The Recurring Cases Of Insecurity In The FCT-Abuja: A Call For Necessary Premptive Actions By The Government By: Hameed Ajibola Jimoh Esq.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended)-herein after referred to as the Constitution- has placed the security and the welfare of the citizens of Nigeria as a primary purpose on every government by the provisions of Section 14(2)(c) of the Constitution. So, the government of Nigeria and that of the FCT have to tighten the security in the FCT especially being the seat of the government of the Federation. Quite surprising is how these dangerous persons continue to gain access into the FCT without any intelligence report that could lead to their arrest. The dangerous acts being carried out includes: kidnapping (including one-chance- according to some of the victims who have become victims, this one-chance takes different styles: some persons including males or and females would enter a cab pretending to be passengers or drivers sometimes, they would use the style of discussing about sharing some amount of loss but found money either in dollars or in Naira in the vehicle and where their victim(s) intervenes in their discussion or does not intervene but is taken to a particular destination, then, he or she is dispossessed of his or her property or even get killed and his corpse disposed to an unknown place); another style is where the victim hires a private taxi whether painted or not, someone is already sitting in the cab’s boot unknown to the victim and the person would just find his way into the vehicle and harm his victim either with gun or other harmful object(s) then, throws out his victim from the moving vehicle, after having collected all the victim’s property, leading the victim to sustain several body-injuries or likelihood of death. The case is even worse to the extent that some of those who are non-resident but visitors have fallen victims of these heinous acts. These vulnerable persons/vitims include: Nigerian Law School students; tourists, among others. Some have been killed, while some might still be in the custody of their evil doers at present. Furthermore, victims of these dangerous acts should also try as much as possible to always report any criminal act that they suffer to the law enforcement agency, as soon as possible. In this way, they would keep the law enforcement agencies aware of the occurrence of such crimes and to be at alert in placing those suspects under watch. Furthermore, some if not many communities are being unsafe to enter at nights, especially from 7pm. Some of those motorcyclists that would take one into the street would always refuse to enter the street as from 7pm due to the bad experiences that they have had or their colleagues have had while entering the street where they were either killed or seriously injured and their property hijacked and taken away by the unknown dangerous persons. Therefore, the FCT is becoming unsafe with the recurrent criminal activities being carried out by some of those dangerous persons. That is why this paper is calling on the government and the security agencies to be vigilant and be at alert in securing the FCT in its entirety. Finally, it is the belief of the writer of this paper that this short write-up would be of great advantage in putting the residents, non-residents, tourists and the government in charge of the FCT on notice of the recurrent criminal activities being perpetrated by some dangerous persons and that everyone would be vigilant and that the government would carry out a massive intelligence investigation into these criminal activities and put in necessary preemptive measures in curbing same in the FCT. E-mail: hameed_ajibola@yahoo.com]]>