Security agencies in Niger State have been accused by local water suppliers, popularly known as mai ruwa, over unlawful arrest on some of their colleagues after the Minna Medium Prison break.
The mai ruwas have also threatened to sue the Comptroller General and other security agencies in Niger State for unlawful arrest of legal businessmen who are law abiding.
Speaking to our correspondent, one of the local water suppliers, Dabo Adamu, an indigene of Daura from Katsina State, said he was arrested alongside many other suppliers by a combined team of security men who drove in four trucks, claiming they were among the escapees from the prison.
Dabo, who spoke in Hausa, said: “I just supplied my customer a truck load of water and I decided to buy recharge card to load my phone.
“I was loading my phone when the security men with guns came to me and ordered me to enter one of the trucks.
“When I asked them what happened, they pushed and forced me inside even though I told them I am a water supplier and they saw me with my truck.
“They collected my phone and all the money in my pocket.”
Dabo said it was some of his customers who intervened that aided his release by the security team who are desperately looking for escapees.
Another water supplier, Abdul Ibrahim, told our correspondent that he lives in M.I. Wushishi Estate in Minna, and that some of the persons they arrested and took to the prisons are water suppliers and not escapees.
Accordingly, Ibrahim said: “When I requested for my phone and money after we were released, they told me: ‘instead of you to count yourself lucky, you are asking of phone’.”
They however pleaded with the Comptroller General of Prisons to intervene so that their colleagues and kinsmen be released.
It should be recalled that unknown gunmen had freed 270 inmates from the Minna Medium Prisons on December 6, 2014, with 211 inmates still at large.