Kaduna Massacre: Northern Leaders, Others Demand Compensation

On Tuesday, community and religious leaders from the Northern region of the country expressed disapproval of the military drone attack on Sunday, which resulted in the killing of over 90 innocent villagers in Tudun Biri, Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

While calling for a full-scale investigation into the incident, they also demanded compensation for survivors and families of the deceased.

Daily Trust reports that the victims, among them women and children, were struck dead as they celebrated Maulud while over 60 others were left injured.

The Defence Headquarters earlier Tuesday said the drone attack on the community was based on information about untoward activities of terrorists in the area.

This was contained in a statement by the Director of Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. Edward Buba on Tuesday in Abuja.

Buba said the Nigerian Army Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) detachment had at about 2200hrs on Sunday, observed movement of terrorist at Ligarma, known to be a terrorist-infested area of Kaduna State.

He said the aerial surveillance captured movement of groups of persons synonymous with the terrorist tactics and modus operandi.

Buba explained that the observed advance of the terrorist that were gathered, posed a threat to key infrastructure within reach of their activities.

According to him, the threat was eliminated to prevent the terrorist from unleashing terror on innocent civilians.

“It should be noted that, terrorist often deliberately embed themselves within civilian population centres for civilian population to bear the consequences of their atrocities.

“Nevertheless, the Nigerian military does its best at all times to distinguish between civilians and terrorist.

“The military views every civilian death in the cause of operations as a tragedy as such tragedies are needless and unwanted, which causes the armed forces to take extensive measures to avoid them,” he said.

But while appearing on Trust TV’s Daily Politics programme last night, Senator Shehu Sani, who is from Kaduna State, described the military’s statement as highly insensitive.

He said the language used in the statement was unfair to hundreds of families affected by the tragedy as it appeared that the military attempted to justify its action of dropping the bombs to punish many innocent people because of the crime of a few criminals, it there were any among the deaths.

Senator Sani called for a thorough investigation by the National Assembly saying similar injustices were brushed over in the past.