Zamfara State Governor Dauda Lawal has told channels Television that the recent airstrike that affected some civilians in the state was not intentional.
The Governor who dropped the hint during a Channels TV show politics today insisted that they were the ones that made distress calls to the Nigerian Air Force to come to the rescue of some communities that came under the armed bandit attacks and that the operatives of the Air force responded and dealt with the bandits successfully on the first day.
He added that on the second day when the airstrike occurred same call was placed on the Nigerian Air Force but in the course of the operation some civilians were unintentionally affected.
He explained further that when the incident happened his Deputy Governor led a powerful delegation to commiserate with the families of the affected victims and also explained to them the true position of things which he said they quite understood.
He also explained that the Air Force authorities had already sent a fact finding delegation to come and commiserate with the state government of Zamfara and its people and also go to the affected communities for fact finding mission.
Governor Dauda insisted that the area where the airstrike incident occurred is a hilly one which make the Air force operation too complex to segregate who is who during the execution of their job.
The Governor who described the area where the incident happened as the border towns between Maradun and Zurmi local government said such types of mistakes due occurred during Air force operations noting that the communities had demonstrated high level of understanding of the situation.
He said the Air force committee sent to Zamfara in collaboration with the state are doing their best to ensure that such incident does not occur again.
“We were fully aware that there was going to be an air force operation in fact we were the ones who made the calls and part of their quick response strategy the came and successfully killed a lot of bandits and on the second day such mistakes occures”
“What they saw was the movement of people on motorcycles equipped with guns so the Airforce mispercieved them for bandits”
