Abuja okada clampdown: HURIWA alleges apartheid, demands reopening of Deidei market

A civil society group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has called for the re-opening of the Deidei market in the nation’s capital of Abuja.

The group advocates the rebuilding of infrastructure destroyed by commercial motorcyclists during a fracas which broke out Wednesday, May 18, 2022, or ban commercial motorcyclists operations in Deidei and Kubwa for justice, equity and fairness.

The rights group said that it offend the principle of natural justice that two parties were involved in a fracas, but the authority, rather than make peace and create harmony and reconciliation, allegedly backed one of the combatants because of religious motive.

“We do not want to believe that it is true that the FCT Minister, Mallam Muhammad Bello, who is a Nigerian will adopt controversial and unnatural steps that offends the commercial interests of his fellow citizens and let off the motor cyclists who are largely illegal aliens from Niger Republic, Chad and just a sprinkling of Moslem Northern Nigerians only because traders at Deidei market that fought with Okada riders are mostly Igbos from Southern Nigeria and are Christians by faith orientation.

“We call on President Muhammadu Buhari to ask the FCT Minister to adopt solution that won’t be seen as favouring a party in a fight by two parties only because the favoured party are almost 100 percent Moslems sharing same faith system with the minister.

“The Minister who has worked harmoniously with peoples of all faith systems and ethnicity for years, should not now be remotely connected to this sort of story of open but shameful partiality and crude biasness.”, the statement read in part.

HURIWA recalled that the FCT Minister had ordered the immediate closure of the Dei-Dei International Building Materials Market, following Wednesday’s violence which claimed four lives.

Trouble started at the market when an unidentified female trader reportedly fell off a commercial motorcycle and was crushed to death by an articulated vehicle.

Other traders from the market then burnt the motorcycle blaming the biker of reckless riding. Their action, however, prompted a reprisal from Okada riders in the area who regrouped in large number and went into the timber section of the market and set it ablaze.

The FCT Minister, while inspecting the scene of the incident with FCT Commissioner of Police, Sunday Babaji, the Director, State Security Services, alongside other sister security agencies and top officials of the FCT Administration, directed the indefinite closure of the market, while charging the community and market leaders to  fish out hoodlums and bad eggs who perpetrated the violence.

HURIWA has, however, asked the minister to rescind his decision which, it said, “is offensive to Constitutionalism, equity, fairness and equality before the law of natural justice and respect to human rights of all.”