By Amos Aar
AT LEAST eight young persons have been reported killed in the last one week in the polytechnic town of Ugbokolo, Okpokwu LGA of Benue State, following a ferocious war between two cult groups, National Record can authoritatively report.
A senior staff at the Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo confided in National Record on Tuesday that trouble started on Friday, August 11, 2023 when an alleged member of a cult group identified as Black was killed by its rival group identified as Red, a situation which prompted members of the Black to go on a raft of reprisal attacks on their Red counterparts.
According to our source, who pleaded anonymity for security reasons, seven members of the Black group have so far been killed while a Red member was killed last night as an immediate reprisal for yesterday’s brutal killing of a suspected Red member.
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“That very day (August 11, 2023), they (Black) killed one. The following day, they killed four, making five. The day before yesterday, they killed one who happened to be a member of the vigilante around a place called Ijede, exactly around A’Okpe Road. They were pursuing him and some people saw them but they thought he might have escaped.
“When they searched and got his corpse this morning in the bush, that one generated a lot of grievance among youths in the community.
“They carried the corpse in their gulf car and blocked the road and called on all the blacks to come out so that they would go into final battle,” the source told National Record.
Asked whether the vigilante member was killed in the course of his official duty, trying to control the crisis, the source said the Black cult group suspected him to be a member of the Red cult group, adding that it was the killing of the vigilante member that provoked youths of the community and the crisis would have worsened if adequate security personnel were not deployed to Ugbokolo to calm the situation.
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According to the source, the management of the Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo called soldiers from Okpoga, the headquarters of Okpokwu LGA, to come and protect the institution, but the soldiers were yet to arrive as at the time of the conversation.
Although our source reliably confirmed the killing of eight persons in the fierce cult rivalry as at Tuesday morning, the Benue State Commissioner of Police, Mr Bartholomew Nnamdi Onyeka, who confirmed the incident during a press briefing in his office on Tuesday, however said only one person was killed.
Mr Onyeka said the police were on top of the situation. “We have our men that are there and the situation has been brought under control. It’s just a person that was killed there and that person is an indigene where the locals went and carried the corpse and were moving up and down. But my men went there and they have been able to bring everything under control and we are still monitoring.
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“So, we are very much aware of what is going on there and have not left them alone,” CP Onyeka said.
National Record however gathered that the police were helpless and outnumbered by the angry youths on Tuesday morning, as they were on rampage, setting ablaze buildings of persons suspected to be behind the killings.
