It is a case of use them when you need and dump them when you don’t. But in practice it is not as easy as it sounds as the Bauchi government is discovering, writes Ahmed Kaigama.
The menace of the notorious group, Sara- Suka, in Bauchi, has resurfaced following the disengagement of some of the youth who served as personal assistants and special assistants to the state governor, Mallam Isa Yuguda in his first term as a strategy to curb the menace.
Peoples Daily gathered over the weekend that the deadly group has taken to new ways of assaulting and disfiguring innocent citizens in particularly Bauchi metropolis. This includes snatching of people’s personal effects such as mobile phones, wrist- watches, money and inflicting injuries on victims using dangerous local weapons.
Some residents who spoke to Peoples Daily are of the opinion that the return of the group is because of the increase in unemployment among the state’s teeming youth. The most recent attack was on a lecturer at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, (ATBU), Dr Abdullahi Mohammed Bello of the Biological Programmes Department, who was picked on by two thugs on a motorcycle 40 meters away from his residence at New GRA.
Narrating his ordeal, Abdullahi said the incident happened when he came out to buy drugs at a pharmaceutical store, not far from his house. Two young men on a bike coming from the opposite direction stopped to ask for one Alhaji Shehu’s house and challenged him for not knowing the house.
According to him, the thugs who were angered by his response, stabbed him with a knife in the face, and attempted to stab him again but the lecturer defended himself using his palm. When they realized they had failed they hurried away on their motorcycle.
A senior civil
servant who
pleaded anonymity said: “I had a terrible experience at the hands of persons I suspect to be political thugs, recently.I was attacked by some members of the group who robbed me of my valuables before they zoomed off on a bike.”
Another victim,
Rabiu
Mohammed, also narrating his ordeals said “I was on phone for a long time, when I overheard someone saying “We are waiting for you to finish and give us the phone”, the second person added “if you make any noise we will disfigure your face or kill you”
Out of fear for my life, I quickly ended the call and gave them the phone and one of them said, “You have save yourself and the young men left on a bike parked close to were I parked my car.”
It would be recalled that some time ago, political thugs assaulted the state Commissioner for Rural Development, Alhaji Mahiru Maiwada Wandi, former Commissioner for Commerce and industry, Alhaji Yakubu Abdullahi, and a PDP National Assembly candidate in the last general election, Barrister Hussaini Umar.
The trios were attacked in Toro Local Government Area by the political thugs who beat them mercilessly and stabbed them in different places. The assaulted victims, who were admitted at the state University Teaching Hospital, sustained various degrees of injuries.
Giving account of the incident, a relative of one of the commissioners attacked said they were attacked on their way to their polling units last Thursday. “They noticed a bus trailing them and suddenly over took and hit their car pushing it into a ditch. The thugs came out holding deadly weapons they used on them before they were rescued by military officers on patrol who later arrested two of the members of the group,” he said.
Responding, the Chief Press Secretary to governor Yuguda, Ishola Michael, denied that the reappearance of thugs in the state was because of disengaging of some of the youths who were appointed as Personal Assistants and Special Assistants to the governor during his first term in office. He said that the government and the security agencies in the state are doing their best to tackle the menace.
According to him,
the state
government through its Youth and Women Development Commission, (BAYWAD), has spent the sum of N360 million on 400 youth and women in the state saying that the amount spent was for paying for JAMB, NECO, and WAEC examinations and coaching of the state students to prepare them for the various examinations to enable them secure admissions in to the various tertiary institutions in the country.
However, the present security challenges facing the state have shown the governor that all the state’s youths need to keep them way from crimes is gainful employment which does not necessarily have to come in the form of white-collar jobs.
Traumatised residents are of the opinion that the menace can be curtailed if the state government and stake-holders at all levels come together to proffer a lasting solution which can come in the form of programmes designed to engage the teeming youth more productively.
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