In a gory insight into the plights of the victims of banditry, a Katsina elder has explained how bandits forcefully take their wives and daughters for sex and turn men to slaves.
Bashir Kurfi, an elder and member of the Security Assurance Program for the communities of Katsina narrated the ordeal in an interview with BBC Hausa.
“You will see a village will be attacked and married women will be kidnapped or they will be gathered in one place and be raped by this bandits,” Mr Kurfi said. “Now there are even villages that the bandits will call the head of household and ask him to bring his wife or daughter for one week to be with them.”
Mr Kurfi said further, “The leader of the bandits will come with his boys to the village, they will eject every body out of the house and rape our children and collect all our belongings…we even farm for them, what is happening is just like the old days slavery.”
Mr Kurfi lamented that while the government dialogues with bandits, no nobody is talking about the victims.
This revelation gives insight into the plight of citizens in Katsina and other parts of the country, particularly the North.
President Buhari, whose home state has been badly ravaged by banditry, had in June boasted in an interview with Bloomberg that his regime will leave Nigeria better secured.
The criminals have however become more brazen in their recent attacks as exemplified in the Kaduna train bombing and the attack on the Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre in the nation’s Federal Capital Territory in July.
In another attack, Boko Haram terrorists killed three elite officers of Presidential Guards Brigade in an ambush in Abuja, forcing the regime to immediately announce school closure in the nation’s capital.
