Tucked away from the Enugu-Onitsha Express, off the side of the road going to Onitsha, is a new estate in Awka called Dubai Estate. No doubt, it was so named because those behind its development envisioned a luxurious, livable area where the residents will enjoy peace and security. However, recent happenings there are contriving to make that area one of the places in the capital city to dread. This is no thanks to the activities of criminal elements there, notably at the entrance of the road leading to the estate which is without street lights.
Indeed, tales of robbery and kidnap activities have become the norm in this place and it was once reported how Fulani kidnappers took away some residents of the estate and were paid ransom. The Anambra State Government would however debunk this story.
Recently, two female attendants at a nearby filling station were kidnapped after boarding a commercial tricycle vehicle to go home and their poor parents were made to pay a million Naira ransom, plus some packets of cigarettes and crates of beer by their abductors.
The situation there has become so bad that it is dangerous for anyone to either drive or go home on foot once it is seven O’clock in the evening. Not long ago, a man driving a Toyota car was kidnapped there and his vehicle burnt. Another man driving a tipper was stopped and robbed.
There was also the story of a young man who had alighted from a bus and was robbed of his mobile phone at gun point immediately he stepped into the dark area at the junction of the estate. Luckily, he knew the robber and while not doing anything as he was being robbed because of the gun pointing at him, he went to the man’s house early the next morning and demanded to have his phone back. According to him, the robber told him he did not know the man was the person he robbed and returned the phone. Others have not however been this lucky.
But what is amazing is that this whole thing goes on not more than two poles away from a major police checkpoint; a checkpoint that is manned close to 18 hours of the day. Also it is amazing that despite the hullabaloo the criminal activities there are generating, the Anambra State Government has not deemed it fit to take measures to stem such by installing streetlights and beefing up security at the place.
The other day, a young woman who was not conversant with the situation there was advised by a bus driver against dropping off there. She had to make a detour through the Amawbia Express Junction, down again to Kwata where she boarding another bus that this time dropped her off at Ngozika Estate Junction from where she made her way to her destination.
We use this opportunity to call on the state government to beef up security in that place and other places like this in order to save the citizenry from the menace of these hoodlums. It is a duty the state government owes them. It is unacceptable that the state government continues to take no action to address security concerns in such known dangerous places.
