Abuja Outlawed Scavenging, Restricts Activities to Dumpsites
Scavenger activities have been restricted to dumpsites in and around the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, as they have been warned against moving around the city either during the day or at night.
The present ban followed the criminal activities of some scavengers popularly known as ‘baba nbolas’ in the area.
They have been alleged to be involved in carting away critical infrastructure, especially manholes, from the city’s expressways.
Parading 36 scavengers who were arrested with dangerous weapons and vandalized items, the Commandant, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Command, Dr. Olusola Odumosu, said scavengers who roam the streets of FCT, indiscriminately, perpetrate all forms of criminal activities under the guise of scavenging.
According to him, the move by the FCT Administration was necessitated by the need to prevent vandalism of public infrastructure, such as manhole covers, streetlights, solar panels, armored cables, and so on.
Items recovered from the 36 suspects include four daggers, three jack knives, two chisels, three knives, two pinches, and 10 bottles of codeine syrup.
Others are 45 wraps of Indian hemp, thrash bags, pieces of iron rods, and narcotic drugs. The scavengers, he explained, go about the nooks and crannies of the city and satellite towns, house-to-house and estate-to-estate, scavenging for plastics, scrap metal, and irons.
He said: “But from previous arrests, interrogations, and investigations, we have realised that their real business is to vandalise and remove our road infrastructure such as manhole covers, flood drain covers, streetlights, armoured cables, rail sleepers, iron rods for bridge enforcement and the likes, which would fetch them good money.
“The public also needs to know that some ‘Baba Nbolas’ now disguise themselves to rob innocent commuters and bystanders as they go about with dangerous weapons to attack and dispose of their personal belongings, especially at night. Our record shows that many who dared to challenge them in the past had met their untimely deaths while others are maimed in various parts of the Federal Capital Territory,” he said.
Odumosu noted that many residents of the FCT and environs have experienced the sudden disappearance of household items like generators, cooking pots, stoves, pressing irons, air conditioners, compressors, car batteries, security light panels, iron drain covers, and so on.
“Scavengers are major suspects in most of such disappearances, and they carry out these activities whenever they notice that there is no one in sight, but not without wielding dangerous weapons in case they are busted by the house owners.
“The most vital is that many of them work as informants for armed robbers, kidnappers, hired assassins, terrorists, bandits, and all sorts of criminal gangs. Many families have fallen victim to kidnapping, abduction for ransom, murder, assassination, and the like because they give information about your family, the number of children you have, the types of cars you drive, where you work, and, by extension, keeping tabs on your movement.
“They (baba nbola) also assess and profile you through the kind of household waste products you dispose which, in most cases, reveal your status and lifestyles.
Unfortunately, and in most cases, many of us perceive these miscreants and criminals as ordinary, innocent, poor Nigerians hustling for their daily bread. So they move about unchecked and unquestioned by anyone. Some of us even sympathise with them by extending alms to them, whereas they are responsible for the various crimes happening around us.
“Owing to this revelation and credible intelligence at our disposal, it is therefore imperative that citizens and residents join hands with the corps and other security agencies to flush out these dangerous elements in the FCT by chasing scavengers away whenever you see them in front of your houses, your streets, neighborhood or estates.
“The public should note that, although they appear innocent, armless, and vulnerable, most of them are extremely dangerous, their activities are criminal in nature, and they constitute threats not only to the safety and security of lives, property, and infrastructure in the FCT but to Nigeria’s national security architecture as a whole” he noted.
The commandant used the occasion to advise FCT residents to dispose of their refuse properly and stop patronising the Baba Nbolas for their own safety and that of their family members.
