By Luka Binniyat
(Abuja) -On normal Sunday mornings in Karmo-Phase-3, a sprawling, packed slum on the outskirts of Abuja, the air is throbbing with raucous praise music and sermons blasted outdoors by preachers in a feeding frenzy for souls. Folks in Karmo got “plenty of nothing,” but they love God.
But on Sunday March, 3 devotional air was marred by blaring car horns as drivers dodged masses of looters carrying swag pulled from food warehouses around the Tasha neighborhood.
Karmo lies on the busy Karmo-kwagwa-deidei bypass, some 7 miles west of Abuja’s Aso Rock Presidential Villa and endures a high crime rate. On Sunday the crimes were petty, but Nigeria’s future as a democracy is on trial in the court of public opinion.
Sunday worship interrupted by looting
Hundreds of residents had trooped into a large government-owned store that had earlier been broken into by unknown persons and started helping themselves to bags of foodstuff as early as 6 a.m., news media reported.
“My church was almost empty this morning,” said Paulina Tinat, a trader and relation of our TruthNigeria reporter who resides in Karmo.
“Some youths broke into a very huge warehouse where the government is hiding hundreds and thousands of bags of rice, maize, beans and even Indomie noodles,” she said.
“Early before church service people have started coming with bags of grain into our compound and surrounding houses. Seeing this, other people rushed to go and try their luck,” she said.
“My brother, it is very difficult to feed these days because there is no money and the price of food material is just too high,” she said.
“The poverty is too much. It’s just that as a Christian, I can’t do that,” said the mother of two who is also a widow.
FCT Store, not NEMA looted
Though no official figure had been placed on the quantity of foodstuff looted, the development has been confirmed by Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Police Command Spokesperson, SP Josephine Andeh. She said that the situation was brought under control around 9 a.m., Sunday.
It was first thought that the store belonged to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), but it later turned out that it was that of the FCT Ministry of Agriculture. https://www.vanguardngr.com/
When TruthNigeria contacted the Director of Press and Information at Ministry of FCT, Sule Hazat, he said that he had just been informed but was yet to gather more details as he was on his way back to FCT around 3 p.m. Sunday.
“I have just been told around 1 p.m. Right now, I am driving back to Abuja from Lapai,” he said.
Food Truck looted during Friday Muslim Prayers
A hungry mob in Zaria, Kaduna state, on Friday looted thousands of assorted packs and cartons of pasta from a flatbed cargo trailer.
The daylight raid of the fully loaded flatbed trailer belonging to BUA industries, covered with trampoline canvas, was captured in videos that went viral in Nigeria’s social-media space.
The video shows desperate males on top of the trailer looting the cargo while others fought over cartons that had been thrown down at them.
Ahmadu Sani, a Hausa-Language reporter with a local radio station told TruthNigeria that it was the first time he had witnessed such lawlessness in his 40 years in Zaria.
“The amount of hunger in Zaria and many areas around here is something that is a security problem,” he said.
“The driver of that trailer you are talking about drove from Kano and was on his way either to Kaduna or Abuja with his cargo of pasta” he said.
“Since it was around 2 p.m. and time for the Friday Muslim Jumaat prayers,” he parked to observe the prayers,” he said.
“As soon as he entered the mosque, hungry youths climbed the trailer, opened the canvas cover and began looting it,” he said.
“There was macaroni, Indomie, and spaghetti all made by BUA consortium,” he said.
“For over an hour, the looting continued. Even when police arrived, little was left to be salvaged from the truck,” he said.
It is not known if arrests were made or not. Kaduna State Police Spokesman ASP Mansir Hassan did not respond to inquiries from our reporter. But the incident was well reported in Nigeria’s press.
In February truckloads of food items were looted in Suleja town, about 18 miles West of Abuja in Niger State.
The looting took place after the trucks got stuck in a gridlock caused by a fish sellers’ protest of skyrocketing prices n the commercial center of the city.
There have been angry demonstrations across Nigeria in recent weeks as food prices soar out of the reach of most citizens in a country where the minimum monthly wage is N30,000 (US$18 dollars).
A 50 kg bag of rice in February 2024 costs N70,000 (US $41 dollars) compared to N9,000 (US $5 dollars) in 2015.
It’s the same for most food commodities in a country of 220 million people which prides itself as the “giant” of Africa.
About 40 percent of Nigeria’s population is considered poor, according to the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The declining standard of living in Nigeria is sometimes captured in grim videos portraying the undignified and poignant struggles that many go through to feed.
The sudden jump in the cost of food prices since the coming to power of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in May, 2024 has been attributed to the tripling of the domestic price of gasoline and the spiraling fall of the Naira in relation to the dollar and other international trading currencies.
Also, the inability of famers to access prime farmlands as a result of attacks and displacement of millions of famers across Nigeria’s fertile Middle Belt and other parts of Northern Nigeria by armed bandits and terrorists has contributed to the food crisis, experts said.
Luka Binniyat is a Kaduna-based journalist reporting on crime, politics and economics for TruthNigeria
