Last week, there was apprehension at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), especially Bwari and Dei Dei areas, after it emerged that terrorists had abducted over 96 residents of the territory in three weeks. Residents of Bwari Area Council and the communities around the area are presently said to be living in fear in the aftermath of the invasion of their areas by bandits. The latest of the attacks took place on January 1 when a senior official of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) and other members of his family, including his wife and a child, were abducted. This was a sequel to the dastardly event of December 9, 2023, when gunmen abducted 23 residents in Dei-Dei community. The victims were taken from their flats in a single compound between 8 pm and 9 pm, but seven of them were rescued an hour later by the vigilantes in the area who trailed the terrorists to the bush.

On Sunday this week, a gang of kidnappers invaded Sagwari Layout Estate in Dutse, a suburb of the FCT in Bwari Area Council, abducting eight residents. They then proceeded to abduct two staffers of a nearby hotel. The victims were said to have been taken to the hills behind the estate. The outlaws were said to have engaged security personnel and the estate security in a fierce gun battle, firing from vantage positions atop the hills. The incident came just as the FCT Police Command assured residents of Abuja, particularly those living in Ushafa, Bwari and environs, of their safety, saying that additional police personnel had been deployed to contain security threats. In another incident last week, four people were killed by armed robbers at One-Man Village near Mararaba, Nasarawa State, about 27 kilometres away from the FCT. The gun-wielding attackers reportedly stormed Wisdom Supermarket located along the Abuja-Keffi Expressway and took security operatives, customers and attendants unawares. The FCT and the satellite towns have been in turmoil in recent times as criminals rob, rape and kill innocent citizens at will, even after receiving ransom.

To say the very least, the killings and kidnappings are highly regrettable. To think that such acts of criminality could take place at the seat of power is disheartening. For some time now, daredevil criminals have taken different parts of Abuja, Nasarawa and Niger states by storm, without any meaningful resistance by the authorities. Abuja is the FCT, the seat of the Federal Government, and the national headquarters of all military and paramilitary agencies in the country. Abuja is relatively well planned, and the office of the Abuja Geographic Information Systems is, by its own admission, constantly reinventing the city to fit in with the Abuja Master Plan. Ordinarily, surveillance equipment should have been deployed by now to cover the entire territory and give it the dignity it is supposed to have as Nigeria’s capital city. The fact that it has not speaks to the dilemma of life as a Nigerian. Indeed, considering the fact that the FCT is the seat of multiple governments and foreign embassies, it is unfortunate that the kind of kidnappings and killings witnessed in recent times took place. What kind of signals are the authorities sending to the outside world?

The upsurge in criminal activities, including armed robbery and kidnappings across the country, should be a source of concern to all because of the decadence and the collapse of society it prefigures. Crimes have become not isolated events expected as part of the imperfection of human life and the world, but permanent and pervasive features of life today in Nigeria. And what remains of life where crimes rule almost the entire gamut of existence? Criminals are not only invading the bustling environment and abducting people and dispossessing shoppers of their belongings at will, they are also snuffing life out of citizens in a whimsical manner. The fact that criminals are everywhere and operate with impunity across the country, not bothering in the least about the feeble resistance from victims and the overall incapacity of the security agencies, is a clear sign that the fabric of the society and the structures of governance over it are substantially broken.

It is not the norm to have society and many of its members largely operating on and wanting to benefit from crimes and negative activities. The essence of society ordinarily has to be productive engagements through which it reproduces and ensures continuity for itself, knowing that anything else, particularly a resort to unproductivity, will only result in disaster. Surely, those in charge of governance in the country ought to realise the ultimate destruction awaiting any society where crimes, rather than productive engagements, have become the stock in trade. We expect them not to allow the mindless killings to go on unchecked as they would surely end in disaster for all. There must be urgent action by the government to stem the drift into total collapse and give the country a chance of assuring itself of some level of continuous existence going forward.

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