Life after the bomb blast in Nyanya

We are at the receiving end again. Yes, we the masses. I know some people will think that I am being myopic, that it is in the interest of the general security but it is crazy to take a security measure that is not only antiquated but totally ineffective to the threat at hand.

I live in one of the several housing estates in Karu-Nyanya. There are a number of such settlements spanning Jikwoyi, Kurudu, Nyanya and in more recent years, Kurudu, Karshi, Orozo etc. These areas are next to Nasarawa state and in fact the demarcation between the FCT and Nassarawa state is only a welcoming billboard. It has been reported by the news media that 50 per cent of the working population lives in this axis, and I believe it because the border town of FCT/Nasarawa state is Mararaba which is so densely populated that it reminds me of areas like Okokommaiko or Ijora-Badia in Lagos. 

Even the adjacent settlements in Nasarawa: Masaka, One-man Village, Uke, Ado and Keffi have most of their inhabitants headed to an office in Abuja to eke a living everyday of the week. It is people like us that live in that area where the only time Karu road was re-patched in about 10 years was when the Big Man was going to commission something at the Federal School in Orozo.

Why do hundreds of thousands of us live here? We live here because that is where housing is affordable. A decent two bedroom flat can be rented for ‘as little as’ N400,000 or thereabouts. The beauty is that such parts also have buildings where one can get a single room or double room apartments, to break it down- ‘face me I face you’ or ‘self-contained’. 

In the latter type of accommodation, you have your own conveniences and kitchenette, so there is more opportunity for respect and fewer avenues for quarrels with your neighbours. In this part of town it is possible to even be a monthly tenant, a rarity in many parts of Abuja where yearly tenancy reigns and people often take loans to meet up with their landlords’ demands. Housing is ‘affordable’ although there are areas the bourgeoisie could refer to as slums, this ghetto is our shelter and our homes are as sweet as can be.

Like the gold miners of South Africa, each day, we are forced to head to ‘downtown Abuja’ in order to earn a living. We go to work in different parts of Wuse, Garki, Central Business District, etc where industrialisation is situated and corporate establishments have their offices.

 I was less than a minute away from the blast last week because I was in Nyanya by 6.35a.m barely a minute away from the motor park but many of us, the masses, were affected. I had to report to the office that day but I could not work and the shock is only just beginning to wear off. Since Thursday, the 17th of April, security has been ‘beefed up’ (to use a now common parlance): A checkpoint was created around Nyanya and every car going into the FCT was subjected to hours of queuing through a blockade. Unfortunately, on Friday, this ‘checkpoint’ moved to Kugbo-the furniture market/settlement along the Abuja–Keffi expressway. Thus even those that used to make a detour trough Karu and reduce a quarter of the perennial hold up now have no leeway. Not only is this idea an exercise in futility, it is nothing more than a display of ACUTE UNINTELLIGENCE on the part of our security personnel.

Firstly, checking thousands of cars, one at a time has created a traffic jam: The passageway of the Abuja-Keffi expressway is now delineated so that instead of 4 lanes, there is now only possibility for 1 vehicle to pass at a time. At the check, a uniformed, combat-armed personnel, displaying his weapons and scowling, peers into your car. It does not matter if you have young children going to school in your car to be dropped while you proceed to the office, you have to suffer this indignity silently and as with a straight asks a face as possible, else you may be suspected of being ‘Boko Haram’. 

The damage done to the psyche of a child seeing guns at such close range are something that cannot be easily repaired. If satisfied that you are not a likely bomber, you will be waved on from where you meander through the puzzle-like blockade until you come out and you can cover the remaining distance to town. If unsatisfied, you will be asked to ‘clear, clear’ to one side of the road and handed over to other uniformed colleagues to conduct a ‘more thorough search’. It starts with asking you questions and if unlucky, you are harassed, your tormentors caressing guns casually and from the look of these guns, they seem well loaded and functional.

 No device is employed to discern whether or not explosives exist in the vehicles at all. Ordinarily, before the blast, the average worker in these areas had to leave home before 6a.m M to be in an office in main Abuja by 8a.m. Now with the security check, the average number of hours is 4 hours. How can the productivity of a city be sustained when a good percentage of the work force cannot even get to the workplace timely? 

On Thursday, a lot of people simply disembarked from their vehicles and started trekking. They trekked for as long and as far as possible before they started trying to flag down the few vehicles that had succeeded in exiting the security check point, about one in every 10 minutes. 

Secondly it is sad that in this day and age, we do not have a sensible idea on how to secure ourselves. Shakespeare it was that said, ‘There is no art to find the mind’s construction on the face’. Therefore, how will these people at the checkpoint know who is likely to plant a bomb by checking the way they do? Would it not have been more sensible if some electronic gadget or security device is erected for every motorist to pass through or embedded in the roads to detect possible IEDs and their carriers?

Thirdly, in erecting such a blockade, our security personnel are actually leaving us more open to bombings and the like. You need to see the kind of crowd that builds up waiting to be checked and each vehicle usually has more than one passenger, sometimes, there could be up to five people in a car. Should an explosion occur there, you cannot imagine how many people will be affected due to the build-up of traffic and this is exactly what these bomb-throwers want, a mass of hapless and unsuspecting people on which terror can be unleashed.

 Fourthly, erecting a blockade in that particular point shows that the security agents’ wish is to secure those who are wealthy and not all the inhabitants of Abuja. This is because a better and more logical sentry point would have been Mararaba, or at least, somewhere technically close to the geographical demarcation between Nasarawa and the FCT. To site this barrier at Kugbo is to say the least punitive, in other words, why is there no such screening before citizens are allowed from other settlements in the FCT such as Apo, Gwarimpa, and Life camp into the main business areas of Abuja? 

Why is it that those coming from other parts of Abuja and going to Karu, Nyanya and co are not screened? Do we, the less endowed living in these parts, not deserve to be ‘secured from potential harm’ as well? The citizens that live here need security, rather than do that the government is meting out its fury on hapless people who are trying to live honestly in a country where simplicity and hard work do not get appreciable returns. It is now a crime to be poor and live in this part of town, but let those remember that the people who are living here are not there by choice, they are there because the paltry minimum wage of eighteen thousand naira cannot rent a house in Maitama!

 

Oghos Omos