Ugbokolo, the host town to Benue State’s second highest educational institution – the Benue Polytechnic – has come under a strange, violent siege on it for a month running. Data of nightly raids in the area has shown a consistent daily ritual of physical attacks on suspecting neighbourhoods by armed young people who rob, machete victims and kill in many cases too. Details available so far shows the following have been killed within the last one month, the most prominent being Sunday Oteikwu, the community leader of Efoyo, the sub-urban area to the Polytechnic, killed on April 19th, 2017. Others are Inalegwu Uloko, Ameh Apeh, an Immigration officer from Ogungaga on the outskirt of Ugbokolo, Emma Idibia and John Abah, the last two being staff of the Polytechnic. The three others killed whose names have not been confirmed are two students and a lady suspected to be a girlfriend of a member of the gang. She was killed at Ollo, also known as ‘Sambisa Forest’, a place the police is reported to dare not go.
Although the Benue Police Command recently declared some alleged violent killers wanted, it is still not clear why Ugbokolo is experiencing the violent turn. More intriguing is how that level of organised, open violence could have gone on for this length of time in Ugbokolo, the commercial capital of Western Idoma without any communal action or statement by elders and political leaders from the area. Described as the haven of peace by its multicultural inhabitants, (indigenes, Igbos, Hausas, Bini, Ijaw, Tiv, Calabar, Edo, etc), it has, slowly but steadily, been taking locational advantage of being between Otukpo and Enugu, close to Obollo Afor and, therefore, direct to most Eastern towns such as Aba or Onitsha.
The police authorities, especially men of the of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) have battled this new violence especially since the suspected gangsters killed a Police Inspector and took away his gun late January, 2017. In retaliation, the police killed one of them. The young men re-organised and allegedly set out to burn the local police station on the ground that their colleague was extra-judicially killed. This is understood to have attracted SARS raid and arrest of upwards of 70 of the suspected gangsters, some of whom have been released, about 50 of whom are, however, still in prison custody in Makurdi. Many people, particularly the lawyers around Makurdi, believe that the ones in prison now are not the real stuff.
The drama took a new turn in early April when the suspected cultists gained the upper hand in taking forceful total control. Night life ceased and life became nasty, short and brutish. This meant not only the overcoming of the local vigilantes that sprang up in most local settlements around Benue Polytechnics campus such as Efoyo, Ichakwu, Aokpe Road, Ollo, Okwugaga and Ugbokolo urban but the police too. On April 11th, 2017, for instance, they carried out a house to house operation. That night and the subsequent few days were particularly said to be very bad as many people fell victim of brutal attacks.
Among them are Emmanuel Ameh, Mrs Mary Abah, Emma Easy, Elias Oboh, Oga Monday, Enenche Abah and Sunday Ella, a staff of Okpokwu Local Government Council. His own tragedy, it was learnt, was that he had no cash the night they came calling. They decided to teach him a lesson of his life with several machete cuts, leaving him in pains. An elder in the town remarked on how they decide their victims. One is anyone they classify to be proud. Two is anyone considered to be materially well off. This, it is argued, is why many Igbo traders are victims. In most of such cases, the victim is woken up and marched to his shop where they get what they want.
In truth, no one knows the criteria by which they choose victims and the category of what is visited on such victims. Some are left untouched because one of the suspected cultists could say, “ah, don’t touch this one because he buys drinks for us’. Others are left because he or she is connected with somebody powerful. Some are matcheted while some are killed. Ugbokolo is the operational heartland but it actually covers the villages surrounding Benue Polytechnic.
People who claim some knowledge of some of the boys involved said that some of them are the most innocent looking and handsome young people in town, that when they greet you, it was impossible to ever associate them with anything of that nature. They greet humbly and they never accept being part of such a network of criminality and cultic behaviour, he said.
There is also the view that the group is a complicated assembly, stretching from police informants to gang leaders from surrounding communities within the local government council, especially where the poverty level is such that robbery or criminality doesn’t pay when compared to Ugbokolo. The rest are local or ‘area boys’ who got tempted into criminality.
But criminality in Okpokwu Local Government Council is said to go beyond Ugbokolo to Okpoga, the council headquarters as well, citing the broad daylight burning of three suspected gangsters on February 16th, 2016 at the Central Round-About. It was in the presence of policemen whose head office is only a few metres from the popular spot.
Ordinarily, the local police at both Ugbokolo and Okpoga are not reckoned with at all. No one gives them any chance. Some elements say their operatives have become too familiar and too integrated to be of any use in this regard. Others say they are outgunned. Yet, others say it is being sponsored but no one in particular is mentioned.
The surprising thing throughout the area is the pervasiveness of fear as the phenomenon has turned Ugbokolo into where life ceases early evening as everyone sneaks into his room, huddles up the family in prayers to God that ‘they’ do not come knocking. By ‘they’, is meant a group of formless young men who have established their vicious, violent authority over the embryonic town. This is without exception. It is a stupid thing to ask where they get the guns given the spate of violence across the Middle Belt for a long time now.
Perhaps everyone has reconciled with the whole drama although when this would end appears to be the question on all lips even while silence, fear and suspicion keeps all company at Ugbokolo.
There has not been any statement from the Police on this wave of violence as at press time.
