Reports on Zamfara attack baseless – Official

From Ibrahim Sidi Muh’d, Gusau

The Zamfara state government has dismissed media reports which claimed that some communities under Shinkafi local government area were attacked last week Friday by the dangerously armed bandits killing a number of innocent people.
Debunking the report yesterday in Gusau the state capital, the Special Adviser to the governor on security matters, Usman Ajiya Shinkafi said, the report was concocted by unpatriotic citizens who connived with some lazy reporters simply to sabotage the efforts embarked upon by the state government in ensuring peace for legitimate businesses in the state.
He challenged that, “On getting the report, we rushed to the said affected villages and found even nothing of that nature happened, it did not happened at all, there were free movements either from farms to houses or houses to mosques, and weekly markets were in full operations as usual, this indicated a nasty political game played by destroyers of peace”, he added.
He further challenged that, when there is any report especially involving attacks on communities, a reporter is expected to go to the affected areas or, contact any authority responsible for communication on the matter, but not relying on remote-findings in favour of destroyers whose aims were to cause unrest with a view to achieve political gains.
“Base on reliably gathered information on such a baseless report, the Zamfara state government is satisfied that all the listed villages captured in the sabotaging efforts of some lazy medium reporters, were peaceful, therefore, must take action against the saboteurs to prevent further attempt of destroying the state, he threatened.
Contacted for confirmation, Malam Shehu Usman, a resident of Mallamawa village said, there was no attack on either their village and even the neighbouring, saying that, they were shocked when they began to saw a convoy comprising armed security operatives from various agencies trooping into the village.
“It was later we were told that, the convoy was there to save us from armed bandits who already besieged our village and even killed many of us, which was not true because almost every member of the community was either at farm, mosque or market as at the time the reports claimed were under attack, “ he said.