Robbers and kidnappers take ownership of the Keffi-Akwanga-Nasarawa Eggon-Lafia-Makurdi Highway, arguably Nigeria’s best road
NKRUMAH BANKONG-OBI/Lafia
Denis Ekpang (not his real name) was in high spirits when he boarded a commercial vehicle from Calabar to Lafia. He chatted exuberantly with his co-passengers, cracking jokes carefreely. Since it was a long haul, he bought snacks to refresh on the way. Ekpang even made a romantic advance to a female co-passenger and exchanged contacts, with the view to nurture the affair when they arrive Lafia.
For eight hours, Ekpang who works in a tertiary institution in Nasarawa State refused to surrender to fatigue. But he succumbed to something greater. The joy of arriving home was rudely punctuated in Yelwata, about 35kilomters to Lafia, when men of the underworld stopped the vehicle and for four hours, robbed and tortured its occupants nonstop.
When our reporter met the victim, his face was swollen and his bloodshot eye sallow with tears. “We were beaten and kicked like children,” he told TheNEWS. “I lost all the valuables I had. My friend that I went to see gave me some foreign currency to change and fix my car. It was all taken and every other penny I had on me. They were small boys, you needed to see what they did to us,” he narrated between sobs.
Experiences such as Ekpang’s are common in Nasarawa and Benue States. At present, the 300kilometre road is perhaps the best road in the country. Potholes are rare and the engineering finishing is tasteful in most parts. “Driving on that road gives me joy,” Abdul Goni, a commercial driver who plies his trade between Abuja and Lafia told this reporter. “But there isa problem. At night and sometimes early morning, those of us who drive here, do so with our hearts in our mouths. Armed robbers and kidnappers are everywhere. Many have been kidnapped and a lot more have had their property collected from them,”
Investigations by TheNEWS indicate that there are hotspots where thieves and human snatchers lay ambush. Garaku in Kokona, the area between Akwanga and Nasarawa-Eggon, Angwan Chinyawa, Ende Hills, Nasarawa-Eggon except the township, Azuba and Agaregeu in Lafia area etc are favourite spots for kidnappers and thieves. In some of those places, the criminals take advantage of the treacherous bends, large swathes of open fields and the small-sized villages made up in some instances, of ramshackle kraals, to perpetrate their heinous crimes.
In 2021, this reporter was robbed on the Nasarawa-Eggon axis of the road. Young boys not more than eighteen years, laid siege to the area. Our reporter who was traveling late at night with two other passengers was beaten, his money and other valuables he had were taken. The incident occurred near the Mobile Police training school located on Endde Hills.
Other road users have also told this magazine of their ordeal on that road “It’s impossible to go home now through that road,” said a prominent politician who used to ply the road to a state in the southsouth.
“It is ridden with criminals, some of whom are even said to be these boys from the Northeast. They kidnap people, rob and even kill. That road isn’t safe at all,” he said in disgust. Another motorist, Sunday Gabriel who said she had lost a huge sum of money to the thieves while on a business trip to Abuja from Kadarko in Benue State.
“Even while we were in Abuja, my mind was on this spot (a narrow double-bend in
Nasarawa-Eggon) I have four motorcycles in the booth of this vehicle. If I encounter those boys here, you can be sure that they’d be gone,” Sule Yahaya, a driver who conveyed this reporter from Abuja to Lafia early December, said when asked about his experiences on the road. Only God is saving us. We can’t do anything about what is going on on this road.”
Travellers have blamed the absence of security men on the road for the continuous attacks by criminals. Our reporter could count on his fingers, the number of security checkpoints each time he travelled on that road. In the mornings, a few checkpoints are noticeable but they all disappear at night, leaving road users at the mercy of the criminals. But Ranham Nansel, a deputy superintendent of Police and Public Relations Officer of the Nasarawa State Police command says, the Command has adopted new strategies for dealing with the problem “It is in response to that that the Command has created nibbing down points from Keffi to Garaku in Kokona Local Government Area, then Gudi, Akwanga and Nasarawa Local Government and Lafia.
From Lafia, Agaregeu down to our boundary with Benue State, there are stop-and-search points in those axes. This is done in order to create a free-flow of traffic and reduce the perpetrators of crime on that road. Crime is somehow part of the society. It cannot be totally eradicated. But crime on this road has been reduced to the barest minimum, to a tolerable extent.”
Several attempt to speak to the leadership of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW could not yield fruits. No official could speak on the subject when our reporter made several visits to the association’s offices on Makurdi Road, Lafia. Phone calls to the Chairman did not yield any result. Indeed, the highway gained notoriety for hosting daring robbers and recently, kidnappers. And high-profile government officials have not been insulated from their activities. In 2018, the motorcade of deputy governor of Nasarawa State was attacked in Nasarawa Eggon and some policemen attached to him killed in the incident.
In the early 2004, Andrew Agom, a former managing director of the Nigeria Airways was killed on the road while traveling to Abuja in the same car with the then governor of Benue State, George Akume. That these criminals still operate freely despite the remodelling, reconstruction and modernisation of the road, point to the failure of the society to safeguard itself from its dregs.
We Are Curbing Criminal Activities On Our Highways
Ranhan Nansel, Deputy Superintendent of Police and Public Relations Officer of the Nasarawa State Police Command, tells NKRUMAH BANKONG-OBI that criminality on the Abuja-Nasrawa-Makurdi Expressway way is being brought to the heel
Are you aware of what is going on, in terms of criminality on the Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga-Lafia-Makurdi expressway?
Keffi-Akwanga-Lafia-Makurdi road is a federal road. And it is a dual-carriage way. Due to the good nature of the road, there is heavy traffic there. And once there is heavy traffic on the road, men of the underworld or criminals would want to take advantage of the unsuspecting road users and perpetrate crimes. The Command is not oblivious of that fact. It is in response to that that the Command has created nibbing down points from Keffi to Garaku in Kokona Local Government Area, then Gudi, Akwanga and Nasarawa Local Government and Lafia.
From Lafia, Agaregeu down to our boundary with Benue State, there are stop-and-search points in those axes. This is done in order to create a free-flow of traffic and reduce the perpetrators of crime on that road. Crime is somehow part of the society. It cannot be totally eradicated. But crime on this road has been reduced to the barest minimum, to a tolerable extent.
You use that phrase “tolerable extent” how much amount of crime can we tolerate? As you know, people get robbed, people get kidnapped particularly in places like Agaregeu, Yelwata which is in Benue but very close to Nasarawa even Kadarko. Nasarawa-Eggon is notorious for criminal activities. How much can we tolerate?
Nasarawa-Eggon used to be notorious. But the criminal syndicate terrorising those areas have been disconnected. And so the level of crime there has reduced. We encourage members of the public to reduce the rate at which they travel at night because criminals used to attack people on that road mostly at night. Police operatives cannot be everywhere. So, members of the public should be conscious of their security too reduce the rate at which they ply this road at night. The police will continue to do our best in order to make sure that members of the public travel at any time without fear of any criminal attacks or intimidation on this road.
If you travel on that road at night, you’d find, I know you mentioned your tactical nuance in which you now have structured stop-and-search point that you called pin-downs, but confidence is inspired when one sees the movement of the police and other security forces, to and from on the road. But if you are not able to do patrols, where you help travellers to feel safe because they are seeing the police, what challenges do you have that prevent you from undertaking patrols that can give confidence to the traveling public?
It is not in the tradition of the police to complain. We make use of the little resources that area available to us to carry out any task or assignment that is given, in order to make sure that members of the public are at peace as they carry out their lawful businesses. To the best of our ability, patrols are going on this road. They might not be enough but patrols are going on.
Nasarawa is sitting in the middle between the Federal capital and Benue State.
How much do you collaborate with the two other States to ensure that people who are coming from Benue or coming from Abuja and are passing through Nasarawa are not just crime-free but are also protected?
There is synergy between Nasarawa State Police Command and Benue State Police Command. Likewise, the FCT. The Commissioners of Police interface often with each other. Joint operations are always being carried out in areas where it is suspected that criminals use as a safe haven and they go out and perpetrate their crimes and return. Series of operations have been carried out by police operatives of Nasarawa State Police Command and FCT Police Command and likewise Benue State Police Command. So, we are collaborating and we shall continue to collaborate.
I take you back to the point you made that the Police can’t be everywhere. The civil populace can be activated to fight crime. I am talking about the vigilante groups and the local communities on this expressway, particularly on the Nasarawa-Eggon axis up to Azuba in Lafia. What does the Police do in terms of drawing synergy with the local communities to check robberies, kidnapping and others in that axis and elsewhere?
Community policing generally is the in-thing in Nigeria. Nasarawa State has keyed-into community policing. We are liaising or collaborating with the Volunteer Guards also called the Vigilante Group of Nigeria. We interface with the State Commander often.
Even recently, as a result of the collaboration, the State Commander gave an award to the Commissioner of Police for carrying them along. So, we are collaborating with the vigilante in Nasarawa State and we shall continue to collaborate with them
Do you have any sort of data to show the number of criminal activities that have gone on there and what you have been able to intercept and what has been reported to you.
For now, I can’t say. But from the complainant statistic and incident reports of crime we receive daily, we know when crime has reduced in a particular location and we know if there is an increase in crime in that particular area. We have them all over the State. And we receive daily situation reports across all local government areas and the development areas. We have men manning all those places and we receive situation reports from them. so, we know when crime has reduced in a particular area and we know when there is a surge in crime in a particular area.
There is a Mobile Police Force training school in your State. Naturally, the civil populace will like to know why the trainers and the trainees there do not provide security for that stretch of the road. Why is it that at night when people travel on that road, they see lights up the hill but there is no police presence on the road?
I am not the spokesperson for the Police Mobile Force. They have their own public relations officer, though the place is under Nasarawa State, so it is under my jurisdiction. I might not be able to say some things about the Mobile. But their presence has reduced crime in that place. That place was formerly called ‘Many Have Died’ or Many Have Gone’ due to the rate of accidents and criminal activities that used to go on in that place. But the creation of that school has reduced the spate of crime in that axis. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be crime generally. But it has reduced drastically. There are times when we receive distress calls or information about incidents in that axis and we call the Mobile Police training school there and they respond to distresses. So, sometimes if our attention are not drawn to some things, we might not know because we are not everywhere. So, we will appreciate when members of the public phone in to give us information so that we respond to the distress accordingly.
There are some people who, even if they are robbed don’t go to the police because of what they call inefficiency and extortion of victims. What do you say to your own men who might not be accessible and responsive to members of the public who bring in complains of being robbed?
The doors of the police station are generally wide open and it is to entertain complains from members of the public. So, I want to urge the public; anywhere you have a complain and it was not entertained or it was not carried out diligently, you can still report to us. Our telephone numbers are everywhere. A google search will give you the telephone number of the public relations officers and the control room numbers of the State Police command. You can just put a call across to us and all necessary actions will be taken. Any office who is found contravening the laws guiding the functionality of the police, that is, The Police Act, he will be tried accordingly. Indiscipline is not part of The Nigeria Police Force. And we in Nasarawa State won’t condone it. I call on any member of the public who sees something, should say something and adequate action will be taken.
Do you interface with the National Union of Road Transport Workers and other? If you do, how much of self-help are they allowed to take. I ask so that if people are seen with weapons they won’t be arrested.
This is a national issue and only the Police hierarchy can respond to issues like this, that have to do with license for firearms. But we know prohibited firearms. If anybody is caught with a prohibited firearm, the person will be arrested. If there is a license, we must know, if it is given to you to be moving around with the firearm or is it meant to be at home? If you are issued a license for a weapon to keep at home and defend or repel an attack on you, if there is any, and you start going around with it, you would have crossed the boundary.