Thursday, June 1st, 2017 opened with four corpses at the Divisional Police Headquarters at Ugbokolo. They are those of suspected gangsters killed in an all night gun battle with community and security forces resisting them. Dependable sources have told Intervention that the manhunt for them in the thick bushes around Ugbokolo is on-going.
Mr Bashir Makama, the Benue State Commissioner of Police
It was not possible as at 11 am today to obtain the names of those killed from the side of the gangsters as well as the one person out of communal forces the gangsters succeeded in killing during the gun battle. Intervention was told that the situation in the police station was such that the names of the four suspected gangsters could not be verified yet. In any case, only their guy names might be possible for quite sometimes before their official names are discovered. It could only be confirmed that the one person killed from among the vigilantes was taken to the mortuary.
Trouble started late last when the suspected gangsters made good their threat to keep a date with the communal forces who had confronted them during an all night raid last week in which the gangsters killed a young man by name Joseph Ellah. They then warned the vigilantes to expect their return. Last night was the return to which the communal forces responded. As indicated above, one member of the communal forces was killed while the gangster lost three. Before ten O’clock, the fourth corpse was brought.
The question now is whether this is the turning of the tide, in which the hunters have become the hunted or last night was just a chance success. Only time will tell. Ugbokolo dwellers are not heaving any sigh of relief even though the outcome of last night confrontation is something new and different from when no one dared come out. However, the fear of a surprise reinforcement is ever permanent. The popular belief is that the ‘bad guys’ have an all round preparation and are capable of amphibious manoeuvres. Some people do not think that those who should know do know or have got a complete picture of what might be unfolding in Ugbokolo.
