Bwari Area Council in Nigeria’s Federal Capital City is in a psycho-dynamic stasis. The paralysis is coming from the details of an encounter between persons said to be bandits who stormed a house and kidnapped a man and his son Sunday night. Intervention understands that the despondency emanate from the aspect of the Abuja based Daily Trust’s story which said the bandits took on a detachment of the military that confronted them in a subsequent operation that night. And the question is, if bandits could take on the military, then what is left?
It has been understood that the fear is palpable on WhatsApp, conversation circles and neighborhoods, particularly that Bwari has remained mentally and empirically under siege for about a month now. Dare devil operations have been reported and the fear of such has been a major concern across the board.
What remains unclear is why Bwari, about the most sleepy of the Federal Capital’s local government areas. Predominantly made up of peasant producers, very little commercial activities when compared with sprawling nieghbour such as Kubwa, it is curious that it is under siege. It hosts a few Federal Government institutions such as a campus of the Nigerian Law School, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, (JAMB), these makes it a basically civil service settlement. While it is true that there is a university, the university in question but it is certainly not a rich university by any standard.
Some analysts speak of it being a transit space to Kaduna as a main reason but a recent statement by the Police dismissed the fear of invasion of the area by bandits even as such operations have been routinely reported within the past one month in particular.
Other observers point at the difficulties that policing the area would entail, with building sprouting up here and there signifying an unplanned township. It is not clear what the few nights ahead would be. The only thing that appears certain is over-worried men and families in the days and weeks ahead?
The current phase of insecurity in Bwari is a shift from violent identity conflicts and cultism, the dynamics of which have been subjects of conflict analysis by some academics at Veritas University, Abuja.
