Human rights activist and 2023 presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore, has strongly condemned the Nigerian Army’s decision to close Banex Plaza in Abuja. Sowore took to his X account on Tuesday to criticize the action, labeling it as a repression of civilian spaces by the military and calling for an immediate cessation.<\/p>\n
The controversy began after a clash between traders and soldiers at the popular electronic and telecommunications market on Saturday. The incident, which quickly went viral, reportedly started when a trader sold a faulty phone to a soldier. The situation escalated, leading to a broader confrontation.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Nigerian Army announced the plaza’s closure, citing the assault of unarmed soldiers by market hoodlums as the reason. Major General Onyema Nwachukwu, Director of Army Public Relations, issued a statement providing an update on the situation. He explained, “Following the recent unrest at Banex Plaza in Wuse, Abuja, on Saturday 18 May 2024, unidentified hoodlums launched a brutal attack on some Nigerian Army personnel. A swift intervention by soldiers and policemen on internal security duties salvaged the situation and rescued the attacked personnel from being lynched.”<\/p>\n
The statement emphasized that the soldiers involved were unarmed and posed no threat, describing the attack as “entirely unwarranted and unjustifiable.” In response, the army convened a meeting with Banex Plaza management to identify the attackers and temporarily shut down the plaza to apprehend those responsible for the violence and to ensure the security of the Federal Capital Territory.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the army’s statement, Sowore urged the authorities to lift the closure and withdraw the soldiers from the civilian area. He argued, “It is unheard of, even under military rule, that civilian spaces would be shut down in a business that employs thousands over a disagreement between soldiers and civilians.”<\/p>\n
The closure of Banex Plaza has sparked a broader debate about the balance between security and civil liberties in Nigeria. Critics argue that the military’s actions set a dangerous precedent for the use of force in civilian disputes and disrupt the livelihoods of thousands of traders and workers who depend on the market for their income.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Human rights activist and 2023 presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore, has strongly condemned the Nigerian Army’s decision to close Banex Plaza in Abuja. Sowore took to his X account on Tuesday to criticize the action, labeling it as a repression of civilian spaces by the military and calling for an immediate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32214,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213\/revisions\/32214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}