Bandits attack Kaduna monarch’s convoy, riddle car with bullets

Some bandits were said to have attacked the convoy of the 73-year-old Emir of Birnin Gwari, Alhaji Zubairu Jibril Mai Gwari II, along the dreaded Kaduna-Birnin Gwari Highway.

The incident, according to a source, occurred on Tuesday evening while the monarch was on his way to Kaduna.

Although no life was lost during the attack, the royal father, a first-class chief, was said not to be in the convoy as of the time of the attack.

The source noted that the emir was somewhere else when the bandits struck.

He explained that the bandits who appeared in front of the vehicles placed tree leaves on the road all in the bid to force the vehicles to a halt but to no avail.

He added that apart from the minor injury he sustained as a result of shattered glasses from gunshots, nobody was halt during the encounter.

But the monarch’s car was riddled with bullets.

The emir had spoken on how his subjects had paid millions of naira to bandits as a ransom for kidnapped victims in Birnin Gwari at the presentation of the 2020 security reports to Governor Nasir El-Rufai by the state Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Mr. Samuel Aruwan, last week.

The monarch had said, “It is terrible when you see 200 to 300 bandits with weapons surrounding a village, killing people and collecting their money. Our people paid hundreds of millions of naira as ransom.”

Birnin-Gwari, a gateway to the Southern part of the country had over the years been bedevilled by banditry, kidnapping and armed robbery.

As of the time of filing this report, the Kaduna Command of the Nigeria Police Force had yet to confirmed the attack.

The spokesman of the Command, ASP Mohammed Jalige neither picked our correspondent’s call nor respond to a text message sent to his telephone.