Edo State's Public Property Protection Committee has arrested six scavengers for stripping government and private buildings of iron fixtures, chairman Eugene Okoloise told reporters in Benin yesterday. He said the suspects, identified as members of the northern-dominated Arewa scrap-metal syndicate, have been tearing off roofing sheets, railings and reinforcement bars from uncompleted projects across the state. Okoloise warned that the committee will no longer treat such destruction as petty theft, noting that the six detainees are now facing prosecution.
Okoloise's decision to single out "Arewa" scavengers by name drags ethnic branding into what is, at root, a simple matter of property crime. By framing the suspects as members of a northern group rather than as six individuals caught with stolen iron, the committee risks turning metal theft into a communal issue.
Behind the rhetoric lies a deeper frustration: Edo's abandoned construction sites have become open-air warehouses for scavengers who sell scrap to feed rising living costs. With steel prices climbing and unemployment stuck above 30 per cent, informal metal markets are booming, and state agencies lack the manpower to guard every uncompleted school or hospital shell.
For Benin residents, the crackdown means little if courts merely release the suspects on bail and the buildings remain unguarded. House owners whose roofs have vanished overnight still have to buy new sheets at current market prices, while civil servants wait longer for offices that may never be finished.
The episode also exposes the hollow centre of Nigeria's scrap-metal regulation. Despite federal bans on unlicensed scrap trading, police rarely question the buyers who pay cash for bent reinforcement bars at roadside depots, ensuring the cycle of stripping, selling and rebuilding will continue.
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