How robbers killed, burnt 15 Zamfara traders

Seated on a hospital bed with legs sprawled, Yargado Buba trained her gaze at her little boy who was sharing the same bed with her and who happened to be as lucky as she was. While the child was busy helping himself to a plate of spaghetti and macaroni, the mother’s eye carefully and affectionately […]

Seated on a hospital bed with legs sprawled, Yargado Buba trained her gaze at her little boy who was sharing the same bed with her and who happened to be as lucky as she was. While the child was busy helping himself to a plate of spaghetti and macaroni, the mother’s eye carefully and affectionately scanned him from his freshly-shaved head to his bare torso and further down to his legs, where her eyes would pause on a sparsely stained bandage wrapped around his left leg.

Why both mother and son were admitted at the hospital in Birnin Magaji Local Government headquarters, located about 70 kilometres from the Zamfara State capital, Gusau, is a heartrending story that has thrown people in the locality in a deep mourning and fear in certain cases.

Yargado’s presence at the hospital means for her that she can look after her surviving child, mourn the other, who was killed and then, give firsthand account of the carnage that robbed the community of 15 members at a go, as well as to deliver a message of threat of more bloodletting from the perpetrators.

She was set early Thursday morning to visit relations in neighbouring Wagine village in Katsina State, she recalled. With her were her little boy and his elder sister, Na’ima. They left home very early to catch a vehicle going to Batsari Local Government in the neighbouring state. The three boarded a mini lorry alongside about a dozen passengers, most of them traders heading for Batsari’s Thursday market.

The journey started and continued peacefully until they crossed the boundary into Katsina State, after leaving Shamusalle village, which is the last community on the Zamfara side of the border. While driving in through the notorious Dajin Rugu (Rugu Forest) inside Katsina State, they came under attack by gunmen.

“As we approached, armed men dressed in green uniforms had taken over the road ahead of us. While we were getting closer, they opened fire at us,” Yargado narrated. “Everyone sitting around me was being shot and bodies were falling out of the open vehicle. While I was contemplating what to do, I also took some bullet in the back.”

The woman told Sunday Trust that in spite of the injury, she managed to jump out of the vehicle. According to her, the attackers did not give her a second look after realising she is a woman, adding that they continued on the killing spree, mowing down every adult male in the vehicle.

She did not want to take any further risk, so she tried to move herself and the children away from the killing field. But until then, she only knew that her son was injured on the left leg, she did not have the slightest idea that her daughter, Na’ima had been fatally shot in the head.

“I grasped my son and asked my daughter to follow us. I realized that she was answering faintly, so I looked at her closely, only to discover that a portion of her head had been ripped open. I asked her if she could manage to walk with me to a nearby tree, but she shook her head,” the mother said.

Already, blood had started gushing out of the gaping bullet hole on Na’ima’s temple when her mother assisted her to get to the tree. “She died immediately we got under the tree,” Yargado stated.

As she battled with the trauma of losing a daughter in an early morning raid, which rationale she could not imagine, the attackers have gunned down 14 persons and were rounding up and gathering their corpses.

Within seconds, the dead, the vehicle and personal belongings of the passengers all went up in flames. The attackers set them ablaze for reasons they would come to disclose to Yargado.

“Your husbands invited this on you when they killed our men recently. When you get back home, tell them this is just the beginning; we will come for them all,” she remembered being told.

It was however not known at which point the woman was overwhelmed by fear due to the attack, as hospital officials revealed that, she later abandoned the little boy in the bush, before they were reunited hours later at the hospital.

But the shock from the incident has reverberated around the area and has reignited the memory of similar tragic incidents in other parts of the state, especially in Lingyado, where a robbery gang killed 19 villagers in a repraisal attack over the killings of their members by vigilantes.

Another similar incident had occurred earlier at Guru and Tungar Baushe villages in Maru Local Government, when 10 villagers were gunned to death by robbers on a revenge mission.

The only difference this time however, is that Thursday’s attack was carried out in Katsina State not Zamfara, as was widely reported earlier, even though all the victims were from Birnin Magaji Local Government of Zamfara.

The incident, according to the state police commissioner, Tambari Yabo Muhammad, and the sole administrator of Birnin Magaji, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, took place after Shamusalle on the territory of Katsina State.

At the cemetery in Birnin Magaji, the new graves for the 15 victims are lined up at the northern corner, covered by fresh soil, while inside the city people from neighbouring towns and villages throng the emir’s palace to register their condolence over the unprecedented incident.

For about an hour after Friday prayer, hundreds of inhabitants of the community led by the Emir of Birnin Magaji, Alhaji Ahmad Umar Usman, stayed back in the mosque and offered special prayers for the victims and also solicited for Allah’s intervention to address the insecurity in the state and the country in general.

Alhaji Sani Gambo, 45, was also a survivor. The trader, who hails from Kaso village in Birnin Magaji, narrated how the attack unfolded before his eyes. “When they fired at our vehicles, many people were hit and felled by bullets, but I was lucky at first because I got off the vehicle without taking a single shot. Even while others were being killed trying to run, I did not attempt to move,” he said.

The gunmen, he added, were making sure that nobody escapes the assault, as they chased some of the victims into the bush and killed them. “They made sure that everyone who was shot had been killed by painstakingly going round the bodies and firing shots when they realized a particular individual was still alive,” he said, recalling that the shouts of ‘finish them all’ by the assailants rent the air while the orgy of killings lasted.

“After killing those they could kill, they came back to me and shot me severally,” he adds, explaining that one of the bullets went through one side of his cheek and exited through the other. Another one penetrated his neck and came out near the throat, according to him.

“One of them went for my money and removed them from my pocket,” the victim explained further.

He said: “I leaned my head against one of the tyres of the vehicle, when I heard them talking about setting it ablaze with all the dead bodies. That was when I pulled myself from it and crawled into the bush, from where I watched them firing shots into the fuel tank until it caught fire.”

Another victim, Hashimu Sa’idu, was shot in the right arm. But like Alhaji Gambo, he managed to escape into the bush, from where he said he watched the gunmen, who he said were all armed, killing his co-travelers with impunity. “When they shot me, I was only able to move some metres into the bush where I took cover. From my hiding place, I saw them mopping up the victims, before burning their corpses.” He corroborated Yargado on the dressing code of the attackers, saying they wore green uniforms.

Among his friends who died in the vicious attack were Tanimu Waziri, Surajo Mamman, Sayyadi Maikano, Dayyabu Alhaji Sale and Ibrahim Dantasha, Sa’idu recounted.

Across the hospital ward on a bed, is another victim, Jamilu M. Bako. He came from Danmusa in Katsina State to learn the Qur’an from an Islamic teacher in Birnin Magaji and was on his way back to his home town when they ran into the ambush.

He told Sunday Trust that bullets were removed from his shoulder and his back at the hospital. Thirty-year-old Bako recalled running kilometres to save his dear life, even after he had been shot. Some of the traders offered the attackers money, but they turned it down, insisting they did not come for money, he said.

The attack, according to people in the state, was the first of its kind, not in terms of the casualty figure, but in the manner the remains of the victim were treated. Concerned residents added that they had never heard of it anywhere else.

“It was a serious carnage and an act of horror done to poor peasants,” said the Pricipal Medical Officer (PMO) of Birnin Magaji General Hospital, Dr Dele Afelumo. “It was terrible.”

The medical doctor said 10 survivors were admitted at the hospital, adding that only four were now on admission. “Some were terribly injured when they were brought, some needed bullets removed,” adding that they acted fast removing the bullets and stabilizing the patients.

Sunday Trust gathered that one person died at the hospital, bringing the death toll to 15. About half a dozen passengers involved in the incident are at ill missing at the time of this reports.

But tracing the genesis of the deadly assault, the police and local authorities said it was a reprisal attack by a suspected robbery gang for the killing of their leader about four months ago, by vigilante members in Shamusalle.

Speaking to Sunday Trust, CP Yabo noted that a notorious robbery suspect named Kacha was killed three months ago in Shamusalle by vigilante members, saying his group which was bent on avenging him, carried out the Thursday attack on the traders.

The commissioner explained further that, the armed robbers laid ambush on the road to Batsari market, where the businessmen from Birnin Magaji traded every Thursday and perpetrated the dastardly act, observing that the attack occurred inside Katsina State, not Zamfara as was widely captured in media reports.

He said the gunmen attacked two Mitsubishi Canter vehicles before setting the victims ablaze.

Also speaking on the attack, the secretary of Birnin Magaji Emirate Council, Alhaji Shu’aibu D. Aliyu, disclosed that the assailants target on that fateful day was to invade Shamusalle village. He however pointed out that, for inexplicable reasons, they struck the travelers plying the highway.

The scribe, who said the route is a shortcut of about 30 kilometres to neighbouring Katsina State, said apart from the killing of their ring leader and other suspected robbers by vigilantes, the hoodlums were not happy with the activities of the vigilante, which he said has been denying them the chance to rob commuters around the area. “The situation is beyond the powers of the police to deal with. There is need for heavy security presence in the area and surveillance helicopters.”

On his part, Birnin Magaji Sole Administrator, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, while maintaining that many of the victims were yet to be identified, said they have been doing their best to contain recurrent robbery incidents in the area.

He similarly emphasized the need for deployment of a helicopter to patrol the bushes in the area in order to flush out the hoodlums, but maintained that joint security meetings between the state and the neighbouring Katsina should be encouraged.

“All these threats we are getting, they are coming from Katsina. We are getting it right from Katsina. They came through Katsina. So if the government (of Zamfara and Katsina) can hold meetings, I think they will come up with ideas for solving these kinds of problems.”

The local government boss also requested for posting of more policemen to the area, in addition to  making a suggestion to the Zamfara State government to ban the use of Kasea brand of motorcycle in the state, stressing that the criminals use it to perpetrate their nefarious activities  with ease and to evade arrest because of its maneuverability in rugged terrains.

Shaken by the daylight killing and burning of 15 persons of their own and coupled with a fresh threat of more attacks, people under Birnin Magaji Local Government and other communities have turned to God begging for His intervention before another preventable calamity as witnessed in Lingyado, Guru and Tungar Baushe befalls them. Whether governments and relevant security agencies will rise up to the occasion and stop the attackers from ‘coming’ (as they told Yargado)it remains to be seen.