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• Slain Abuja market hawker had plans to own a shop
From Abubakar Yakubu, Abuja
• Some of the burnt shops at Wuse Market in Abuja
When 27-year–old Yahaya Ibrahim was leaving his home state Kano for Abuja a few years back, he had two things in mind.
One was to engage in a job that would enable him gather enough money to own a shop in Kano. The other plan was to marry a wife this year.
• Earnest Nnamani inside his burnt shop at the Wuse Market
According to his friend, Abubakar Musa, getting a job proved difficult due to the economic situation affecting the country, so Ibrahim had to stick with being an escort, better known here as guide boy.
“Being a guide boy, his work was to take customers to shops from where they intended to buy certain items. And for this, he would get a commission from the shop owners as well as a tip from the customers in most cases,” he said.
•Late Ibrahim
Although Saturday Sun learnt from most traders spoken to that the guide boys were seriously promoting their businesses and they had no problems with the traders, the Wuse Market Management was not pleased with the activities of the guide boys and hawkers within the market. The management then decided to invite officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), who set up a taskforce, led by one Oga Musa, and a mobile court in the market.
Our reporter learnt that hawkers and guide boys were being arraigned before the court on Tuesdays, and even if they were granted bail, it was difficult to perfect it on the same day, except the hawker had someone influential to stand as surety for him.
Ibrahim, it was gathered, had experienced such embarrassment when he was hawking phone covers within the market, as he was arrested by members of the taskforce and taken to a correctional centre where he spent three months and was released in the first week of March.
His friend Musa said that on Tuesday March 12, Ibrahim arrived at the market very early and had no premonition that the day would be his last on earth.
“He came in as usual about 7:20 am and we all shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. All of us who are guide boys and hawkers began our job as usual and at about 9am, officials of the AEPB taskforce swarmed the market and began to make massive arrests,” he said.
He said Ibrahim was among the 40 suspects arrested by the taskforce and arraigned before the mobile court.
“I went to witness the proceedings at the court but didn’t see the magistrate sit. All I saw was Ibrahim shedding tears and calling on one woman he knew to assist him to secure his bail. But the taskforce leader, Oga Musa, resisted the move and ordered that he be handcuffed and put in the prison’s bus,” he added.
He said Ibrahim was assaulted by one of the taskforce members before they joined him with 39 others in the bus to be transported to prison. Then, probably out of fear, Ibrahim jumped out of the vehicle and started running towards Wuse Zone 5.
“We heard the taskforce leader ordering two officials of the prisons’ armed squad to go after Ibrahim and bring him back dead or alive. They pursued him and later returned to tell Oga Musa that they had ‘wasted the idiot,’ he said.
He said the comment of the prisons officials angered the multitude of hawkers, guides and traders within the market, and they trooped out in search of the body and brought it into the market, where it was displayed in front of the Wuse Market Police Post.
“The sight of the corpse in handcuff with a bullet wound on the chest and leg was what prompted the protest that led to the destruction of the Market Management Office, police post and the burning of eight vehicles, including the car of the taskforce leader and Prisons’ bus,” he narrated.
According to him, messages were sent to Ibrahim’s father that his son was killed by prisons’ officials and the father informed them to bring the remains to Kano so that he would see his son for the last time. “We detailed some of our members to take the body to him and they are not back yet,” Musa disclosed.
Earnest Nnamani, a trader in the market, said when the situation in the market began to get out of control, the market’s management then placed a call to the Wuse Zone 3 Division for backup. He said the policemen who arrived started shooting teargas to douse the situation and it was the burning teargas canister that caused the fire which burnt 10 shops with goods inside.
According to Nnamani, one of the shops (A31 Shop 5) belonged to him and he lost goods worth about N170 million. He said goods lost in the 10 burnt shops will amount to about N1.5 billion.
He said the divisional police officer of Zone 3 Police Division assured the traders whose shops were burnt that the FCT Administration would compensate them for their losses.
When our reporter visited the Wuse Market Management Office on Monday, renovation work was in progress on some partially damaged offices, while the manager declined to speak on the issue and referred the reporter to one Innocent Amechina, whom he described as the market’s spokesperson.
FCT Police Command’s Spokesperson, Superintendent Josephine Adeh, said Ibrahim was shot by a correctional service (prison) officer while he was trying to escape from custody.
She said police preliminary investigation revealed that one Ibrahim Yahaya, 27, was apprehended by operatives of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) Task Force and was taken before a mobile court which sits every Tuesday in Wuse Market, and he was convicted.
“Suspect, alongside others, were being conveyed to the prison, when he reportedly jumped from the vehicle and took to his heels in an attempt to escape. Two armed corrections personnel who were in the vehicle went after him and in the process, shot him. They said Ibrahim Yahaya was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors on the ground confirmed him dead,” She added.
The police spokesperson disclosed further that the situation prompted an irate mob who witnessed the incident to set ablaze eight vehicles and 10 shops in the market.
“The whole fire situation caused uproar from residents but was brought under control by a combined effort of the Federal Fire Service and other security agencies present,” she said.
Also commenting on the incident, Federal Capital Territory Emergency Management Agency’s Head of Public Affairs, Nkechi Isa, said 10 shops were razed by fire at Wuse Market during the incident, but that no life was lost, adding that the cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained.
