Okigwe community at the weekend had a bitter taste of the destructive activities of Fulani herdsmen when the terrorists invaded the town.
One Donald Ede, a student of the Maris Brothers’ Juniorate Uturu, Abia State lost his life in the process while three others were hospitalized as a result of various degrees of injury they sustained.
Our source disclosed that the incident occurred Saturday evening as people were returning from a priestly ordination which took place at the Immaculate Conception Church, Okigwe.
The source also indicated that the herdsmen who bore sophisticated weapons took away some victims into their hide out. The number of possible abductees is not known as at the time of reporting.
It was gathered that it was the intervention of the combined efforts of the army and the police that got the herdsmen to run for their lives. Tension grew astronomically as residents called their loved ones.
A prominent community leader around the area who chose to speak under condition of anonymity expressed concern about how the bandits were able to beat 4 army and police check points between Abia State University and the point where the incident took place, Ihube, Okigwe.
The community chief narrated that the area of the national grid running through Uturu to Umuchieze is the suspected hideout of the herders. He stated that an escapee kidnap victim revealed that he saw four other dead bodies which people were not able to meet ransom demanded as they were killed.
The cattle market is also suspected as the operational base of the killer herders. It would be recalled that last year in one attack at Okigwe about 8 persons lost their lives. There was also another incident this year when some students were abducted and taken to the bush but were rescued through police effort.
There is great apprehension in the South East as the menacing Fulani herders appear to be taken a firm foothold in the Igbo nation what with the pockets of incidents here and there. One of the residents of the area who spoke under condition of anonymity blamed the government of Orji Uzor Kalu for the series of attack
According to him, “if he had not donated the Lokpanta-Lokpaukwu land to the Hausa-Fulani for settlement along the stretch to Enugu they would not have the opportunity to do what they are doing now’’, he averred.
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