Eid-el-Kabir in Kubwa comes with its own unique colour, year in and year out. It is an exciting and upbeat two days of holiday for Muslims all over Nigeria.
The celebration is characterised by family outings after the formality of the season has been observed. In Kubwa, young people are particularly excited about the season as they get to dress up in their colourful dresses and walk distances in what appears to be a journey to no particular destination until now…
Residents of Kubwa have long yearned for a place where they can go to unwind and celebrate significant occasions such as the Eid-el Kabir. TK Mall has been that place.
TK Mall along Gado Nasko Road has, over the years, welcomed clients who patronise their restaurants and confectionery stand, and their services have been satisfactory. Another attraction to the Mall is the ambience, created mainly from bright light, art installations, and displays of goods within the various shops in the mall. For any curious and fun-seeking young person, such a place is the place to be! But the management of TK Mall may not have envisaged the volume of “patronage” they are getting this 2026 sallah despite the proactive measures they put in place security-wise.
Starting from the evening of the first day of the celebration, which coincided with the 2026 Children’s Day, the crowd of fun-seekers at TK Mall was already overwhelming for the facility to accommodate.
The mall’s architectural design and location make a surge in customer traffic a pure nightmare for staff responsible for parking and crowd control and also affect vehicular traffic around part of the road.
The second day of the celebration, 28th May, 2026, turned the excitement and a quest for holiday enjoyment into the kind of chaos that Kubwa residents have never seen before! Vehicular movement became a tedious adventure while trying to get across the 20-meter stretch of the mall.
This time, the flamboyant herders of the Fulani tribe arrived at the already overcrowded mall to celebrate the season and needed to wade their way into the very “slim” mall. The crowd made it difficult. They insisted on getting in and had to use their sticks to support their quest. This got the crowd agitated; soon, there was a clear risk of stampede!
The police officers posted to the area intervene to both control the crowd and ensure the free flow of traffic. This did not work so well, as many in the young crowd wanted to go in, while others simply wanted to be in the vicinity to enjoy the bright light and admire others as they came in and went out.
The police, seeing the risk, began to fire tear gas toward the crowd to break off the momentum of the growing danger! The crowd began to disperse; even those who were passersby were also affected by the fume from the tear gas. The pandemonium from the tear gas became necessary to prevent a stampede in the town of Kubwa.
This calls for investment in recreational centers and large malls for people to visit with their families to enjoy their time together.
