Aba Residents Now Live In Fear

Aba Residents Now Live In Fear

Uche Nworah

Residents of Aba (aka Enyimba City), the commercial city of Abia state may be wondering if life will ever return to normal for them, their doubts are strongly rooted in past and current happenings in the land-locked town, which boasts of the famous Ariaria market, one of the busiest in sub-regional West Africa and also African Champion’s league winners – Enyimba Football Club.

The town has suffered neglect in the hands of previous and successive governments both at the local, state and federal levels which have failed to invest extensively in infrastructure (roads, drainage, water, erosion control, electricity, sanitation etc) in the town, in order to fully exploit and tap into the economical and technological potentials of the town.

Aba is generally regarded as the Taiwan of Africa, as a result of the ingenuity of local businessmen, artisans and crafts men who are able to use locally available resources to fabricate spare parts and other machinery (e.g. Onwuka Hi-Tec Industries), but such enterprise and talent have never really made it beyond the front doors of some of the artisans and entrepreneurs, because of lack of support by the government, this has meant that customers have had to look elsewhere for supplies because of the poor road accessibility in the town, also because some of the finished products lack the finesse and finishing touches that would have enabled them to survive in an increasingly competitive and globalized market place. A government funded training programme on branding and cutting - edge manufacturing techniques may have helped to solve some of these problems.

As if the residents are not already suffering enough, the town was in the news again recently when Igbos clashed with Hausas living in the town. Such clashes have occurred in the past, usually as a retaliatory measure from the Igbos anytime their brethren living in the North come under attack from their Hausa Muslim brothers, this last incident has added to Aba’s reputation as a hot bed for violence and the seat of Igbo/Biafra resurgence. It can not yet be ascertained to what extent such negative images will affect the town, and its ability to continue to attract visitors and businesses from other parts of Nigeria and also from neighbouring countries (Cotonou, Cameroon etc), whose patronage have helped to drive and sustain the local economy.

Obviously, both the government of Abia state, and the two local government authorities in Aba (Aba North and Aba South) have not yet realised the strategic importance of the town hence there is currently no strategic development plan in place, which should cover both the security of lives and property, urbanization and infrastructural development. They haven’t yet realized what a gold mine Aba is because though the town may be small in size but it is indeed mighty in potentials.

With Calabar now an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) and Onitsha a further 2 hours drive away, Aba could easily be transformed into a gateway town and trade centre with easy access to other strategic towns such as Onne, Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Enugu, and Oron etc.

Apparently, people out to make a fast buck, have always found Aba a fertile ground, exploiting mainly the ignorance, greed, lethargic apathy, fears and the ‘life goes on’ attitude of some of the town’s residents. Aba is famed to be the breeding ground of small-time fraudsters because allegedly the Ibu Alhaji (Alhaji’s goods) con originated there. Government officials and their institutions are not left out in the scam, hence the many syndicates that operate most of the public services in the town, they operate along the lines of mafia syndicates (racketeering), a deeper probe actually indicates that such operations are nothing but another form of organised crime, ranging from collection of loading fees at Aba motor parks to collection of sanitation/environmental and other levies/rates. These services have been contracted out to ‘cowboys’, whose ‘arm-twisting’ modes of operations leave much to be desired. At some point, a notorious local man, known as Aragas held the town hostage with his hired goons and they terrorised the town’s many motor parks with their levy collection antics, leading to constant clashes with the commercial bus and taxi operators, and their respective unions.

At the motor parks, there are many factions of unions, different from the officially recognised National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), their indiscriminate collection of loading fees has resulted in the constant hiking of transport fares, the passengers are now left to hang and dry. It is unclear the extent of involvement of government officials in these schemes, but they don’t seem to be doing anything to abate the practice hence the conclusion by local residents that the government is also deeply involved.

There is also the issue of tax collection, it is largely unclear if all the tax monies collected indiscriminately from passers-by, who get accosted on the way ever end up in government coffers, such tax collectors operate in strategic locations in the town and will usually accost any passer-by who catches their fancy with the phrase – kedu afo ato gi?, meaning where is your 3 years tax clearance? As always, people don’t carry their tax clearance certificates on them always, and any explanations usually fall on deaf ears, the ‘culprit’ is then intimidated into ‘sorting’ the tax collectors, after which a receipt or tax clearance certificate is issued, such receipts could easily be printed at the many local printers in the town, so there is no clear evidence who gets to keep the tax money.

I don’t know if the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) still operate from the Babangida government – built SDP secretariat along Ikot-Ekpene road but local operatives of the NDLEA really had a swell time in 2001/2002 in Aba, a period when they used jobless residents as informants to ‘report’ on any body returning home from abroad, such diasporas became easy ‘meat’ for them, as they were regularly arrested and detained at the make-shift cells in the NDLEA temporary operational centre, on trumped - up charges of drug trafficking, the ‘suspect’ is held for as long as it takes to reach a ‘negotiable compromise’, his or her passport, car(s) are also seized, the suspects are beaten in the cells by local miscreants caught smoking marijuana, at night the window-less, dirty cells become buzz-centres for mosquitoes, the NDLEA operatives prey on the ‘fear’ and ‘discomfort’ of such returnees who easily succumb to bribing or settling the operatives in order to escape further discomfort in the cell. Those who refuse to play ball, are transferred to a higher command in Port Harcourt, under the NDLEA statutory detention rights clause, in the pretext of ‘continuing investigations’ or they will allege that the ‘suspect’ is a flight risk.

All the issues narrated above pale in comparism to the present reign of terror that armed robbers have unleashed on residents of Aba. The town has now been taken over by armed robbers who are out to get their pound of flesh and also extract revenge and ‘recoup’ from their long absence from the scene occasioned by the activities of the banned Bakassi vigilantes. The situation appears hopeless and is gradually leading to a situation of complete breakdown of law and order, when the residents may be forced to rise up and take the laws into their own hands, such a ‘Boys - O -Ye!’ approach, of which the town is renowned appear imminent because the police can not cope with the upsurge in crime, they lack the facilities (officers, communication equipments, ammunitions, response vehicles etc) to combat crime, also the poor and impassable conditions of the roads make any such rapid response to distress calls difficult and suicidal.

Since the ‘ember months of 2005 began, stories of night time raids and sieges on houses of residents by armed robbers have increased, in the absence of any serious challenge, the robbers who usually attack in great numbers have been helping themselves to people’s life savings and properties.

While the residents await divine intervention, the general feeling amongst residents especially this Christmas period is for the outlawed Bakassi vigilante to resume operations in the town once again, but under strict guidelines. Some residents are also planning to vacate the town temporarily and travel to their respective villages, to return back in the new year after the festive period, in the hope that the crime wave which may have been occasioned by the desperation of the robbers to acquire wealth to celebrate Christmas in their villages may have subsided, and also in the hope that help may then come from the government.

An Aba resident but who wishes to remain anonymous cautions all those who plan to spend the Christmas period in the town to exercise some caution, ‘stay away for now if you can, because Aba is hot at the moment’ he advised.

Uche Nworah was formerly an Aba resident. uchenworah@yahoo.com