In an attack at the Ukaegbu Junction by Ezeiweka Road, Awada Obosi Layout in Anambra state‘s Idemili North Local Government Area, gunmen killed a police officer and two civilians.
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The attackers also set fire to the police patrol van before fleeing the scene, which occurred on Sunday.
According to residents who spoke to reporters, the incident occurred around 8:30 a.m. when officers from the Awada Divisional Police Station were conducting a stop-and-search in a high-risk area.
During the attack, the officer, a tricycle rider, and a local resident were killed.
Mr. Tochukwu Ikenga, the Public Relations Officer for the Anambra State Police, confirmed the attack in a press release.
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“The assailants arrived in a Sienna… and began shooting at the patrol vehicle along Ukegbu Junction,” he explained.
“Unfortunately, one police officer paid the ultimate price during the exchange of gunfire.”
Tochukwu stated that “in an attempt to elude the police responding team, the hoodlums set fire to the patrol vehicle.”
Other officers were injured in the attack, he said, adding that patrol and surveillance in the area and Onitsha have been increased in order to find and apprehend the perpetrators.
Although no group has claimed responsibility for recent attacks, police frequently blame the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a banned separatist group seeking an independent state for the ethnic Igbo people.
Although IPOB’s armed wing, the Eastern Security Network, denies involvement in the attacks, separatist agitation is on the rise in Nigeria’s southeast and southwest.
Since the beginning of the year, dozens of police officers and other security personnel have been killed in targeted attacks in the southeast.
Several prisons have also been raided, resulting in the release of hundreds of inmates and the confiscation of weapons.
Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB, has been in the custody of the Federal Government since he was arrested in June on treason charges.
MASSOB Expresses Concern about Igboland’s Delayed Traditional Burial Rites.
The Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has expressed concern about the careless storage of corpses in Igboland morgues.
MASSOB stated that it has begun consultations with key Igbo traditional, religious, and political leaders on the issue.
The pro-Biafra organization lamented that Igboland has become an unredeemed societal menace as a result of keeping corpses in mortuaries for too long before their actual traditional burial rites.
MASSOB further lamented the increased rot in society, ranging from criminal tendencies, immoral exhibitions, and loss of traditional/cultural values in Igbo land, in a statement made available to reporters on Monday, by the neglect of rendering traditional burial rites to the departed.
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The group, however, vowed that it would not relent in exposing Igboland’s neglected societal ills and urged traditional and religious leaders to begin the process of implementing the forefathers’ initial traditional burial rites.
According to MASSOB’s statement, “it was untraditional during the times of our forefathers to keep dead members of the family more than two days before burial.”
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“Igbo land has become an unredeemed societal menace as a result of keeping corpses in mortuaries for too long before their actual traditional burial rites.
“The spirit of unburied dead people has usually possessed young men and women of our current generation into societal immoral and criminal activities.”
“The spirits of unburied people float around the society in which they once lived because they were not accustomed to their proper traditional burial rites.”
