Yar’adua’s ex-economic adviser: How I was attacked

Late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s Economic Adviser Alhaji Tanimu Yakubu yesterday narrated how he was attacked in Kaduna by   assailants  he thought were kidnappers. The assailants pounced on him as he was leaving a friend’s house on Galadima Street, Saturday evening, he said.
This is coming at a time when there are rising cases of kidnap for ransom in Kaduna as well as on the Kaduna Abuja highway.
Recently a Nigerian army colonel and a clergyman were abducted in separate incidents   and were later found dead in the bushes on the outskirts of Kaduna.
Yakubu, who escaped abduction,  however sustained injury on the head and had a cut on the nose. When our correspondents visited him at his residence yesterday he had a bandage   round his head to stop the flow of blood and a plaster across his nose.

The former economic adviser said he was a private citizen and demanded not to  be recorded or photographed.
He said as the assailants accosted him one of them pressed a metal object against his body and was ordered   to get into his (Yakubu’s) car which was parked few meters from where they stood.
He said confused,  he saw himself walking away from the car.
He said when the man noticed that he wasn’t cooperating with him but was moving in the opposite direction, he started hitting him with the metal object. Yakubu said he could not get help from people  on the street  who decided   to flee the  scene.
It was then he noticed that blood was gushing from his head he said.  He said he was later  picked up by some people who rushed him to the hospital.
Yakubu said luckily for him, the injury on his head did not penetrate  and he was treated and allowed to go home that day.
 The former economic adviser said he preferred to view what happened as a consequence of lack of adequate arrangement to cushion the effects of a post crisis situation in the country.
He said with the current onslaught on insurgents, there had not been a proper post crisis arrangement to absorb into the society those who might have handled arms.     He likened the current situation to what happened immediately after the civil war when those that handled arms melted into the civilian population without adequate reorientation.
He added that this  led to serious security crises and the advent of armed robbery in the country.
The ex-economic adviser said Nigeria needed to work out strategies that would check such occurrences in the present circumstance.