Old giant threes with fat, twisting trunks that
outlived their colonial planters, spread forth
their huge branches of green leaves over the
Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, Jengree in
Bassa Local Government Area, LGA, of
Plateau State.
The hospital, said to be over 60 years old,
bore all the trappings of colonial structures
in Nigeria – simple homes of asbestos roofs
with walls made of stones and well spaced
from each other; and rows of flower beds all
over the place.
In one of the wards, Pastor Emmanuel
Danjuma Garkida lay on his sick bed bare-
chest, with sunken eyes that seemed to
stare at nothing. There was a wide band of
bandage on his lower abdomen. The story
behind the bandage is a summary of the
bloodlet that took place in Saminaka in Lere
LGA, Kaduna State, on April 13 and 14 after
the 2015 gubernatorial election. In barely
audible voice, Garkida, who hails from Borno
State, narrated to Sunday Vanguard his
close shave with death.
Naming ceremony
“I come from Borno State, but I am a serving
pastor with the Redeemed Church of God,
Yobe Province,” he stated.
“My wife is a native of Abadawa, Saminaka
in Kaduna State and she had come back to
her parents and put to bed a baby boy a
week earlier. I had come to see her, my kids
and her family, and I could name the new
child.
“I took a bike, that morning to go see my
fellow pastor in the other side of Saminaka
to help officiate the ceremony”.
According to him, on arriving the Saminaka
main bridge, on the Jos-Zaria Expressway,
met had a grim encounter.
Saminaka’s green line
The bridge has for long served as a kind of
green line between the two major political
parties in the country, and the two main
religions. Sunday Vanguard learnt that the
two group of people had always voted in
opposite directions in all elections since
1999. Some said it even dated back before
then.
Christians and some Hausa/Fulani occupy
the eastern part of the bridge and dominate
the Abadawa ward where the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, has a comfortable
base in the town. The western part, called
Hayin Gada and populated mostly by Hausa/
Fulani and Muslims, but with good presence
of other tribes, is a bastion of the All
Progressives Congress, APC.
‘Kill the infidel, cut him down!’
“I reached the bridge on my way to Abadawa
when I met some Hausa youths carrying
weapons and inflicting injuries on passersby
who were not of their own. But since I know
some of the boys, I asked them to show
mercy on people. To my surprise some of
them started yelling, “Kill him! Kill the
infidel! Cut him down!”, he said. “One of
them rushed at me with a machete. I don’t
know how I managed to grab him and threw
him away. Another came with a sword and
aimed at my neck, I used my hand to receive
the blow.
“I started running, and one of them used a
cutlass and wounded me at the back of my
head. I started bleeding and I could feel the
blood dripping on my clothes. I kept
running, and they kept hitting me with sticks
and stabbing me with knives until I fell.
Saved by a stranger
“As they were coming to finish me off, the
last thing I remembered was that a Hausa
man, well dressed in white agbada and cap
sped on a bike and arrived at my side.
”The man shouted at them in Hausa, ‘leave
this man alone and disappear now! Are you
not satisfied that you have killed him? Every
one of you must leave immediately I don’t
know what happened afterwards. I went into
coma, the bleeding and pains were too
much.
“The man whom I had never met before was
said to have stayed there with me, as I later
learnt, until my friend, Skido, a Yoruba man,
came and evacuated me to an hospital in
Saminaka. I was told that I had ruptured
intestine.
“The doctor had to bring out my entire
intestine and clean up by stomach before
stitching me back. I have been stabbed in
many places. You can see the healing
wounds. I was brought here to Jengree
when my condition got worse. But I am fine
now. And I thank God for sparing my life. My
sister and mother have been the ones
bearing the emotional and financial burden
of this problem alone”.
District head’s account
The districk head of Abadawa, Dahiru
Abubakar, himself a Muslim, and a native of
Kurama – original inhabitants of Saminaka
– wrote a report on the violence to copied
Kaduna State government and copied the
heads of military and security outfits in
Kaduna State, the Emir of Zaria, the state
House of Assembly and National Assembly
members and others. He blamed the
violence on a political party’s supporters.
The district head said that on April 13,
2015, he was lying in his palace when
around 1pm he was told on phone by
someone that “some political thugs” were
coming to his palace possibly for trouble.
“Before I could come out, they had reached
my palace and immediately started
destroying the doors and windows. They
were saying, ‘we will drink the blood of
pagans’. They were saying, ‘new assembly,
new governor, new district head’. They said
that I should come out so that they spill my
blood”, he wrote.
According to him, they youths left shortly.
He wrote that before he could make contact
with the police in Saminaka, a fracas had
broken out between the invading youths and
Abadwa youths.
The district head spoke of seeing more
violence as he rode in a car with one of his
chiefs in Abadawa despite the arrival of the
police. “By the junction of Anguwan Jega (in
Abadawa), we met two motorcycles burning.
Towards the Roman Catholic Church, we
saw a corpse covered with leaves. The
police picked the corpse and put it in their
vehicle”, he wrote.
Abubakar, said they came under attack in
another part Abadawa, but they managed to
escape.
The attacker later left or were pushed
outside Abadawa ward, that afternoon,
according to the report. The district head
said elders of Abadawa, including him, went
from street to street pleading with the
youths to calm down, and that the police
would take care of everything.
From his report, he did not cross the main
Saminaka bridge on April 13.
Abubakar maintained that Abadawa became
calm, and he urged everyone to be vigilant
in the night.
He said that on April 14, Abadawa was rife
with the rumour that staff of Water Board
Corporation, Saminaka , and natives of
Abadawa had been murdered by the
rampaging youths from the other side.
“This triggered another round of tension as
people started looking for ways to revenge. .
. Another corpse of an Abadawa man was
found by the river side. . . security agents
succeeded in chasing people back to their
homes. That helped a lot. And later a 24-
hour curfew was imposed in the town.
The district head wrote that on April 15,
tension was renewed when the corpse of an
employee of the Water Board from Abadawa
was brought for burial. He praised the
Nigerian Army and the police for strictly
enforcing the curfew which led to peace.
“Shops and other businesses were opened
and hungry people caged for three days
rushed out to buy food and other needs”,
according to the report.
Undergraduate hacked to death
The report listed the names of those from
Adabawa killed as follows: Habila Daniel,
Danlami Gaba, Michael Timothy Yusuf
Usman and Stephen Galadima. Also, one
Hausa, Yusuf Usman, was said to have been
killed, curiously in the Hausa area of Hayin
Gada part of Saminaka.
Joshua Akpama, an Igala from Kogi State
and a final year economics student of the
Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria, was
also reportedly killed after he was forced out
of the vehicle he traveling in.
Garkida not on list
Meanwhile, the name of Pastor Garkida is
not among those injured according to the
report.
The district head also listed several
damages done to property of many people.
Two suspects were arrested by the police
and taken to Kaduna, Abubakar stated in the
report.
“The government/authority concerned
should ensure that all the perpetrators of
such evils are punished according to the
rule of law, this will serve as food-for-
thought to other youths with same
behavior”, he advised in the report.

http://www.nigerianeye.com/2015/05/kaduna-attackers-wanted-my-head-for.html?m=1

My God deliver us from religious intolerance!

Naija with a lot of problems sha

I thought redeemed pastor is the VP...blind people everywhere and always following their master blindly

God is watching

He is from Borno;
Hausa youths nearly killed him
Hausa man saved him;
A Yoruba friend of his took him to hospital.

This Nigeria is a very funny place!!!

APC is an Islamic Party!