Grisly murder at Gboko Motor Park
The cold-blooded killing in broad daylight of seven travellers at the motor park in Gboko, Benue State last week, apparently because they were identified as ethnic Fulani, threatens to introduce a new and much more dangerous dimension to the crises that engulfed the state due to incessant clashes between farming communities and pastoral herdsmen. The […]
The cold-blooded killing in broad daylight of seven travellers at the motor park in Gboko, Benue State last week, apparently because they were identified as ethnic Fulani, threatens to introduce a new and much more dangerous dimension to the crises that engulfed the state due to incessant clashes between farming communities and pastoral herdsmen.
The state’s Commissioner of Police Fatai Oweseni said at a media briefing on Wednesday last week, “At 11.a.m. today (Wednesday), we got a report that Gboko area of the state which before now had been very peaceful was being disturbed. The incident happened between 9a.m. and 10am. Some passengers believed to be of Fulani extraction were attacked at the motor park and killed by some criminal gang.
The victims were attacked right in the park while trying to board a vehicle to Okene. Some said they were going to Taraba. The police rushed to the park on getting the information and the report was that the criminals threw stones at the police which took the situation out of control.
“We have gone there for on the spot assessment. We have information that would help us to get the criminals. We are looking at the case as an act of criminality. It’s not religious, political or tribal,” Oweseni said. Reports said the mob that killed the innocent travellers later snatched their corpses from the mortuary where police took them and set them ablaze. This devilish, malicious, unreasonable and dangerous criminal act must not go unpunished, lest others be encouraged to also engage in it.
Governor Samuel Ortom placed a dusk to dawn curfew on Gboko. Though Police Commissioner Oweseni rejected any religious, tribal or political undertones to the grisly murders in order to douse tension, it was apparent that the mob thought it was a “reprisal” attack for the equally grisly killing of seventy three people by suspected herdsmen on New Year’s Day. No doubt the inciting utterances of some religious, political and traditional leaders served to inflame passions. These grisly killings of the Fulani travellers indicate that the problem may not end soon and a new circle of reprisals and counter-reprisals could ensue.
Unless the authorities, local, state, national, political, security and traditional wake up to this danger, it may spill over to other states and all Nigerians will be the worse for it. Sordid and regrettable though the Benue killings were, we were made to believe that security agencies were doing all they could to bring the culprits to book and to prevent future occurrence. Slow though the process has been, there was no justification for criminals to resort to self help in a major city, in broad daylight, with hundreds of on-lookers in the name of so-called vengeance.
Since this grisly murder took place at the motor park, it is very easy to identify the culprits and bring them speedily to answer for their ignoble crimes. The fact that the security agencies have not yet succeeded in apprehending other killers is no justification at all to let these known killers go scot free. The way things work in Nigeria, some unscrupulous political, religious and traditional leaders will try to make political capital out of it and argue that the Gboko killers should not be punished unless the criminals who perpetrated the killing of 73 Benue indigenes on New Year’s Day are caught. While we indeed urge the security agencies to accelerate their efforts at apprehending any and all killers, not apprehending one criminal cannot exculpate another criminal.