Sit-at-home: Assailants kill passengers in Enugu

 

.Streets deserted, shops, offices shut

. Gunmen bomb police divisional headquarters in Imo

.As Anambra workers defy Soludo’s order, shun offices

 

By Phil Okose Onitsha, By Cosmas Chukwu

 

 

 

As the Monday sit-at-home in Enugu metropolis went on without any violent occurrence,however unconfirmed reports have it that unknown armed persons had vehicles bearing early morning passengers.

The passengers may have been trying to beat the observance of the sit-at-home protest before they ran into the armed killer. men

According to some survivors eye witness account, the UGM struck around Colliery Hospital , adjacent to Iva Valley Road, near Aria (New Market) Enugu, early this morning. and shot  dead some passengers going out for morning business and wounded some.

The police who had arrived after the incident,conveyed some of victims with gun shot injuries, including one shot on the stomach with his intestines outside to ESUT Parklane hospital .

One other woman has a bullet that pierced through leg..

 

PPRO  Daniel Nduke,ASP,in response to a demand for confirmation said: ‘Good morning. There was no such fatal attack. Rather, there was a shooting incident at Odegba, along Iva Valley Road, Enugu in the early hours of this morning, by yet-to-be identified armed men, which led to the injury of two persons. However, the victims are responding to treatment at the hospital where they were promptly taken to by Police Operatives, who swiftly responded to a distress call on the incident. Meanwhile, investigation has been launched to fish out the fleeing miscreants, please”

 

Though Enugu metropolis and the entire Enugu state had remained compliant to the weekly Monday Sit+At-Home ordered by the pro Biafra independenve Indigenous People Of Biafra,IPOB, to protest the arrest and continued incarceration of their detained leader,Mazi Nnamdi Kanu by the DSS,many had looked forward to a cessation of the exercise today.

This is because pundits had posited that following the hard-line taken by newly inducted Anambra governor, Prof Soludo in directing that the protest should stop, that a spill over reaction may have spread to neighbouring states such as Enugu.

 

However, from the look of things this morning, this prediction has not come to be as the exercise is holding in the Enugu metropolis and environs with offices, shops, markets,motor park,barrages,restaurants,markets,banks,filling stations,schools and public places are under lock and key while the roads,streets and interstate and expressways are ghosts of themselves.

There has been patrols with armoured cars as well as military, paramilitary, police, vigilante and state forest guards on the prowl.

So, there has no security breach anywhere or instance enforces recorded any where.

 

There has been express directive or reaction from the state government other ensuring that that security is maintained.

Pedestrians are visible on streets on short journeys while there some occasional non compliant minibuses making brisk businesses ferrying commuters at sky rocketed fares.

 

In another development, Gunmen suspected to be members of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra/Eastern Security Network attacked the Obowo police divisional headquarters in Imo State on Monday.

 

Police spokesman in Imo, CSP Michael Abattam, stated in Owerri that the assailants approached the station from an ungoverned forest at the rear.

 

He added that they threw petrol bombs and Improvised Explosive Devices that fell on the transit camp behind the station and on a parked vehicle.

 

“Police operatives and some of the Command’s Technical Teams engaged the hoodlums in a fierce gun duel preventing them from gaining entrance to the station.

 

“In the process, they forced the hoodlums into retreating into the forest with various degrees of bullet wounds.

 

“The police operatives gave them a hot chase and while combing the bush, three undetonated explosives, four expended AK47 bullets and five live cartridges, were recovered.

 

“Also recovered were 33 expended cartridges, two masks, one pump action gun and a motorised sawing machine,’’ Abattam stated.

 

He added that apart from the minimal damage on the transit camp and the vehicle, no life was lost.

 

He stated also that a police operative who sustained minor gunshot injury had been treated.

 

The police spokesman added that Acting Commissioner of Police, DCP Mamman Giwa, who visited the scene, commended the officers and men for repelling the attack.

 

Giwa appealed to Imo residents to continue to give the police timely and credible information about criminals and their activities and to report any person seen treating bullet wounds within the community to the nearest police station.

 

Meanwhile, a source in the community, who requested anonymity, said two persons were feared killed in the attack.

 

“The attack started around 2 a.m. and lasted for about three hours. We heard the sounds of various firearms and suspected dynamite during the attack.

 

“We do not know whether the assailants took away police weapons as they usually did,’’ he said.

 

Monday’s attack brought the number of police divisional headquarters attacked in Imo in March to four.

 

Earlier in the month, gunmen attacked Orsu, Oru East and Umuguma police divisional headquarters.

 

Also, The order by Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State to civil servants to be on their duty posts every Monday like every other week day starting from this Monday fell on deaf ears as the order was 100 per cent non compliance by both civil servants and non civil servants in the state.

 

As at 8.am in Onitsha and Nnewi, neither school children nor their teachers were seen on the streets heading to school.

 

Same applied to other civil servants that include workers at local Government Areas, courts, hospitals, among other places as the roads were completely deserted.

 

A staff of Onitsha North Local Government Area, who simply identified herself as Ngozi, said that, “I don’t want to risk my life, let the Government order the markets, banks, courts and others to start first before they ask us (civil servants) to be on the duty post”

 

Another staff at Onitsha General hospital who pleaded anonymity added that, “days were gone when as bread winners we lost our lives to miscreants and those who have no future. It is not that we are disobeying the executive order but the whole place is prone to insecurity”

 

“Who comes to your rescue when the miscreants attack you. Even the IPOB are looking for these miscreants who claim to be working on behalf of the genuine IPOB.

 

So the Governor’s order should wait for now until the coast is clear for the ship to Barth. Today is even worse, you can see that people are in their respective homes making merry. The youths are playing football in the streets and others gather, drink and talk about Ukraine and Russia war”.

 

“The Governor’s order even worsened the situation, you can see that the situation is even worse today than the previous days and it is because Governor Soludo issued it as an order to us when he has those security operatives that guard him around him.

 

His predecessor, former Governor Willie Obiano, tried it and failed because if anything happens to us it is our family that will lose and not the Government. So we better stay indoors even if IPOB has according to them suspended the every Monday sit-at-home order, the miscreants and street urchins still capitalize on that to rob, maim, assault and intimidate the innocent general public”

 

Also reacting, a trader at Nnewi Nkwo trial, Mr Ogem Mathew, stated that, ” it is funny for Governor Soludo to ask the Innocent civil servants to go to work on Mondays when he did not put in place the enabling environment like security that will ward off any attack from miscreants that now want the suspended Monday sit-at-home order to continue”

 

” You can see that the roads are deserted, worse than before and it is because of the executive order he issued while in Awka with over 30 security men around him when we don’t even have one with us.”

 

“The problem now is not the IPOB but the fake ones who even place public notices in all the places warning that whoever that dare them will meet his Waterloo, it it not funny to us the poor civil servants to defy the order of the miscreants that have nothing at stake”

 

Meanwhile the ever-busy Onitsha/Owerri road, Savoy junction, Ogbonmanu junction, Oguta road, notorious Upper Iweka, Nkpor junction, among others were deserted as at the time of filing this report.

 

Most police stations that include, Onitsha Central police, Okpoko police Division, Onitsha Police Area Command, Ogidi Police Division, Awada Police Division, among others blocked the major roads leading to their stations over fear of attack from unknown gunmen.