3 weeks ago
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No fewer than a dozen hoodlums attacked the spokesman of the Niger State Command of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, Ibrahim Muti, while he was returning from his office.
Arewa PUNCH gathered that Muti, who suffered severe knife injuries during the attack, was stabbed in the stomach and rushed to a hospital after the hoodlums fled the scene.
While speaking with our correspondent at the hospital where he is recuperating, the NSCDC personnel disclosed that he narrowly escaped death at the hands of the hoodlums.
According to him, the hoodlums mistook him for a soldier when they sighted him in the keke tricycle, adorning a pair of camouflage trousers beneath his uniform t-shirt.
The incident happened on Friday at the Federal Housing Estate in the Gbeganu area of Chanchaga Local Government Area of the state, within the state capital Minna.
Muti said he was writing his report for the day with his phone in the Keke
when the hoodlums stormed the road, blocked the tricycle he was riding on, and then rushed to attack him with different cudgels and knives.
According to him, two people pretending to be passengers had stopped the tricycle under the pretext that they were to board the Keke, which was heading to his destination.
He said as he concentrated on his writing shortly after the day’s work. Unknown to him, the assailants who posed as passengers suddenly stormed the Keke, and one of them stabbed him in the stomach.
The NSCDC boss said he was stabbed with a knife, and his phone and other valuables were forcefully snatched from him. While searching him, one of the hoodlums discovered his uniform trousers was camouflage and alerted the others, saying, “He is a uniform man, he is a soldier,” and they abandoned him in his injuries.
Continuing, he added, it was his uniform trousers that saved him, stressing, “unfortunately, the other passengers had already disembarked, leaving only me with the rider to our fate shortly after the incident occurred.”
When contacted by phone, on Sunday night, Muti confirmed the incident, saying that three of the hoodlums had
pretended to be waiting to board a tricycle which he had earlier boarded and just as the rider slowed down to pick them, nine other hoodlums and criminals stormed our keke after emerging from the nearby buses and attacked me in particular while I was still seated in the tricycle I was travelling in.
He narrated, “The other passengers fled from the keke and ran to different directions, but because I was busy with my phone writing out the day’s situation report, I wasn’t concentrating on what was really happening around me.
“The three hoodlums had stopped the tricycle under the pretext that they were boarding to a destination.
“I was shocked immediately the tricycle stopped, and the hoodlums emerged from the bush and took over the tricycle. No fewer than 12 of these hoodlums invaded the tricycle.
“I was stabbed with a knife, and my phone with other valuables was taken. While searching me, one of the hoodlums discovered my pair of uniform trousers and alerted the others, saying, ‘he is a uniform man, he is a soldier,’ and just then, they abandoned me with my injuries and fled.
“I still dont know, but I think it was my uniform trousers that saved me,” he further narrated, adding, “I was surprised that the other passengers had already disembarked, leaving only me with the rider just as the incident occurred.”
He noted that the attackers were armed with knives, cutlasses, daggers, and sticks (Gora).
When Arewa PUNCH initiated a second call to him again, he responded thus, “I have been discharged from the hospital, and I am responding to treatment. It is serious. I am home today. I was discharged from the hospital. It happened at Federal Housing Estate after Gbeganu. At that spot, three of the people just stood by the roadside, and I was inside a moving Keke.
“All of a sudden, and I was just writing my report with my phone so when the Keke stopped those three guys just ambushed us and the remaining people about nine, came out from the bush and the one closest to me just stabbed me on the stomach and the rest people collected my phone. When they saw I was wearing camouflage, some of them said, ‘he’s a soldier o, he’s a soldier,’ and they fled the scene. That was how they left me,” Muti stated.
The spokesman said that when he is much better, the Corps would track down the hoodlums through his phone, which they stole from him.
“We will track them since they went for the phone. When I am much better. I am not too strong now. We will launch an operation to get them since the phone is still with them,” he assured our correspondent.
