The Police Massacre!

It was a black Tuesday (June 2) for the Nigerian Police as they lost two of their men in two separate shoot-outs with suspected armed bandits in transit along Lokpaukwu/Ihube axis of Enugu/Port-Harcourt express way. Scores of other police officers were critically wounded in the shoot-outs. (Picture left is a group of Nigerian police officers; left is Mike Okiro, Inspector-General of Police)

One of the victims, Corporal Michael Custom, who managed to escape with bullet wounds in the left shoulder, said the criminals were dressed in army uniforms, and were moving in a convoy of Hilux jeeps when they suddenly opened fire on the unsuspecting police team at a check-point on the highway.

The anti-terrorist squad of the Nigerian Police was on a road block at the dreaded Ihube (near Okigwe) cashew plantation was the first to come under vicious attack by the blood-thirsty criminals who shot sporadically as they bulldozed their way towards the direction of Enugu.

The fleeing criminals attacked yet another police team in a distance of about two kilometers. Eye witnesses recounted that the police recorded heavy casualties in both incidents as two of their patrol vans (Hilux jeeps) were set ablaze respectively by the heartless men of the underworld, leaving many officers critically wounded.

But police officers were not alone on the casualty list as some travelers who were taking shelter at the second police check at the time of the incident were, also, hit by stray bullets.

One of the victims, Chimezie Ume, a commercial bus driver, who spoke to our correspondent from his hospital bed in Okigwe narrated that he was traveling from Enugu to Owerri when the police flagged down his vehicle at the check point shortly before the incident. A stray bullet ripped open Ume’s back, and came out from his abdomen. Doctors pronounced the driver’s condition as very critical.

Perhaps, more pathetic was the story of the surviving police officer, Michael, who said that when he managed to crawl back to the scene of the incident after the gun duel and was almost bleeding to death following a bullet wound, commuters (including the ones taking shelter in the check-point, as well as a police escort cruising by), refused to assist him. Michael was about bleeding to death until a public-spirited commercial motorcycle operator voluntarily took him to the hospital.

Dr. Tochukwu Ejikeme of St. Anthony’s Hospital, Okigwe, in an interview, stated that one of the wounded police officers had to be relocated to the National Orthopedic Hospital, Enugu because of the degree of injuries he sustained in the attack.

‘The bullet shattered his left leg, and we don’t have such facilities to handle it here”, Dr. Ejikeme said.

The medical practitioner, however, expressed his disappointment in the police authorities for what he called their ‘poor attitude towards the welfare of their officers wounded in active service‘.

‘For example, that guy that was sent to Enugu was immediately referred to Enugu after the first aid here but the police told us they were coming and they left. Another group of police men came and said they are coming and left till night nobody came and the boy was bleeding. So we have to go ourselves to the police station.

‘Instead of them to act they said that he was not from their division but from MOPOL, saying that O/C MOPOL had been contacted. But I asked them to give me an officer who will take me to the hotel where he was said to be lodging. The officer while in my car as we drove to the hotel even demanded that I should mobilize him,’ angry Dr. Ejikeme narrated.

When contacted for his comments on the incident, Paul Aliu, the Area Commander in charge of Okigwe, said he was too busy to talk to journalists.

It will be recalled that this is happening barely three months a similar nasty incident occurred at the Okigwe junction of the same Enugu/Port Harcourt high way in which two officers attached to the Police/Army joint patrol team code-named: Operation Festival lost their lives. And mid last year, all five Highway patrol officers on a road block at the same Ihube cashew plantation spot were killed by yet-to-be-tracked down gunmen.

From all indications, highway robbery on the Enugu/Port Harcourt express road appear to have taken a very dangerous dimension. In fact, the development has been too difficult for the police to contain, a situation which leaves commuters at the mercy of the criminals who now celebrate their gallantry on the highway almost on daily basis, particularly, between Lokpaukwu and Ezinnachi axis of the road.