HOW GOVERNMENT STEALS FROM THE POOR
Last Thursday, May 18, 2017, I got a distress call from a young single mum of three children who ekes out a living by hawking fresh fruits somewhere in Wuse Two, Abuja.
This call came at about 8am, the moment I settled into my office desk to begin the day’s work.
The purpose of the call was to report that the armed operatives of the Abuja environmental authority seized her articles of trade and arrested her.
She was forced to cough out N5000 before she could be let off the hook but the men went away with her entire business wares.
This lady by name Evelyn has a toddler she still breastfeeds in addition to the other two children who are in public school even as she relies on the petty trading to take care of them.
She wept uncontrollably and urged that our group should intervene so her wares can be released. But our effort was fruitless.
This is because upon our investigation those governmentsponsored armed thugs who brazenly took her wares had gone to their various houses with the loot and we were even told that she was lucky to have escaped being dumped into a decrepit detention facility administered by this notorious agency.
Many persons languish for days before bribing their way out of these dungeons that aren’t fit even for wild animals. These detention centres are scattered all over Abuja and Abuja can’t boasts of vibrant non -governmental group that thematically focuses on the plight of the poorest of the poor. Most platforms are politically inclined.
Pathetically, we saw how even the armed operatives of the Nigerian navy and army in addition to the regular police and civil defence were part of the squad of these Abuja environmental department’s staff.
Their daily routines include roaming about the streets of Abuja chasing petty traders out of the streets, looting their wares, imprisoning them so as to extort some money from those severely disadvantaged and economically deprived Nigerians.
This is pure governmentsponsored road side armed robbery and must stop except governance in Nigeria is meant to rob the poor to enrich the few privileged elite.
This was the basis for a letter we sent to the Abuja Minister and the Senator heading the Committee on the Federal Capital Territory Mr. Dino Melaye but both of these men have taken no action to stop this day light robberies that have gone on for ages.
The current FCT minister Mohammed Bello who headed the Islamic Pilgrims welfare board before his kinsman redeployed him to the juicier position of FCT minister is rated as the weakest point in this current political dispensation. For two months that we sent him our letter demanding an end to these broad day harassment of petty traders by the government’s armed thugs, he has neither replied nor adopted any panacea to check the trend which is making governance in Nigeria to look like organised crime against poor citizens.