Three days after the Nigerian Army “mistakenly” dropped bombs, killing 126 innocent civilians in Tudun Biri village in Igabi local government, Governor Uba Sani has yet to return to his duty post, lingering in the Emirati city as Kaduna residents mourn and beg for justice.

President Bola Tinubu, whom the Kaduna governor accompanied to the United Arab Emirates for the climate summit in Dubai, returned to Nigeria late Tuesday. 

Peoples Gazette reliably learnt from one of the state officials that Mr Sani was advised to return to Nigeria on Monday. However, the governor did not heed the counsel, lounging in Dubai, which, until COP28, maintained a visa ban on Nigerians.

The Gazette reported that some individuals on the 1,400-delegation to Dubai saw an opportunity to circumvent the cumbersome and increasingly futile process of obtaining an Emirati visa and took it.

It is unclear why the Kaduna governor stayed behind in Dubai.

Meanwhile, angry Kaduna residents in Zaria, on Tuesday, took to the streets to protest the massacre of 126 civilians Sunday night.

The army, which admitted it bombed scores of civilians, said the military officers on aerial patrol had “wrongly analysed and misinterpreted their pattern of activities to be similar to that of bandits,” leading them to air-drop the bombs, according to an official statement by spokesperson Onyema Nwachukwu on Tuesday.

Mr Sani did not immediately return a request for comment on his continued stay in the UAE in the wake of the bombing in Kaduna by the army.

Chief of Army Staff Taoreed Lagbaja and a presidential delegation led by defence minister Bello Matawalle had visited Kaduna to condole with the bereaved. Chief of Defence Staff, General CG Musa and the defence ministry’s permanent secretary, Ibrahim Kana, were part of the delegation.

The minister said thorough investigations would be conducted to determine the facts of the horrific incident and that the findings would be communicated to the public, according to Brigadier-General Tukur Gusau, director of defence information.

Survivors, on Monday, told BBC Hausa that the army air-dropped two bombs at 30-minute intervals on Tundun Biri villagers who were celebrating the Muslim Maulud event Sunday night.

The witnesses explained that villagers who tried to rescue casualties of the first bombing were the victims of the second bomb explosion.

Samuel Aruwan, spokesman for the governor, also did not immediately return a request for comment.