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IT was another cruel disregard for human life yesterday when five suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed the Borno State All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) governorship candidate Alhaji Modu Fannami Gubio and six others at the same spot.
Also murdered along with Gubio who was the Finance Commissioner were two policemen and four other persons at his father’s residence in Lawan Bukar Ward of Maiduguri, the state capital. The gunmen fired several shots at Gubio, while he alighting from an un-marked Sports Unity Vehicle (SUV) at about 2.20 pm at his father’s residence.
Police Commissioner Mohammed Ababakar said: “It was about 2 pm this afternoon that a gang of armed Boko Haram members attacked and killed seven people at the residence of the father of the gubernatorial candidate in Lawan Bukar.
The gunmen fired at Modu Gubio while he has alighting from his vehicle. As he was gunned down along with the younger brother to Governor Sheriff, Goni Ngala, the suspects also shot and killed two plain clothes policemen, and four others at the scene of the massive assassinations.”
According to the police chief, the assassins were about eight in number riding motorcycles, and sped off into the neighbouring Shehuri, Abaganaram and the Customs areas of Maiduguri metropolis.
Even though no arrest has been made, the police commissioner said: “The entire Lawan Bukar and Bulabublin wards have been condoned off by the police, including parts of the palace of Shehu of Borno, in hunt for the fleeing gunmen that killed seven people today in broad day light.”
Abubakar also appealed to the general public to fully cooperate with the police by providing more information on the hideouts and modus operandi of the Boko Haram sect members that have been targeting policemen, soldiers and other security personnel in Borno State.
Meanwhile, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders’ Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) has warned of the dire consequences of withdrawing the soldiers of the Special Task Force (STF) from Plateau State. The association warns that any attempt, as is being done, to ridicule the members of the STF, with a view to withdrawing them will usher in a total state of anarchy in Jos and its environs.
National secretary of the association, Alhaji Sale Bayari stated the position of the association at a press conference yesterday at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre in Jos. He spoke against the backdrop of calls by some groups in the state for the withdrawal of the military because, according to them, their presence has not helped matters as killings persist under their nose.
But Bayari said the advocates of withdrawal of the soldiers have dangerous ulterior motives to execute after the soldiers might have left.
According to him, “we have noticed, of recent, the wild attacks both physical (through demonstration), verbal, religious and sectional against the Special Task Force and its operatives, getting more loud and stringent in an effort to have them withdrawn so that such people will have the space to launch their attacks on other citizens of the state.
“Such people have done so before, precisely in January 2010, when they killed 219 members of this association which included women, children, 7,000 heads of cattle in Jos South, Barkin Ladi and Riyom local councils without a single person being brought to book till this day despite our reports to the police authorities in Nigeria. We noted with total bewilderment the absolute absence of the police in all these areas when these massacres were taking place and the lack of any report by the Divisional Police Officers of the killings, burnings and stealing that took place under their noses.”
Bayari pointed out that the association was therefore not surprised that such murderers and armed robbers are today asking the soldiers to leave and that they prefer the police. He said that such people prefer to have the type of environment that they had in January 2010 and still go scot- free.
“With the soldiers around now, such environment has not been found by these people as the soldiers are now scattered all over these villages where such killings took place and are still taking place as our people are always attacked and killed today in palces, including Barkin Ladi, Jos South, Riyom and Bassa (Irigwe area) local governments.
“With the soldiers in place, all the bodies of our people killed and their cattle had been recovered by the soldiers and most of the atrocities exposed while, before the coming of the soldiers, none of our 219 people killed and 7000 cows stolen, were ever reported or acknowledged as the bodies of all those killed were burnt, buried and such areas made ‘no-go areas’ to all relations of the dead as well as the security agents until all traces of such murders had disappeared,” he bemoaned the situation.
According to the association’s scribe, what such people are fighting for by saying that they are part of the problems of the state by preferring the police, “is because the soldiers have been marking the troubled areas and warning the trouble makers. Their presence, with their armoured tanks, has been quite intimidating and scaring to the murderers and arsonists, and they want the soldiers out by implicating them in every crime committed by them or against them by unknown persons. That is why they often alleged that their killers had army uniform, the same way the killers of our members say that those who killed them wore police uniform too.”
He called on both the army and police authorities to mix the personnel on the basis of 40 and 60 percent so that mischief-makers do not have the opportunity of running down any of the security agencies through frame-ups and blackmails therefore by subjecting them to odium or ridicule with a view to withdrawing them.
Source: The Guardian
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