Vice-President Namadi Sambo

This seems a season for people to get things wrong about Vice-President Namadi Sambo. On Thursday, August 2, 2012 when he clocked 58, some of the dignitaries who placed congratulatory adverts in celebration of his birthday claimed he was 60. How wrong they were. The Vee Pee was born on August 2, 1954 in Zaria, Kaduna State and he should be marking 58 this year, not 60. I particularly remember his 57th birthday last year.

Again and only three days before that Thursday, there was a robbery operation close to his residence in Zaria where one person, a shoe-shiner, was killed. That operation was widely reported in the media as an invasion by gunmen on his family house in Zaria. Sources within the police and close to the VP said nothing could be farther from the truth. Truth is there was a robbery operation opposite Sambo’s residence and some of the robbers sensing policemen guarding the VP’s house had first moved against them in a bid to dispossess the policemen of their arms. It was one big exchange of fire where both sides were said to have run out of arms. In the clash, one of the robbers was killed and another injured. One of the policemen was also badly injured. The cobbler working on the shoes of the policemen died in the exchange of gunfire. The VP’s Zaria residence had been razed since last year’s post-election riots in some parts of the North and nobody lives there at present. But the policemen are guarding the place as it is being reconstructed. As it turned out, the injured robber was unlucky. He was rushed to the same hospital the injured policeman was taken to.

On sighting him, the policeman was quoted as saying, ”this is one of the robbers”. The Kaduna State Police Command is said to be handling the case at present. But some now claim the media deliberately twisted the story and merged it with the Boko Haram suicide bomb attack on the AIG’s office and police station in Sokoto on the same day with malicious intentions. They claim the media was out to either embarrass VP Sambo or that some politicians were eager to score cheap political points. I beg to disagree. I think the information on the operation close to the VP’s house must have been blurred for the journalists to decipher that the VP’s residence was not actually the target. I don’t think there is more to it than that.