By Sam Kayode
Early this week, precisely on Tuesday, Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum, was to return to Maiduguri after a working visit to Gamboru Ngala but delayed the journey due to some state exigencies.
And that saved his entire convoy from running into a morning disaster if he had chosen to return to Maiduguri early on Tuesday morning as he planned.
Zulum had gone days earlier to Gamboru Ngala as usual to distribute palliatives of food and non food items to the residents and was to return that fateful Tuesday.
The insurgents had assessed wrongly that since he had finished sharing the food stuffs and cash, for the vulnerable, he would leave first thing that day but he never left early to fall in line with the spies of the insurgents.
In his characteristic style, Zulum rather left in the evening and arrived Maiduguri safely without encountering the improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) planted on the highway that fateful day.
Impeccable sources told this reporter that in place of the convoy, another set of commuters carrying food stuffs ran into the buried trap and some of them lost their lives in the process with others sustaining severe injuries.
Confirming the incident, Police Public Relations Officer Nahum Daso stated that the deadly IED planted along the Gamboru Ngala road killed seven commuters on the spot.
His words, “an Isuzu pick up van coming from Gamboru and going to Maiduguri ran into the IED explosive along Kinoba and Mosuseni road at Gamboru Ngala axis of the road.
” The driver and 6 others died on the spot after the explosion while 3 others in the vehicle sustained various degrees of injuries.
” Police Explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit and joint security operatives have visited the scene to access the situation.”
The entire trunk A road is scanned daily before it is plied by commuters because it is closed daily to traffic at specific hours of the evening.
Boko Haram insurgents have been badly degraded in the north east war theatre of operation Hadin Kai but the iswap faction has remained a thorn in the flesh of security agencies of late.
They have always come out with their trade mark asymmetrical surprises within the three sectors of the theatre sometimes kidnapping people as they did in Yobe recently.
Recently also, Borno elders have regretted the lapse in the security of the state and have called on the government to do something before the state is returned to the dark days.
All the trunk A roads in Borno actually need security escorts to ply except for that of Damaturu Maiduguri which can be plied by commuters without escorts.
The only people who dare to ply the roads are commercial vehicles who are sometimes stopped to pay tolls to the insurgents depending on which direction the insurgents control.
The road is constantly plied by a joint security team of the RRS squad which also escorts vip’s in and out of the state capital for fear of being kidnapped.
Heavy ground and air operations have been taking place recently to back up the major kinetic support being received from the theatre commander, operations Hadin Kai, Major General Gold Chibuisi.
