Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has denied a news story that he was caught up in a gun attack in Kaduna on Sunday night.
Daily Nigerian reported that the minister and hundreds of train passengers escaped narrowly Sunday night after suspected kidnappers opened fire on their vehicles as they left the Rigasa station in Kaduna.
But in a reaction on his Twitter handle, Amaechi thumbed down the report as ‘fake news”.
” This 👎🏿 is completely concocted”, he wrote.
According to Daily Nigerian, the gunmen, suspected to be kidnappers, opened fire from their ambush position in Mando on the cavalcade of vehicles leaving the station, in search of preys to capture. They wanted to force the vehicles to stop.
The train reportedly arrived at Rigasa train station around 8:15pm.
But no sooner the shooting began than mobile policemen and soldiers arrived the scene in armoured vehicles.
“We were lucky the police and soldiers are nearby to come our rescue. The minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi was among the passengers. His convoy had to make a detour onto Rigasa Road,” said a passenger, Musa Lawan, who spoke with Daily Nigerian.
The police are yet to speak on the attack.
Hoodlums have in recent months been attacking passengers arriving Rigasa from Abuja, after they drove people out of the Abuja-Kaduna highway, where they routinely attacked vehicles and kidnap occupants.
On January 24, gunmen similarly attacked the disembarked train passengers on the connecting road from Rigasa Train station to Mando.
“We escaped with 1 bullet hole but am not sure the rushing trailing cars survived the ambush. The bandits obviously targeted the late train passengers from Abuja”, wrote
Waliy Maishanu, a gas and power engineer who was on the train and also reported that the kidnappers operated the following day 25 January.
