7 INJURED AS SUSPECTED CULT GROUP ATTACK OBOSI YOUTHS
No fewer than seven persons sustained various degrees of injuries yesterday at Obosi community in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra state when some suspected cultists attacked various parts of the community.
The cultis
ts, according to eye-witnesses, had been on rampage in the area for about a week now without attacking any one until yesterday when they allegedly assailed members of Obosi Land Management Council, OLMC. According to the source, one of the inured persons whose name was given as Benjamin Okonkwo who was said to be living with only one functional kidney, is now at the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital, following a gunshot injury he sustained from the rampaging cultists.
Three other victims, Onochie Tagbo, Chairman of Isiowulu-Obosi branch of the OLMC nearly had his right hand cut off by the attackers who used machete on him, while Ebuka Ichu and Chukwudi Ibeme sustained injuries and had their motorcycles shattered.
Speaking to newsmen at Obosi town hall, Ibeme noted that the attackers swooped on him at Eke-Obosi market square between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. and attacked him, while Prince Emeka Orizu, Chairman of Littlewood Estate, Obosi, said he barely managed to escape from the hands of the suspects when they invaded his office in the morning and he ran upstairs, locking up his staircase and watching them from afar. Orizu said he could identify some of them as the same group who invaded his family house during his absence sometime last year and set his house ablaze which resulted in his mother suffocating to death in the process.
The Divisional Police Officer, DPO at Obosi, CSP Musa who addressed the victims and other members of OLMC, at Obosi town hall, said he was aware of a lingering communal crisis in the area and urged them to remain calm as according to him, he would inform the police authorities accordingly. Speaking to newsmen Mr. Chinedu Okafor, Vice Chairman of OLMS, Ime Obi Zone, also accused two prominent persons from the area of sponsoring the cultists, adding that their grouse was that they (victims) did not support them to dethrone their monarch and also resell lands already acquired by some persons else but who could not develop their lands.
The traditional ruler of Obosi, Igwe Chidubem Iweka, confirmed to newsmen on phone that the cultists were being sponsored by a drug baron and a retire police officer from the area who are hell bent on grabbing and selling communal land for their selfish interest. The monarch lamented that the attackers could not wait for the state government to release the white paper from the panel of inquiry set up by the government on Obosi communal crisis which sat on weekly basis for five months (November 2015 to March 2016). He therefore called on the government to release the white paper and find a lasting solution to the crisis before more lives and properties are lost.