According to reports, the gunmen attacked Kachiwe village and spread to other adjourning villages in the area. The fully armed bandits who rode on motorcycles started shooting sporadically to scare the villagers during which many people were killed.

Confirming the incident, the Secretary to the Niger State Government, Ahmed Ibrahim Matane, said the State Government is not leaving any stone unturned in its efforts at ridding the state of crime and appealed to residents of the state to provide security agencies with credible information to succeed.

“What is happening to us in Niger State in terms of insecurity is beyond our power and this is why we are calling on the Federal Government to come to our rescue immediately,” the SSG pleaded

Similarly, the state Commissioner of Police, Monday Bala Kuryas, said the state police have taken steps towards tracking down the perpetrators of the criminal act.

“A team of policemen have been dispatched to the area to safeguard lives and properties of people of Sarkin Pawa,” the Commissioner revealed

The state government which proposed to pay workers 70% of their salaries, a decision the organized labour kicked against, stressed that the reduction was not a slash but the state’s inability to meet 100% salaries.

Secretary to the Niger State Government, Ahmed Ibrahim Matane said “There is no talk about slash in the salaries of civil servants. What we have discussed with the organized Labor was that because of the recession, our FAAC allocation has dropped to a level where we won’t be able to pay 100 per cent of the salary. We called their attention to this, we opened our books in terms of how much we received, the existing commitments and what is leftover”