20th December, 2012
A group of 30 gunmen who stormed a residence in Rimi, near Katsina in northern Nigeria where expatriate workers were staying, kidnapped a French citizen after killing two persons, police said Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria identified the abducted Frenchman as Francis Colump. A mobile policeman was also injured, in addition to the two persons who were killed.
Those who died, according to NAN are Rabe Dan’Unguwa (45), a security man at the residence of Colump, and one Abubakar Sale (25), a passer bye.
The abducted Frenchman works with S. A. Vergnet France, the firm handling the contract for the 10 megawatt wind mill power project in Rimi.
An eyewitness told NAN on Thursday in Rimi, that the attack on the station and the residence of Colump was carried out simultaneously by about 30 gunmen, who divided themselves into two groups.
According to him, the attackers arrived the town in three vehicles and began shooting before setting off the bomb which badly damaged the station but recorded no casualty.
The mobile police man was injured in the attack on the Frenchman’s residence.
It was gathered that as soon as they shot the trio, the gunmen forced themselves into the residence and abducted the Frenchman.
When the NAN correspondent visited the town, the residents including the Caretaker Chairman of the council, Alhaji Nasiru Ala were conducting the burial rites of the two persons killed in the attack.
Ala who described the incident as “tragic”, prayed God to expose those involved in the act.
When contacted, the state Police Commissioner, Alhaji Abdullahi Magaji confirmed the incident, saying that the gunmen used a gas cylinder to bomb the police station.
“Their purpose was to kidnap the expatriate, Mr Colump, but they attacked the police station to divert attention.”
Magaji said the mobile policeman injured in the attack was receiving treatment at a hospital in Katsina.
“One gun belonging to the hoodlums was recovered and we are going to pursue them.”
Magaji in an interview on Wednesday night with the French news agency, AFP said:”I can confirm the abduction of a French national,” the Katsina state police chief said. 
According to Magaji, The abducted engineer had just returned from a trip outside Nigeria, he addded.
Vergnet, a company that specialises in alternative energy according to its website, was working on a wind power project in Katsina.
“The gunmen later threw an explosive device into the police station on their way out the town to distract the police from pursuing them,” he added.
Katsina, on the border with Niger, lies in a region assailed by Boko Haram Islamists, an insurgent group that has killed hundreds in northern and central Nigeria since 2009.
Katsina has however been spared Boko Haram’s attacks, and its police chief told AFP he was confident the Islamists were not behind the kidnapping.
Security officials have blamed Boko Haram for previous similar abductions, but the group, which frequently claims gun and bomb attacks, has never acknowledged seizing a foreign national.
Following the abduction of a British and Italian in northwest Sokoto state last year, Nigeria’s government sought to blame Boko Haram. Residents however ruled out the group’s involvement, insisting it was the work of local gangs.
The two Europeans were killed in March amid a rescue operation jointly planned with British authorities.
In January, unidentified gunmen kidnapped German engineer Edgar Raupach in Kano state, which is next to Katsina. He was found dead in May in a home described as a Boko Haram hideout.
A private Mauritanian news agency had reported that Raupach was taken by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
AQIM has not been known to operate directly in Nigeria, though Boko Haram and other extremists in the country are thought to have links to the group.
Kidnap for ransom has long been a lucrative business in Nigeria, although most such incidents have occured in the oil-producing south, where foreigners working for energy companies have repeatedly been targetted.