NON-INDIGENES of Jigawa State have been urged to be law-abiding and ignore text messages ordering them to leave the state or face a Jihad.
The admonition came from the state government, which described the text messages as frivolous because they emanated from no serious sources.
The government also debunked insinuations that the recent attack on a police station in Birniwa was carried out by members of the Boko Haram sect.
In a reaction to the twin incidents after the State Security Council Meeting on Tuesday, Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Alhaji Lawal, said some hoodlums attacked the station with the aim of carting away arms to further their robbery attacks.
“The attack on Birniwa Police Station has no link with the Boko Haram sect and has nothing to do with the removal of fuel subsidy. It was the handiwork of some criminals who wanted to gain access to more weapons”, he declared.
Lawal said the non-indigenes needed not lose sleep over the text messages being “circulated by a faceless group threatening them to leave the state or face Jihad”.
According to him, the messages were analysed and found to be aimless.
“On the text messages threatening non-indigenes, the government is aware of it and the Emir of Dutse and the security operatives have done everything to calm down the non-indigenes and from the analyses, we realised that they were empty threats from no direction as nobody can come out and claim them”.
But in Maiduguri, Borno State, the dusk to dawn curfew imposed on the metropolis seems not to reduce attacks by Boko Haram gunmen.
On Tuesday, they attacked a military patrol vehicle and a security post, where they killed two soldiers and wounded five others in Gomari ward of Maiduguri.
The gunmen allegedly attacked the military vehicles and post at 2.30 p.m. which brought food to soldiers in the area.
The state Police Commissioner, Simeon Midenda, who confirmed the attack and deaths, said: “Yes, there were multiple attacks on the Joint Task Force (JTF) patrol vehicle and military posts in Gomari ward of Maiduguri, where two soldiers lost their lives while five others sustained gunshot wounds in their limbs’’. Also, officials at the morgue of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) said: “We received two bodies of soldiers brought in by a JTF patrol vehicle at 3.30.p.m. Five soldiers were also brought in a separate vehicle to the hospital’s Emergency and Accident Unit (A and EU) for treatment from gunshot wounds.”
