Takwa told The PUNCH in Jos that after the attacks by the bandits on the two communities were repelled by the troops in conjunction with the local vigilante group, eight corpses belonging to the bandits were recovered by the villagers.
Takwa said, “What happened was that there was an attack by bandits yesterday in the night on Angwa Bashar in Kanam LGA.
“Before our troops arrived with heavy gunfire, the vigilante men were already engaging the bandits. So, the troops in conjunction with the vigilante men were able to repel the attack. But as the attack in Angwan Bashar was going on, we received information that another set of bandits was attacking another village within the council area.
“So our troops withdrew from Angwan Bashar and moved to the said community and repelled the attack. After the operation, the villagers told us that they recovered eight corpses but our troops did not suffer any casualty.
Takwa, who described the onslaught against the bandits in the two communities as successful, called on the people to always provide the military and other security agents with timely information to enable them to protect the people.
“A criminal is a criminal. All that is going on in that area is criminality, whether cattle rustling, kidnapping, or attack on a community. They are all the same. All that we need is for the people to let us know in time about the activities of these criminals so that we can deal with the situation”, the Military Information Officer added.
One of the vigilante men, who participated in repelling the attacks, Tasiu Ibrahim, said that before the attack on their communities, the bandits had given them quit notice to vacate their area.
Ibrahim said, “We got the quit notice last week Tuesday where the bandits said we must leave our villages or they will kill all of us. We also learnt that similar quit notices were served on other villages by the bandits.
“We don’t know where we are going to run to and everyone knows that those people do not make empty threats. But we thank God that they did not succeed when they eventually tried to carry out their threat to kill all of us. Instead, some of them were the ones who died because we recovered about eight of their corpses after they attacked us.”
Reacting to the development, the Senator representing Plateau South, Prof. Nora Daduut, lamented the insecurity in some parts of Kanan and Wase LGAs and called on security operatives to come to the rescue of the people in the affected communities.
“As the senator representing Plateau South, I urge security agencies to intensify efforts to investigate the matter with the aim of bringing perpetrators to book and as well deploy drones and helicopters to monitor forests around Plateau South senatorial district, to identify illegal camps of armed bandits throughout the country.
“I also seek for collaboration amongst various security agencies on intelligence gathering and call on the people of my senatorial district to be security conscious.”
