Chairman of the Senate Committee on Housing and
Urban Development, Bukar Ibrahim, representing Yobe East Senatorial District,
has accused security agencies of mass killing while fighting insecurity in the
northern part of the country.
Contributing to a debate on a motion on
insecurity in Zamfara State on Thursday, Ibrahim said the security agencies
were the number one killers in terms of number.
The Senate has however asked its committees on
National Security and Intelligence and Defence and Army to look into the
allegations raised by Ibrahim.
The motion, sponsored by Senator Mafara Garba
from Zamfara Central, detailed the spate of killings by bandits in different
villages in Zamfara State.
He said over 250 persons have been killed between
August 2011 and October 2012.
But Ibrahim said, “Security agencies are the
number one killers in terms of number. I am surprised the other day when the
Chief of Army Staff said Boko Haram killed 3,000. The security agencies have
killed a lot more than 3,000 since this thing started.
“On the first day that this crisis erupted in
Maiduguri, over 5,000 people were killed. Book Haram is just like any other
religious sect, it has existed for ages. It is not a new phenomenon altogether,
but it is the activities of particularly the police who pushed the Boko Haram
people to the wall by killing their leaders and killing thousands of other
innocent people.
“Of course naturally, common criminals will take
advantage of the situation to extort money from people and then the armed
robbers are the third killers, and this is happening in Zamfara.”
He noted that he was in support of the motion
because it was relevant to what is happening in other parts of the North,
including Zamfara State.
But President of the Senate, David Mark, rose to
the defence of the military, saying that it was always a difficult task for the
armed forces when tasked with the challenge of internal security.
The Punch
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