Elekahia Dump Site Attack: Victim Narrates Ordeal
3 min read
Edith CHUKU
Pandemonium struck the Elekahia Community of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, Rivers State, following an attack that left over five persons severely injured and two vehicles destroyed.
TNN gathered that the mayhem was brought upon the community by some purported Hausa men who are scavengers in the area. One of the victims said Hausamen took to the street, heavily armed with cutlass, to retaliate what was done to their brother, who is also a scavenger.
Mr. Kingsley Ezebunwo Boms who luckily escaped the brutality after receiving several knife cuts told TNN that, “That Sunday morning, I couldn’t picture what exactly was happening, on my way out from the house, just about to go to church, I just noticed everybody was running on the street.
“Before I could realize what was going on, one of the guys, which happens to be a scavenger, this Hausa people that stay around the dump yard walked up to me and said bring the phone, I said ah ah!, what is going on? The whole community people were running, I was shocked.
“Before I could say two things, they’ve already cut me. I received like over three cuts on my body, and that was exactly what happened, that I could picture because I needed to run after the third cut; they were running after me.”
Reacting to the question, if there was any misunderstanding that might have prompted the uproar, Boms said “yes, this was how the story, after the attack we decided to dig out what was the issue, we realized that in the night, the vigilante people caught one of the scavenger guys who happens to have robbed people with the things he has robbed people, so they recovered generator, protector, a lot of things, car batteries and other things from the criminal.
“So, they actually beat the guy and called the police, Elekahia Division of police. They came when the guy that was leading the team, he was an Hausa man, spoke in their language, after they finished talking, what he did was to say that the vigilante has already beaten the guy that there is nothing they can do with the guy that they should allow the guy to go or the vigilante should go and treat the guy and bring the guy to station that they can’t carry the guy in that condition.
“They called other of the Aboki guys, said they should carry their brother and go, so that was how this thing escalated, so the people now carried the guy that they’ve beaten already, took him to their dump yard, so what this people now did was to call their friends from different zones, they now gathered.
“We didn’t know what was really happening, we didn’t know that they have had this incident in the night or the early hours of the Sunday morning, so that was what we noticed that prompted the attack.”
He said six persons were injured, and two vehicles were damaged. He added that there were some other people whose injury were internal, so were not bleeding, while some had hit marks.
Boms, who appears to be a voice in the youth wing added that “since after that day, we have beefed up security because after that incident, we regrouped ourselves, because part of our campaign is that we don’t want them to be in Elekahia again, we don’t want any dump yard to be in Elekahia again, because we’ve recorded that after that incident, they even hired guns around one of their dump yards, they do all sort of things there.
“We had different police teams that day, the SARS were here, different division of police were all in the community that day, so, we are waiting for his response, I think this Saturday the youth are going back to his house to know the feedback because people don’t sleep in the night because of fear that these people might come back again, everybody is scared, the vigilante has doubled up their team for the night, it’s a tough situation for us here, we are most grateful that no life was lost.”
