Adamawa: Many sides of life under emergency rule
“I couldn’t get him and I couldn’t reach any of his friends there to get me talk to him,” she said nervously. But some relieve came her way when a neighbour told her that she could speak with her son at the border towns, where there is some flashes of telecom network. Abubakar himself was […]
“I couldn’t get him and I couldn’t reach any of his friends there to get me talk to him,” she said nervously. But some relieve came her way when a neighbour told her that she could speak with her son at the border towns, where there is some flashes of telecom network.
Abubakar himself was also said to have tried unsuccessfully to reach his mother. On the day he got her, she was not actually in Girei; she was in Mayo-Lamja, along the road to Taraba state.
“It was there he called me,” she said, wearing a smile.
Mayo-Lamja, a roadside village has become a Mecca of sort, hosting dozens of people, including soldiers deployed to Adamawa, who troop there to make calls to family members and friends.
Also, several other residents travel to Cameroonian villages to make phone calls using the network there. Kawu Mallum, a resident of Toungo, a border town, said dozens of people cross to neighbouring Cameroun to make phone calls to relatives who are outside Adamawa state.
Journalists are also severely affected by total GSM shutdown. Mallam Umar Dankano and Mohammad Ismail of People’s Daily and Leadership newspapers respectively are both frustrated by the network shutdown.
“It is seriously affecting our job. For days I cannot make call or send reports to my office,’’ says Dankano.
Also corroborating, Mr Gyang Pam said, “I can hardly reach my people the way I used to; if I want to make call, I most travel to neighbouring states.”
At the beginning of military operations in the three affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, mobile phone services were shut down apparently to prevent insurgents from coordinating their activities.
Insurgents, hitherto, used mobile phones to detonate bombs remotely and to communicate among themselves.
Now many believe there is some measure of success in the fight against insurgents, but social activities are grounded. The emergency rule is already taking a toll on the economy, especially with the imposition of curfew.
Petty traders are suffering most. Beer parlour operators, suya sellers, and even women who fry bean cake (akara) and yams have stories of losses to tell. In fact many of them have closed shop.
Be it as it may, some married women confessed that they are happy with the curfew imposed –their husbands are caged at home. One woman, a mother three, said her husband is now giving proper attention to the family.
But as military surveillance continues, resident have complained that they are being harassed and molested at that start of curfew hours.
“This is a cruel way of inflicting more hardship on the poor masses,” one resident said.
“Traders who go about pursuing their legitimate businesses as Nigerians have been abused by security operatives in many areas,” he said.
In an instance, one Yawari Daniel, a resident of Ganye town, said angrily: “We are not animals; we are human beings like them but the way they maltreat us daily in this area is as if we are animals. It is unfair and inhuman.”
In Yola, the state capital and Ganye, a border town, residents have decried the recent upsurge in burglary cases especially during curfew hours. Mallam Musa Garba, a resident of Yola said owners of shops along major roads have been under the mercy of burglars. Burglary is now a common occurrence. It is done with impunity.
“Since the dusk to dawn curfew was imposed on us, hardly will a day pass by without somebody’s shop being burgled,” he said.
Similarly several shops have been burgled in the ancient town of Yola. Many of the shops are located along major streets, yet security personnel on patrol have not been able to spot and arrest the hoodlums.
One of the shops worse hit, located along Modibbo Adamawa Way, is now a shadow of it. Burglars have scooped out most of the valuable items in the shop.
Another tailoring shop belonging to one Mallam Salihu located opposite School of Arabic and Islamic Studies (SAIS), Yola, also suffered similar fate.
But what makes Mallam Saidu’s case more pitiable is that it is close to the Wuro Hausa Police Command in Yola.
One of the shop attendants, Mallam Adamu Ibrahim, said clothing materials worth N200, 000 were carted away from the shop during curfew hours.
“We have never experienced such degree of theft. That is why we found it difficult to understand what is happening now,” he lamented.
The owner of Elyasa Computer Centre, also located in the same block with the tailoring shop, had similar tale of woe. He said said his shop was burgled and the two computers with which he worked had been stolen.
He said, as a student, he does not know how he would pay his school fees now, as he depended entirely on the business for that and sundry expenses. But his main concern is how to pacify the people who gave him jobs, which he saved in the computer hard drives.
Two more boutiques in Yola were also reportedly burgled with clothes worth tens of thousands of naira stolen.
Also, the people of Bachure, a suburb of Jimeta, near the 23rd Military Barracks, were not spared from the onslaught –their transformer has been vandalised.
The ward head of Bachure, Alhaji Sa’ad Ya’uba, said the thieves took advantage of the people’s compliance with the curfew and vandalised the only transformer they have.
“I heard movement of people, because the transformer is located near my house, but I thought they were military men on patrol so I didn’t raise alarm, only to hear in the morning that our transformer was vandalised by miscreants,” he said.
When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the 23rd Armoured Brigade, Yola, Lieutenant Nuhu Mohammed Jafar, said he did not receive such reports of criminal activities. Efforts to reach the Police Public Relations Officer in Adamawa State proved abortive as at the time of filing this report, due to network problem.