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The Nigeria police authority on Sunday denied shooting at over 2000 people in Maiduguri who were protesting negligence and the federal government’s failure to tackle Boko Haram militants.
Media report had earlier stated that the shot was from a policeman’s rifle. But Frank Mbah, spokesperson for the Nigeria Police, told our Correspondent in a telephone interview that the bullet that hit one of the protesters did not come from a policeman’s gun.
“How can somebody just conclude that a Policeman had shot at the protester. There were over 2000 persons on the street that morning and they were all heading to the government House in Maiduguri, and it is just one person that was allegedly shot by a policeman.”
Mbah also added that, the story was too sweet to be true. “When you fire a gun shot in the crowd, apart from the person who would get direct contact with the bullet, others around would sustain injury from the pellets. But this did not happened, and someone was bleeding on the head and they concluded that Police shot at protesters.”
The demonstrators comprised some lucky residents of Gwoza town in the southern part of Borno State who had escaped when the militants captured their town from Nigeria troops. Fleeing to Maiduguri, they took their protest to the streets with various placards, some of them proclaiming that Nigerian troops had failed to regain Gwoza from the terrorist group.
The protesters were heading towards Government House when a police officer allegedly shot one of them in the head. When the victim fell, a commotion ensued which took soldiers deployed to the scene an hour before they could restore normalcy.
Hawa Ibrahim, a Gwoza resident, said, “If it means to die for our people we are ready as you can see one of us was shot by police simply because we’re saying they should dislodge Boko Haram militants from Gwoza.”
Also speaking, Muhammad Umar noted that Gwoza has been under siege for the past five days. “For Allah’s sake, do they expect us to keep silent when nothing has been done about it,” the teacher queried.
The Borno State Police Command on Saturday responded by banning public demonstrations, citing the security situation in the state, which is under emergency rule. The Borno State Police Command on Saturday responded by banning public demonstrations, citing the security situation in the state, which is under emergency rule. Police spokesman Gideon Jubrin said in a press statement that such demonstrations were capable of causing disharmony, anarchy and pandemonium in Borno State. But neither confirmed nor denied the shooting incident. Borno State is one of the States in the North
