Some suspected hoodlums, on Thursday, hijacked trucks loaded with foodstuff in the Suleja, Niger State.
Suleja is a commercial town near Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
Eyewitnesses say that most of the trucks coming from Abuja and heading for Kaduna were blocked by the hoodlums who burnt used tyres on the road.
This is happening amid the widespread economic hardship and hunger in the country.
An eyewitness, Alhassan Abdullahi, said many bags of food stuffs, especially rice, were stolen before soldiers arrived the scene.
“It took intervention of soldiers who arrived the scene and started firing gun shots in the air to scare the hoodlums away. But even with that, many of them went away with bags of rice and cartons of spaghetti and other food items,” he said.
“We learnt commercial motorcycle riders are also planning a protest. They would have done it since yesterday but we didn’t know what stopped them.”
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has said that there is no going back on its planned two-day nationwide protest next week.
The strike, according to NLC president Joe Ajaero, was necessitated by the current economic situation in the country.
The Labour union also rejected an appeal by the Department of State Services (DSS) for members to shelve the planned action.
