Nigeria’s Vice President, Arc. Namadi Sambo, has lost over N200 million (over $1.2m) to armed night marauders, according to reports from his home state, Kaduna in North-Central Nigeria. A report this morning in the Sun said he lost the fortune about a fortnight ago.

“The incident, which has been kept under wraps and downplayed in government circles, has greatly unsettled the number two citizen, who is not only unhappy that gunmen could enter his premises in Kaduna and cart away his life investments unhindered, but also that almost three weeks after, security agencies, especially the police, seem not to have any clue on how a sitting vice president would be so brazenly robbed,” Saturday Sun reported.

It said that about a fortnight ago, some armed men in military uniform invaded a commercial farm owned by the vice president along Birnin Gwari road, Kaduna State, where they allegedly loaded about 2000 imported special specie cows into trailers and disappeared till date.

The paper quoted a close associate of Sambo as saying that “the monetary value of those special cows far exceed N200 million,” adding that “the incident and subsequent development look more like a deliberate attempt to strangle the VP economically because he has been a successful businessman in and out of politics.”

The source, who refused to be named because he was not authorised by the VP to speak for him on the matter, disclosed that “the issue, though not in the public domain because of the quiet nature of the vice president, it is generating strong suspicion and mistrust not only in the presidency but between Northern elite and the government because of some other persons that were targeted in what we regard as a calculated decimation of the economic power of northern leaders.”

The report said that in an attempt to downplay the loss, a vice presidential aide, who sought to be anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the matter, claimed that Arc. Sambo only lost about 1,000 cows in the attack, saying: “Anybody saying it’s 2,000 must be mischievous.”

•Photo shows Vice President Namadi Sambo.