By Olayemisi Abdul
Military officials confirmed today that six people were killed on Saturday night by gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram during a shootout in a small village of Yobe state.
Spokesman of the Joint Task Force in Yobe, Lieutenant Eli Lazarus said the attack occurred in Ngalda town, 172 Kilometres south-west of Damaturu, the state capital.
The villagers told newsmen that their attackers were earlier seen taking a rest at the outskirts of the villages some hours before the attack.
‘We thought they were travellers whose vehicle broke down and they were trying to fix it. Some of them even came to buy bread and tea at one of the tea shops near the market, but they later moved into the town and started shooting’, said a road transporter who spoke on phone.
JTF spokesman, Lt Eli however said they are still on the trail of the gunmen.
Also, a renowned University Professor And Environmentalist, Dr Abba Kagu, was yesterday abducted by a gang of gunmen in Maiduguri, Borno state, eyewitnesses and security sources said.
Kagu, who teaches geography in the University of Maiduguri was, according to eyewitnesses, picked by a gang of armed young men around the Federal Low cost Estate of the city.
A top security official in the Maiduguri Department of Security Services confirmed the incident to News Diary Online.
‘Dr Kagu’s abduction was reported to us shortly after it occurred yesterday (Saturday) evening. We are seriously working to locate his where abouts; we believe his kidnappers may not have exited the Nigerian borders near Niger, Chad and Cameroon’, said the security source who doesn’t want to be named.
Kagu has been a famous environmentalist who had carried out several researches on desert encroachment, water and related ecological problems in the northeast arid zone of Nigeria.
The Spokesman of the university of Maiduguri, Ahmed Muhammed, also confirmed the incident to News Diary Online.
