In the past few weeks, communities in Lapai local council of Niger State have experienced a number of attacks by rampaging terrorists who kill, maim and kidnap locals unchallenged.
Notably, communities like Kpada, Gulu, Maijaki, Fapo, Ebbo and a host of others have been ransacked by the terrorists locally known as bandits who are turning the council into another enclave after Shiroro local council in the state.
The assailants, according to sources, invade Lapia through its porous border with Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
READ: Again, Bandits Reign Terror in Lapai, Kill 2, Abduct Scores from General Hospital
Five days ago, the marauders besieged Abubakar Abdulsalam General Hospital in Gulu where they killed two persons and abducted scores of others including health workers in the facility.
The area is prone to attacks, says Abass Aliyu, a resident of Gulu. “But they have never entered the hospital until that day.”
Aliyu told WikkiTimes he narrowly escaped the assailants that fateful Monday.
In another coordinated attack, bandits killed over 10 villagers in Maijaki, a small village on the outskirt of Gulu.
BANDITS WRITE TO TARGETED COMMUNITIES
On October 3, 2022, bandits attacked Anguwan Yusufu in Kpada community, kidnapping 12 locals, according to reports.
A week before, the marauders had sent a threat letter through the office of the vigilantes to seven communities in the axis. They include Duma, Nassarawa, Kuchi-Kebba, Ebbo, Miropka, Adalami and Gupa — all in Lapai LGA.
Subsequently, the leadership of the communities asked their subjects to contribute N140,000 — N20,000 each — to hire men and women with “black power” to fight the bandits.
According to sources in one of the tensed communities, the levy was to boost the “witches’ morale” including some retired “military personnel.”
WikkiTimes also learnt that a boy simply identified as ‘Daddy’ in one of the affected communities was arrested for writing to the vigilante office in the community, enlisting some of the vigilantes to be eliminated soon.
He would later be taken to Lapai Police Division from where he was released a few days later.
