Bello Turji Orders 5,000 Residents To Flee Sokoto Communities

Bandit leader, Bello Turji, has ordered 5,000 residents from more than a dozen rural communities in Sokoto State to flee their homes.

This was confirmed by a lawmaker, Habibu Halilu Modachi, and residents who spoke to AFP on Monday.

“Between Saturday and Sunday, over 5,000 people have been forced out of their homes in Bafarawa and several nearby communities as a result of threats of attack from Bello Turji,” Modachi said.

“Turji sent his men to these communities and asked them to leave by Sunday afternoon or risk being killed.”

The evacuation is aimed at clearing the area of its population, who the bandits accuse of providing information to the military about their locations.

Residents of several villages in Isa district near the border with Niger fled their homes on Saturday through Sunday following threats of attacks by criminal gangs who ordered them to leave on Turji’s orders, the sources said.

The displaced were taking shelter in Isa town and in Shinkafi in neighbouring Zamfara state, as well as with relations in relatively safer far-away communities.

“Even this morning the bandits killed two people, injured nine and kidnapped seven others,” Modachi said.

Abubakar Altine said eight people were killed and 20 wounded by the bandits on Saturday, when they attacked his community and asked people to leave.

“We fled to Isa where we are living with no food or shelter. We don’t know what to do,” Altine told AFP by phone.

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– ‘Firing indiscriminately’ –

Ahmad Abdullahi, who also fled to Isa, said the bandits entered his village and asked everyone to evacuate.

“They kept firing indiscriminately and seized money, foodstuffs and anything of value from residents,” Abdullahi said.

Turji, 31, dumped herding and turned to cattle rustling and kidnapping for ransom in 2011.

He fled his town of Shinkafi in Zamfara state for Sokoto state where he set up bases following extensive Nigerian military air strikes on his camps in December 2021.

The kingpin had made several peace agreements with Zamfara state authorities, only for him to renege and resume attacks on communities.

Turji is highly respected by his men and feared by communities he terrorises who believe he has supernatural powers which make him invincible, according to residents and security sources.

He took control of three districts where he imposes levies on communities and conducts deadly raids on those that fail to pay, sparing no one, including women and children, according to residents.

In February 2021, Turji appeared in a widely circulated video threatening to invite foreign gangs to destabilise Nigeria.

In January, Nigerian military conducted aerial bombings on Turji’s camps in Sokoto and Zamfara states, killing several of his lieutenants and forcing him to go underground.