An Officer of Department of State Service, DSS, attached to Kebbi State Command (names witheld), has assaulted a Correspondent of Authority newspaper, Mallam Shuaibu Zubair, when the journalist asked him to pay up his electricity bill.
The DSS officer, who got angry because his co-tenants reminded him that he only paid N4,000 out of N5,000 he ought to have paid, suddenly got angry, assaulted Mallam Zubair, who led other tenants to confront him six times and bragged that he could kill Zubair, and nothing would happen.
Briefing newsmen about his ordeal, Mallam Zubair explained that the DSS officer, who was supposed to pay his share of N5,000 of the electricity bill, gave N4,000 to one of their neighbours, which prompted others to find out who had not completed his payment.
He said: “The DSS officer is using two apartments and each apartment is to pay N2,500 monthly. We got the monthly bill and all of us have contributed our own share. The total amount to be paid is N10,000. When we were calculating the money, it was discovered that he was the one who didn’t complete his money and when we approached him, he suddenly got angry, slapped me six times in the presence of other tenants, without any reaction.
“After that, he said: ‘You have received beating for nothing and you will die for nothing. It is today you will know that I am a DSS officer. If I kill you, nothing will happen. The last thing you can do is to take me to the police station,” Zubair recounted.
The journalist, who is still battling with eye problem, said the slaps have aggravated the problem and now afraid to live in the house.
When contacted, a neighbour, simply identified as Maryam Aminu, confirmed that the DSS officer slapped the journalist twice in their presence, and tried to strangulate him before they ran out to call neighbours to come to the rescue of the journalist.
According to her: “He slapped him in our presence two times, jerked his cloth, tried to strangle him. We even told them they are all elderly men,why must they be fighting over the electricity bill. So we rushed out to call other neighbours to come over to rescue him from the DSS man.”
Another neighbour, Mallam Haliru Usman, when contacted, said he was in his room and he was called alongside other people to come over and intervene.
“After the whole issue, I asked them to settle among themselves but the journalist insisted he has been cheated and he would seek redress. If I am called upon to testify anywhere, as a Muslim, I will go and testify inline with the teaching of my religion, because I witnessed what transpired between them.”
Meanwhile, Zubair has sued over the unprovoked attack and death threat from the DSS personnel.
