The raid, which took place close to Nukai Market, the operational base of Godwin and his cartel, saw NDLEA personnel shooting indiscriminately while trying to wade off the threat of hoodlums attempting to rescue the drug kingpin and prevent the officers from taking him away.
Residents living around ATC Kasuwan Bera in Jalingo, Taraba State, have revealed how officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency on Wednesday killed three innocent persons in the area during a raid on a notorious drug dealer named Micha Godwin but widely known as Danjuma.
The raid, which took place close to Nukai Market, the operational base of Godwin and his cartel, saw NDLEA personnel shooting indiscriminately while trying to wade off the threat of hoodlums attempting to rescue the drug kingpin and prevent the officers from taking him away.
During the shooting, a 17-year-old boy named Amos, a girl selling a local food known as ‘masa’ and a middle-aged woman selling yam were all killed by bullets from the guns of the NDLEA officials, it was gathered.
Four other bystanders were also severely injured during the shooting by the law enforcement agents and are currently receiving treatment at different hospitals, according to findings by SaharaReporters.
The incident led residents of the area, who are mostly of the Kona tribe, a predominant ethnic group in Taraba, to block major access roads in the area, forcing motorists plying the Jalingo-Wukari Road to explore other options.
A resident of the area, who identified only himself as Yimuzy, told SaharaReporters that claims by the NDLEA that seven of its officers were injured and their vehicle damaged during the operation was a strategy to deflect attention from the innocent Nigerians they killed when they swooped on Godwin and his drug gang on Wednesday in Taraba.
“The NDLEA came to arrest a drug seller and in the process, some boys chased them towards their vehicle in the market area.
“Immediately, the officers started shooting at the boys and in the process, a bullet killed three people on the spot.
“I know of four people who were severely injured by the shooting.
“I was there, I witnessed everything, Nigerians should not accept the lies of the NDLEA. They killed innocent citizens for no reason,” he said.
Another resident of the area, Abdullahi Zubair, disclosed that the indiscriminate shooting by the NDLEA personnel, apart from claiming innocent lives and leaving others injured, also destroyed property.
Also according to him, people ran in different directions when the shooting started, losing money and other valuables in the process.
“It was like a war zone on Wednesday, the NDLEA guys were shooting so fiercely. They destroyed a lot of goods and valuables because their action caused chaos, which eventually left people running in different directions.
“The officers shot innocent people in the market because of one criminal. None of his boys who chased them to the vehicle was injured. Innocent civilians paid the price with their lives.
“The world needs to know the truth about what happened. The NDLEA must be probed to reveal the truth about Wednesday’s incident in Taraba.
The spokesperson for the NDLEA, Mr Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Wednesday had said that seven of their men were injured and their operation vehicle damaged during the raid on Godwin and his drug cartel.
The statement had read, “Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency have arrested a notorious drug dealer at Nukai Market along Jalingo-Wukari Road in the Taraba State, Micha Godwin, during which the anti-narcotic officers came under attack and at least seven of them were injured and one of their vehicles damaged.
“Soon after the arrest of Micha, miscreants mobilised from the community to attack the officers and vehicles with dangerous weapons.
“Reinforcement from the state command of the agency and other security agencies was able to move in to rescue the operatives from the scene of the attack.”
On Thursday, when SaharaReporters contacted Babafemi with the latest discovery as revealed by residents of the community where the incident occurred, he neither answered his calls nor replied to a text message on the issue as sent by our correspondent.