A baker, Hassan Magaji, has narrated how he made N70,000 a day supplying bread to bandits operating in Zaria, Kaduna State.

Hassan is part of a syndicate arrested by operatives of the FIB Intelligence Response Team (FIB-IRT), for allegedly supplying drugs, bread and other food items to the bandits.

The suspect admitted to making about N150,000 weekly from supplying bread to the bandits, but said his income from the venture rose sharply at a point to N70,000 a day while some university students abducted in Kaduna were in their custody.

Hassan, a native of Galadimawa village who is married with two wives and three children, said, “I started the bakery business in 2018. I started with about N21,000 and now make about N400,000 a month. The boom in my business began when I started supplying bread to bandits.

I normally stay close to the part of the forest where they are camped. It was during one of such movement in 2019 that I met Mohammed and three others, who told me that they would like to be buying in larger quantities.

They started with N20,000 worth of bread and gradually increased it to N50,000 a day. After removing the cost of the ingredients, I make as much as N150,000 in a week. We had a meeting point close to their hideout in the forest, but I was not allowed to enter the bush.

It was my workers that were arrested by the police while they were on their way to delivering bread, and they brought them to my factory. During that period (when university students in Kaduna were kidnapped), I supplied up to N70,000 worth of bread every day till recently when it dropped to about N50,000,” he said.

Hassan, however, said there was not much he had done with the money other than marrying a woman “I had always loved. And I was able to save money to take care of my two wives.”