ZAMFARA State Council of Chiefs has apologised to the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) over its recent allegations that innocent citizens were killed in the state during air strikes by personnel of the Air Force.
Attahiru Ahmad, the Chairman of the Council who is also the Emir of Anka, made the apology when a seven-man high powered investigation team led by Idi Lubo visited him at his palace in Anka on Saturday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the traditional rulers had on April 11 alleged that air strikes on suspected bandits camps hit at and killed innocent citizens in some parts of the state. This was said when reading out a communique after an emergency meeting by Hassan Attahiru, an Emir of Bungudu. Attahiru also followed up the claim with the release of the names of some persons who were killed in the air strikes.
The April 11 emergency meeting of the Council was held in reaction to an earlier accusation by the Minister of Defence, Mansur Ali, that some high ranking traditional rulers were conniving with the bandits.
“l apologise over whatever embarrassment the statement may have caused and from now, we have drawn a line, there won’t be anything like that again. And I want to appeal that care should be applied while tracking the bandits and when they run from your firepower into the community, the land army should take over so as to avoid killing the innocent.
“Out of the 17 emirate councils that we have in the state, mistakes occurred in only four and the submissions we made were gathered in the last two years, l also want to state that nothing happened on innocent citizens in the last six months in the state,” he said.
While speaking on the list of killed persons that was later released by the Emir of Bungudu, the Chairman of the Council of Chiefs said: “The Emir of Bungudu is not the spokesman of the council even though he read our press briefing that day.
He then assured that the traditional council would continue to support security agencies in the fight against armed banditry in the state. He urged the army to go and occupy deserted villages where some of the bandits were hiding.
Earlier, leader of the team, Idi Lubo, said the team was in the state to investigate the true position of the allegations in order to avoid future occurrences.
“We have also come with a condolence letter from the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Sadique Abubakar, in case some innocent people were killed in our encounter with bandits.”
NAN reports that the team was taken round stakeholders by the Commander of the 207 Quick Response Group in the state, Sunkanmi Thomas.
NAN