Political elites opposed to the Tinubu administration may have shown their hands with sponsorship and mobilization of several groups of mostly non-literate boys who moved round various parts of Abuja city on Thursday, August 1.
However, with the intimidating presence of armed security personnel standing by at various strategic locations and civil servants as well as civil society organizations’ apparent disinterest, calm pervaded most parts of Abuja.
Civil society organizations, students, and well-informed activists were absent all through, especially at the Unity Fountain near Transcorp-Hilton hotel, the nucleus venue of numerous past public protests in Abuja where the ‘Bring-Back-Chibok-Girls’ movement used as the base of daily.
Although some of the youths who went around with tree branches and shouts of ‘Ba mu so’ (Hausa language for ‘We don’t want’) appear not to know those at the root of incitement and mobilization of their leaders, they appear not to comprehend issues earlier put forward as reasons for the protest while few of them on a street off Ahmadu Belo Way only focused on harassing passing motorists for ‘pure water moni’ to assuage thirst and hunger on Thursday afternoon.
Calm prevailed at apartment blocks and estates mostly occupied by civil servants and private sector employees in Wuse and Maitama areas of the city, as most families appear to have transformed Day 1 of the ten-day protest into a day of rest, with most people staying indoors all through while calm prevailed across Abuja on Thursday.
At the Moshood Abiola National Stadium where a small crowd started gathering at the entrance gate just before 7am, they peacefully dispersed shortly afterwards without entering the stadium or recording any incident with the policemen standing nearby.
When our correspondent left the area around noon, small groups of young boys with tree branches said that they were asked to come but they refused to divulge the identity of those who invited them and how much they were being paid.
Such small groups of mostly non-literate boys were encountered in other places but while some violence was reported in a part of Gwagwalada satellite town, no friction or violence occurred at the usual gathering points for protests like Area 1, Berger roundabout, and Wuse Market area.
At Wuse Market, only two uniformed but unarmed civil defence operatives were at the entrance and to emphasize normalcy, the market personnel was collecting the usual entry fee of N100 from motorists; while there was a scanty number of vehicles at the car park there, the market’s branch of Lotus Bank was open, with three of its uniformed staff standing outside.
Although strategically placed security cordons around the Federal Secretariat, Central Bank, the Tinubu/Shettima Campaign headquarters, NNPC headquarters, and other structures were very obvious, detachments of about 15 armed policemen and eight civil defence operatives kept a discreet distance at Herbert Macaulay Way from where they watched the market entrance from a distance.