would have it, it was the bomber who extinguished himself though he, unfortunately, took the lives of some dutiful policemen. Many of us who lived in Abuja in that period will recall what it meant to live in a besieged city. The armed forces were all over the place with checkpoints in most of the streets causing traffic snarls at all times making movement difficult. The worst of the checkpoints were those on all the roads at the gateways into the city. At all the entry points whether, through AYA, Lugbe, or Deidei, there used to be clogging of vehicles at the checkpoints that could last hours to dissipate.

Abuja is now at the point of returning to those horrific days it left behind. The Boko Haram bombings Abuja left behind have now been upscaled to kidnapping. Over the past few years, kidnapping has been present on the highways in all directions going out of Abuja. The highway going out to Kaduna was the most infamous in those days but now the Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga road is taking the lead.

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What is worrisome is that the kidnappers are moving from the highways to the city itself. They have besieged the city from all corners. The kidnapping gangs now knock on doors or force their way into defenceless homes to cart away their occupants to the bush and would only release them on the payment of massive amounts.

What makes the situation more desperate is that these gangs are ready to kill with impunity if their demands are not met, as they have done so in some tragic instances. What happened in the recent case of the brutal killing of Nabeeha Al-Kadiriyar, a 400-level student of Biological Sciences, ABU, Zaria, is a horror that will live with us for long. The poor girl was kidnapped from her home at Zuma 1, on the outskirts of Bwari town in Abuja along with her sisters and father, Mansoor Al-Kadriyar.

The kidnappers released the father to go home and organise finding the large ransom of N60 million. When he could not meet the deadline, Nabeela’s life was wasted by the gang to show that they meant business. Eventually, a former minister had to organise crowdfunding towards meeting the kidnappers’ demand. To bring this sad episode to an end, it has just been reported that the victims have been released as I write today. What galls about this gory spectacle is that the details of the capture, negotiations of ransom and other sordid details all played out on social media. The government seemed unable to do anything.

The kidnapping incidents that began, on and off, on the outskirts of the city have now come fully into the city centre. It is now commonplace as it is reported daily in the media. To demonstrate that they feared no one, the kidnappers even dared to attack an army estate within Abuja. The kidnappers blatantly came to the army estate, shooting in the air and carried out a successful operation, taking along with them at least two unlucky victims. But that’s not all. Kidnappers now prowl the streets. On Saturday, there was a report that a kidnapping took place in a busy street around Lugbe, in Abuja.

Certainly, there is no gainsaying that a palpable fear now pervades everywhere in Abuja. There is a gnawing feeling that the kidnappers would strike anywhere, at any time. Everyone is a sitting duck that can be picked at the leisure of the kidnappers. The worst part is the feeling of helplessness, that there is no protection anywhere. The hands of the government are already full dealing with all sorts of insurrections in many parts of the country. The person that Abuja would turn to ordinarily is the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike. Unfortunately, the minister is too preoccupied with the happenings in his home state, Rivers.

Since he was appointed FCT Minister, Wike has been seen to be more vociferous over what his successor in Rivers State, Governor Siminalayi Fubara, is doing, or not doing, in the Port Harcourt Government House. One could count the number of times Wike had been seen on television over FCT matters. But on innumerable times Wike has been in the media fretting over Rivers State matters. Maybe it is time President Bola Tinubu reads the riot act to Minister Wike to face his primary function of protecting the lives and properties of the FCT. Abuja needs to hear more from Minister Wike on how to get out of this siege.