Borno legislator recounts assault incident, seeks arrest of perpetrators

The member of the Borno State House of Assembly clobbered into a coma allegedly by political thugs while representing Governor Kashim Shettima at the flagging off of INEC’s continuous voter registration exercise at his constituency in May this year has pleaded with the police to bring the culprits to book.

Saleh Mohammed Banga who represents Kwaya-kusar constituency at the state legislature and who resumed duty last Tuesday, October 10, told Daily Trust that he was hospitalized for five months at the Federal Medical Centre, Gombe and a private hospital in Kano as a result of the severe beating he received from the thugs who, he recalled, used clubs and machetes to send him into a coma.

“The state governor assigned me to represent him at the flagging off of the exercise at my constituency; so I drove myself there in my car,” he recounted.

“Just at the entrance of the town, they waylaid me with their clubs and machetes; first they smashed my windscreen, then they eventually pounced on me; they clobbered and got me down to coma, and abandoned me there, thinking that they had killed me. I even heard one of them while they were clobbering me saying that they were sent to kill me.”

He said while he was on hospital admission, efforts to get the perpetrators arrested took his family from the Divisional Police Office at Kwaya-kusar to the Office of the Assistant InspectorGeneral of Police, Zone 12, Bauchi and finally to the Force CID at the Force Headquarters, Abuja, where it had been since the family reported it there.

“Governor Kashim Shettima had already promised me that he would pursue the case as soon as I recovered, and he renewed his intention to do so when I went to him a couple of days ago to greet him,” he said.