UPDATE from Kano Focus:
By Mukhtar Yahya Usman
An unspecified number of students and residents have been injured in a stampede, which occurred around Kabuga, Tal-udu and Gadon Kaya axis in Kano city, after a team of Nigerian Army soldiers riding through the area in a convoy, fired sporadically into the air.
KANO FOCUS reports that the soldiers, arrived at the scene in a convoy of over 10 Hilux pickup vans and buses, singing and shooting their guns intermittently at about 2:00 pm on Saturday.
It was gathered that most of the vehicles the soldiers were riding in, were branded with the insignia of Yobe state government.
This resulted in panic among students of the Federal College of Education (FCE) Kano,, which is located at Kofar Famfo near Kabuga road. Other residents particularly traders and passersby started running helter-skelter to escape from the scene.
It was gathered that some of the residents lost their mobile phones and other valuables in the pandemonium.
An eye witness, Nasiru Muhammad, a student of FCE from the department of Business education told Kano Focus that, they were in examination hall when they started hearing the sound of gunshots from a distance, which gradually came closer to them.
He said out of fear, they quickly ran away from the examination hall with their booklets in their hands.
“ I was in the examination hall when we heard the shooting sporadically, and we started running to escape. We felt like we were under attack” he said.
Another student, Zainab Hassan Ibrahim, who sustained injuries in the rush, said she couldn’t explain how terrible she felt, saying she couldn’t imagine how she scaled the wall of the college in an attempt to escape.
The army authorities in Kano could not be reached for comments on this report.
