No fewer than two people died after hundreds of irate youths on Monday defied the 24-hour curfew imposed on Jalingo in Nigeria’s Taraba State invaded and vandalised the State Radio station.
The state Commissioner of information and reorientation, Mr Danjuma Adamu, who visited the Taraba State Broadcasting Corporation (TSBS) premises to inspect the damage done to the station, condemned the action of the youths, saying the destruction had gone beyond #EndSARS protest.
All movable equipment in all the departments were carted away by the hoodlums, who also destroyed what was left of the facilities.
Speaking to journalists after the inspection, Adamu said the dimension the protests took in the last two days was criminal.
“The looting of COVID-19 warehouses turned into invasion and looting of private warehouses, shops and private schools,”he said.
He described the incident as worrisome, adding that it had taken the radio station to square one because all documents, equipment and electrical appliances of the station had been stolen.
The commissioner stated that apart from the radio station, other organisations being accommodated within the premises of the Radio Station were also destroyed.
He listed them to include the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Cooperatives, Port Health Services (Yellow Card Center) and ministry of environment among others.
He said that the government was quantifying the level of destruction to both public and private property perpetrated by the youths with a view to ascertaining the next line of action.
The rampaging youths embarked on massive looting on Saturday evening beginning from warehouses of COVID-19 Palliatives.
The action of the youths continued unabated on Sunday with massive looting and destruction of private warehouses and on Monday with attack and destruction of the NYSC Camp, National Center for Disease Control Isolation Centre, a private school belonging to a Jalingo based businessman, and the radio station.
Meanwhile, the police spokesman in the state, DSP David Misal, has confirmed the death of two people and the arrest of 23 others following the incident.
Some tricycles and looted bags of rice and fertilizer had been recovered from the hoodlums, he said.
Misal said that the situation has now been brought under control but that the indefinite dusk to down curfew imposed by the state government will remain in force.
He warned parents and guardians to ensure that their children and or wards were properly guided as the police would apply the full wrath of the law if they were caught committing any crime.