Armed soldiers, on Saturday evening, shut down the popular new Banex Plaza located at Wuse 2 district of Abuja following a clash between some traders and three soldiers over a phone sale dispute.
An eyewitness, Okechukwu Daniel, explained that on Saturday afternoon, a young military man who bought a phone from a phone shop about a month ago, returned the phone to the trader that the phone was faulty.
Daniel, who is also a trader in one of the shops in New Bannex Plaza, said that because of the long time it took the soldier before returning the phone, the seller refused to collect the phone back from him.
“When the phone seller refused to collect the phone back, the young guy threatened him that he will shut down his shop for refusing to collect the phone, and the seller told him to do his worse.
“That was when he got angry and went to one of the barracks close by and brought two soldiers to come and harass the phone seller for him to collect the phone back.
“When the two soldiers got to the phone shop to threaten the seller, he still refused to collect the phone. The soldiers got angry and wanted to use force on him, that was when other traders came to the rescue of the phone seller and beat up the two soldiers,” he said.
Daniel further said that after the soldiers were beaten up, they went back to the barracks to reinforced and went back to Banex plaza to confront the phone seller and other traders, who before they got there had already ran away from their shops.
“When over 50 soldiers who were visibly angry got to the plaza, they could not find the traders that beat up their colleagues, so they decided to shut down the plaza by asking everyone to leave. Anyone found around the plaza was asked to do frog jump and other punishment,” he said.