Bandits kill five in Zamfara community

Five residents of Rogoji in Bakura Local Government Area of Zamfara State have been killed in an early morning raid by bandits on Thursday.

Confirming the deaths, residents said the bandits carried out the attack to punish them for providing information on the bandits to security agents and vigilantes.

Sources said the residents had supported security agents and vigilantes in moving against bandits in Lambar Bakura to Dogon Karfe axis.

Hamza Abdullahi, a resident of Bakura town, said the bandits struck Thursday morning when residents were preparing for their early morning prayers.

He said despite resistance from vigilantes, the bandits entered the community and killed five people.

Another resident of Rogoji, Bello Mande, who is now seeking refuge in Talata Mafara town, told PREMIUM TIMES through a phone call that he escaped on foot to Lambar Bakura before he got a vehicle that took him to Mafara.

“The bandits came on motorcycles around 5 a.m. and started shooting, which alerted the vigilante members in our village. If not because of them, the bandits wanted to ransack the whole community. They killed five men,” he said.

When asked why residents were leaving despite that normalcy had returned to the village, Mr Mande said it was out of fear that the bandits would return.

“The issue is some of our people have clue to security agents on the whereabouts of the bandits in the forest and the vigilante members who led the operation were from our village. That is why we are praying for the end of informants because it was some informants in our town that told the bandits that we were conniving with the police to track them.

“I personally feel that they will still return because that was their promise. They are angry with us and what we are doing to tackle them,” he said.

He added that those killed were buried Thursday afternoon.

The Zamfara police command spokesperson, Mohammed Shehu, did not respond to calls and SMS sent to him on the attack.

Zamfara, like many of the Nigerian Northwest states, is beleaguered by insecurity in the forms of kidnapping described as banditry. The crime has become rampant and the bandits irrepressible.

Thousands of people have been killed or kidnapped in the region and extending to Niger State, since 2021.

In the first three weeks of 2022, at least 486 people were killed by non-state actors across Nigeria, over half of them by bandits in the North-west and Niger State.