How Armed ‘Babanbola’ Laid Siege To Next Cash & Carry For Hours

Eyewitness have told THE WHISTLER how scrap scavengers popularly known in Nigeria as ‘Babanbola” besieged the premises of Next Cash & Carry to forcefully collect steel and aluminium scraps from the premises of the store recently gutted by fire.

The supermarket, which is located in the Jahi area of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, was gutted by fire on 26 December 2021.

It was one of Abuja’s top-rated departmental stores.

The fire razed the building, destroying valuables worth billions of naira, leaving only mangled steel and aluminum scraps.

The store is still being cleared for rehabilitation, and the scraps gathered in heaps inside the locked premises of the supermarket awaiting evacuation by trucks.

But local scavengers, numbering thousands, reportedly stormed the premises on Saturday morning wielding dangerous weapons, intent on forcing their ways into the premises to collect the scraps.

The Police had to be quickly drafted in to forestall breakdown of law and order.
Eyewitnesses told this website there was an initial face-off between the scavengers and policemen who were invited to guard the premises.

According to one of the officials of the departmental store who spoke on condition of anonymity, “The babanbolas came in numbers on Saturday, with daggers, threatening to enter inside Next to pick aluminum scraps. For more than a week they have been coming to disrupt the work of people clearing the premises.

“All thanks to the Nigerian Mobile Police ( Mopol) that came with teargas and scared them away. They stole the Almond cable, disconnected the water pipe, and even broke a section of the fence just to have access into the premises.”

Another eyewitness who gave his name as Mohammed, confirmed the incident saying, “The scavengers who came were much, and they try to enter to pick irons, but the security men didn’t allow them, because they started threatening to enter at first, but they were later allowed to enter, I guess the officials of Next permitted them but the security men gave them time, which was between 1 pm to 4 pm.

“They were picking and bringing them out and going back to pick more.”

Some traders around the area said they couldn’t get access on Saturday and had to go back home.