Zamfara state police command last Saturday arrested a prominant APC figure Alhaji Abubakar Dantabawa along with seventeen other party members and detained them for about seven hours.
Findings by our correspondent reveal through reliable source that, Dantabawa was arrested in his residence at about 9.00pm along with his political associates.
The source said a combined team of heavily armed police and soldiers drove in trucks and stormed the residence of Dantabawa, located at Tudun wada low cost area of the state capital Gusau, and forced themselves in and made the arrests and immidiately conveyed them to the Head quarters of the police command.
Official response from the police command through the Public Relations Officer (PPRO) SP Muhammad Shehu said the arrests followed an intelligence security report that Dantabawa and his cliques were holding a meeting in his residence to reengineer the scourge of banditry in the state.
Following their release Sunday morning, Dantabawa reacted against the claim by the police, and said the action was “flagarant violation of human rights and abuse of democracy as well as insult to humanity”.
Narrating his experience at a press briefing today, Abubakar Dantabawa said as he spends most of his days away from the state, “I decided to come to the state last Friday when I got the information that my village was severely hit by flood desaster, destroying crops and washing away number of houses”.
He said that moved by the magnitude of the damage done to his community, he felt obliged to render some humanitarian aid to the victims.
And it is usual he said ” whenever I come home, my friends and relations vitit me as a welcome gesture, and at the moment of the arrests, I was with many guests as usual”, he said.
Dantabawa further reveals that at about 9.00pm, he saw a team of heavily armed policemen trooping into his house and begun to arrest the guests, including himself, and “when I enqiure for an arrest warrant if any, the leader replied there no warrant and they were only directed to make the arrest.
He said when they were conveyed to the police headquarters, they were asked to write a statement which ”I declined to do unless I was fully informed of the nature of our offence”, he said, “but we were later told that we were arrested for unlawful assembly”, he added.
After pulling strings between leaders of my party and the police, “We were offered “unconditional” bail” which according to him, contradicts the claim later by the police that we were arraigned in connection with a meeting to provoke bandits activities in the state.
He reasons that “if we were arrested based on such greivous charges bordering on security matters, how would the police decide to grant us unconditional bail” he stressed.
Dantabawa however claims that after the police unlawful traspass into his residence, “a sum of twenty million (N20m) naira was missing from his house, stressing that he, in collaboration with his party, have file a court case against the police to recover the Money and also claim for damages caused by the unlawful arrests.
At another briefing hosted by the state chairman of the party Hon. Lawali M. Liman, he alleged that the illegal action was politically motivated to intimidate and scuttle the APC’S glaring chance of winning the forthcoming October Bakura Federal house of Representatives by-elections.
He said his party is recording all the numerious unlawful actions and undemocratic attacks parpetrated and exececutef on APC members and on physical structures of the party, but “we know the PDP is surely losing the elections based on its dismal performance and luck of administrative focus”
