Achaba riders under the aegis of the Amalgamated Commercial Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association yesterday claimed that about 100 of its members died during the Easter Sunday Bomb Attack in Kaduna.
Conflicting reports have continued to trail the actual number of those who lost their lives during the blast.
While the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) had on Sunday claimed that 36 people including the lone bomber died during the incident, the Commissioner of Police, Kaduna State Police Command, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar Jingiri, disputed the figures, saying that only five persons died while 16 were injured.
The police boss had said, “The bomb explosion was massive which resulted from the death of the suicide bomber and five persons with 16 people injured who were passersby.”
But speaking to journalists yesterday, the Secretary General of the Amalgamated Commercial Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association of Nigeria (ACOMORAN), Mr. Nasir Mamman, insisted that about100 of their members died in the blast.
He, however, noted that an emergency meeting of the officials of the association in the state had been convened to get the statistics of those that lost their lives in the blast.
Mamman also decried the claim that their members were involved in most of the crimes in the state, saying that most of the criminal elements, especially the bombers, operate? in exotic cars.
He also urged the state government to look into the association’s proposal which it submitted to it, aimed at sanitising the union.
According to him, most of commercial cyclists that engage in crime were not their members.
He said, “Sunday was a very dark day. I said dark day for us because we lost our members and other innocent Nigerians. It is indeed very unfortunate. We prayed that God will give their families? the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.
“We urge the state government to ensure the security of lives and property of citizens we are not blaming anybody in particular. We are calling on the state government, especially the SSG who is one of our patrons to look into the proposal the association sent to the government aimed at sanitising the way and manner our members behave.
“We have summit this proposal to sanitise the union. Part of the proposal is the need for screening anybody before becoming our member. We don’t just want anybody to come into the trade just like that. If the government had worked with our proposal, by now we would have told you authoritatively the number those that are our members that died in the yesterday unfortunate incident but now we can’t.
“However, we have summoned an emergency meeting of all our chairmen across the five zones we have in the state and they are here already. On the average, our people who lost their lives are over 100.? We want to authenticate our membership, so we appeal to the state government to really do something about our proposal to sanitise the trade,” he said.