ZAMFARA: Media report about bandits writing Christians to shutdown churches unverifiable – investigation

images-4.jpeg

Zamfara Map

Share with love

By OUR REPORTER

The media report by an online newspaper (not The DEFENDER), on Monday, saying bandits in Zamfara State had asked Christians in the state to shutdown their churches or risk being killed has been described as an unverifiable claim, our investigations revealed.

The DEFENDER had, in the early hours of Tuesday, been inundated with calls and questions by Nigerians with taste for knowing what truth of any published reports is, as to whether what they were reading from the other medium, specifically Sahara Reporters, was true or just another fake news.

Our Correspondent (names withheld), who is on ground in Gusau, the Zamfara State capital, and who is better to know about the truth of any such threat, said there was no proof it happened.

“We have tried to verify but no proof,” he said in a simple reply to the official inquiry sent to him Tuesday afternoon.

However, a source, during the cause of our investigation, asked the Federal and Zamfara State governments to take the report of bandits threat seriously.

According to him, “It is usually the very method any mischievous media organisation uses to sell idea to insecurity elements.

“Don’t forget how military tactics to eliminate Boko Haram, which could have been a perfect way to success in the prosecution of war against terrorism in the North East, was leaked through a newspaper report just like Sahara Reporters has just done.

“And I am serious about what I am saying here. Just look at it, few days ago, a competent court of the land declared bandits in the North West as terrorists. We still have people debating it as to whether banditry can rightly be called terrorism or not.

“To make bandits truly act as terrorists, they should have been doing things like setting religions and tribes against one another. These bandits have not started doing that and it is not clear that the criminal elements have such idea until this medium now suggested it to them in the name of free press,” he wondered.

Adding he said, “Do not forget that killing some members of one religion, and for instance screaming Allahu Akbar while doing it, to set Christians in conflict with Muslims, or impersonating one region or tribe, either by way of dressing or language, and bY that way, killing some members of other tribes or regions to cause ethnic war in any society, is a major tactic of terrorists. Boko Haram used it.

“It is therefore the job of governments at all levels not to allow the agents of doom achieve their aim of taking Nigeria, from North West, through another stage of such stupidity we experienced for over a decade in North East, again.

“This is the reason I will particularly call on the President and Commander-in-Chief to order all the intelligence agencies within the military, DSS and the police, even the paramilitary agencies to let their antenna be hIgh up picking the report by Sahara Reporters as a case study. It is important.

“I am saying this because we are the ones that live here in Zamfara. We have been trying to verify the claim in the report to see how, where a letter from bandits, ordering Christians to shutdown their churches or risk bring killed, has been received and which church or Christian received such letter. It is now left to the intelligence agencies to act because, it could be more of opening the eyes of bandits to a new method, God forbId,” he warned.


Share with love
Top