Persons Living With Disability Initiative (PLWDI) has raised an alarm over attacks on its members by bandits on the Abuja-Kaduna expressway.
TBI Africa said the President of the initiative, Mr Augustine Onwuamaegbu, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Abuja.
Onwuamaegbu decried the inhuman treatment and outright lack of empathy on the plight of people living with disability by bandits who attacked them while on an empowerment mission to Katari village in Kaduna State.
He said that members of the association numbering about 25 were on a journey to the village in a Coaster bus to help people living with disability in katari village when they ran into the bandits, numbering about eight, armed with AK 47 rifles.
He said that the bandits beat them up mercilessly and used several dangerous weapons on them in an attempt to disposess them of their valuables.
He said that a lot of them sustained varying degrees of injuries.
According to him, the bandits made away with wheelchairs, Braille machines, rice, and guide canes, among others.
He condemned the attack on his members for no just cause, stating that the bandits refused to take their condition into consideration when they unleashed terror on them.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that PLWDI had on April 16 embarked on a journey to katari village in Kaduna state to distribute food items and other empowerment materials to their members when the bandits swooped on them while stopping to ease themselves on the road.
According to the president of the association, the bandits emerged from one of the bushes on the road wielding many dangerous weapons, stopped them and ordered the 25 of them to obey their instructions or they would get hurt.
He called for thorough investigation into the maltreatment his members received from the bandits.
He emphasised that fishing out the perpetrators of such dastardly and heinous crime would assuage the feelings of his members.
